Welp, I’ve completed my Hobb-a-thon, the entire 16-volume Realm of the Elderlings series, and Assassin’s Fate was, of course, a beautiful and bittersweet ending to this epic story. I knew that there were going to be tragedies, heroism, and possibly deaths of beloved characters. But even when you know it’s coming, when you know who is going to die (maybe even why and how), somehow Hobb delivers it in such a way that you are completely gutted. You weren’t as ready as you thought. Hobb is a highly skilled literary assassin, and in this final volume, she brings together all of the incredible story lines: the dragons, the Elderlings, the Liveships, the White Prophets, and the Farseers. While the personal stories of Fitz, the Fool, Bee, and their people will have you screaming, crying, cheering and weeping, I found myself amazed at Hobb’s ability to create an elaborate, cohesive history of this world of warring kingdoms. Since the first trilogy of the series, readers have known that dragons and a magical people called Elderlings had once ruled over an opulent kingdom, but they disappeared long ago. Why did that happen, and now that they seem to have returned, what will the ripple effect be on the world? I will do my best not to spoil the plot, and hopefully I will convince you to pick up the series and dive in.
Assassin’s Fate is the story of multiple quests coming together for what promises to be an explosive, possibly world shattering conclusion. Fitz’s 9-year-old daughter Bee has been kidnapped by the White Prophets of Clerres. They believe she is the realization of a prophecy that could have deadly consequences, and, as they have done before, they want to control how those events play out. Bee is an extraordinary child; she is very pale and has vivid dreams, much like White Prophets. She also seems to possess the Skill and maybe even the Wit, powerful magics that Fitz also has. Much of this 900+ page story is about the kidnappers’ movements with Bee to get out of the Six Duchies and back to their remote island. It is a brutally violent tale involving a significant amount of child abuse (trigger warning). Meanwhile, Fitz and the Fool, who has been hobbled by torture at the hands of the White Prophets, are on a quest for revenge. Fool wants to destroy those who have hurt him and countless others. Fitz, believing Bee is dead, wants revenge on her killers. Fitz is a trained assassin, but he is also in his 60s and his reflexes aren’t what they once were. As much as he would prefer to travel to Clerres alone, the Fool and a few others (young people who knew Bee and/or have something to prove) insert themselves into this quest. Dragons, Elderlings, and Liveships will all become part of this quest for vengeance, and the reasons for their involvement have to do with their repressed histories and increasing memory of what was done to them in the past.
The parallel journeys of Bee and her kidnappers and of Fitz and his cohort are thrilling and dangerous. It is hard to read about Bee, a little girl, being ripped from all she loves, wondering if anyone is trying to find her, and using her fierce skill set to try to save herself. Bee does have an ally in her corner, unseen and unknown to others, and I do love that part of the story. Meanwhile, Fitz and company are gathering unlikely allies and entertaining the possibility that Bee is alive. In their wake as they travel, they sow seeds of discord and of hope. More and more folks want to be involved in this quest, much to Fitz’s chagrin, but their reasons and their powers will make it impossible to deny them.
While there are many themes that come up in Hobb’s work (gender identity, sexuality, physical and intellectual disability, just to name a few), the themes that really hit hard in this final trilogy have to do with memory/history and justice/vengeance. How memories are recorded and who does that are important, because there is great power in controlling how history is told. Some people write everything down on paper and manipulate information to sway events in their favor. The price other people might pay for their selfish interests is an acceptable cost from their point of view. Others record memories in stone, but the ability to read those histories is limited to the few magic users who can access them and then translate and interpret them. Still others rely on oral tradition or hereditary memory, which is something dragons possess. But if your ancestors have all been exterminated, their memories have been as well. In Assassin’s Fate, peoples all across this world are waking up memories, and the responses vary widely. For some, when the fog is lifted, the memory of what has happened to them drives them mad. For others, there is ferocious anger and a desire for revenge. And for others still, there is a hope that life will change for the better.
Hobb leaves us with a world on the brink and bereft of some really wonderful people. If I were in a book group discussing Assassin’s Fate, I would want to spend time discussing the fates of characters such as the Bingtown Traders and Prilkop the White Prophet because their reactions to economic upheaval and violence are similar to things we see in our news today. Measuring economic security and tradition against morality makes folks uncomfortable. Do you adapt to the change or fight it?
Anyway, this entire series is outstanding. The themes and action make it suitable for teens and up (not for little kids), and you are going to get a much more nuanced and challenging presentation of magic, power, and human relationships than you ever found in a certain children’s series that made a transphobe into a billionaire. If you need a fantasy series with heroic/human/flawed characters, dragons, pirates, and all manner of magical creatures (plus heaping amounts of genuinely decent people and scary bad guys); a series where the disabled and the outcast are not cheap props but fully realized characters with agency; a series with both political intrigue and ordinary everyday friendships that can save your life, then you need to start Realm of the Elderlings. Re-reading it will be a literary treat for me from now on.
