“Assassins Apprentice is, just like the blurb on its cover says, a richly detailed debut. The story follows Fitz, and his growing-up tale as the bastard of Prince Chivalry. While this type of beginning may seem like it will lead to cliches, it does nothing of the sort.
The story is a little slow in getting interesting, but is much better than the vast majority of debuts in this area. After awhile establishing his childhood under Burrich, the former stablemaster of Prince Chivalry, Fitz goes through a variety of teachers, all with interesting personalities, including Chade. It's no surprise that Fitz starts being tutored in being an assassin, and most of the interesting events of the novel result from this.
The pacing is, in a word, excellent. Events and characters are introduced just fast enough to keep everything interesting, and you don't have to wait the whole book for a climax, like some other fantasy authors are wont to do. I won't spoil anything, but Fitz, being not only an assassin, but a bastard, is wrapped up in quite the intrigue, which gets better and better until just near the end of the book.
A lesser, but still impressive feat is the world, at least as much of it as Fitz sees. Hobb doesn't waste large sections of text introducing new peoples and places, but instead focuses mostly on the Capital of Shrewds kingdom, Buckkeep. The areas that are described are realistic, without going into excessive detail about the stuff that doesn't matter to the story.
All in all, this book is probably the beginning of a great series, and has some setups for what could be great plot points in the sequel. All the more impressive in that this works even as a standalone story. Highly recommended.
”
Black Friday wrote this review Thursday, September 3 2009.
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