Royal Assassin opens where we left FitzChivalry Farseer at the end of the previous book. FitzChivalry is slowly recovering from internal injuries he suffered from during his last assignment. At his return to Buckkeep, life at court resumes and once again, FitzChivalry must do everything in his power to protect the King he has sworn allegiance to against conspiracies and plots from within Buckkeep as well as from the Red Ship raiders.
I am conflicted about Royal Assassin, book two of the Farseer trilogy. On one hand, I have a tremendous respect for Robin Hobb’s writing style, for the world she has created, and how she weaves her story. These are the reasons why I kept on reading Royal Assassin. But on the other hand, I found the story and the characters extremely frustrating.
My biggest disappointment in the book concerns FitzChivalry. First of all, for a story revolving around an assassin, I personally find the absence of assassinations quite unsatisfactory. My second issue with Fitz was that he did not learn from his past mistakes (book one), and where I could forgive him in Assassin’s Apprentice for being a teenager who always followed orders without questioning them and for showing no interests in politics, I realized I could not bear with his ‘I could not care less’ attitude towards obvious conspiracies, plots and threats against some of the royal family members.
My other issue with Royal Assassin was that, the villain is not that clever, he is just lucky enough to be surrounded by characters who have absolutely no sense of observation and no common sense at all. Many times I found myself yelling at characters such as Prince Verity, FitzChivalry, and Chade for not taking actions when they should have.
Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken and Lady Patience were my favourite characters. They were intelligent, honest and observant, always willing to provide advice to the male characters, especially FitzChivalry, despite him obviously not listening to their wisdom which inevitably has him fail at his task.
Royal Assassin had a killer beginning and ending, however, the middle of the book was, in my opinion, slow-paced, repetitive and frustrating while characters's evolution was nonexistent. This has me worried for Assassin's Quest, book three of the Farseer trilogy.
Hobb, R. Royal Assassin, London, Harper Voyager Books, 2014.