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...you're right, it's a classic. I'm not sure why it took me so long to find it. Maybe it's always been overshadowed by whatever hyped books are getting all the press, the First Laws and Malazans and SoIaFs. But this trilogy was excellent all around.
If I try really hard I can come up with some quibbles, mainly with the last book. But that's true of any fantasy series I read, especially the ones I listed above. But the Farseer Trilogy had great worldbuilding, a truly unique approach to magic, and above all it had excellent characterization. 10/10, highly recommended.
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The Farseer trilogy is the start of the Realm of the Elderlings Saga, which is 16 books in 5 series. You'll definitely want to read at least the first three trilogies.
The Farseer trilogy ends in a really rough spot. I was dazed for a week after finishing it. I highly recommend that you don't stop there. The story isn't over. Keep going.
What?
I've read Liveship Traders. But there's more? Oh my, oh me oh my.
The first three trilogies are the core of the series, but I love all of them. You DEFINITELY want to read the Tawny Man trilogy. Anyone who reads the Farseer trilogy NEEDS to read the Tawny Man trilogy.
There’s actually 18 books. There are two novellas one which is a group of short stories and the other is a prequel which gives some more lore about the Tawny Man trilogy.
What? No way?
😲
More lore?
Unlike others in this thread, I found the Fitz and the Fool trilogy to be the weakest by far, to the point that I headcanon the series as stopping at RWC. RWC has its good points for me, but FatF has... let's just say it introduces a new main character and makes some (IMO, gratuitous) changes to existing characters.
Yes. And was Thronescape below mentions, the Tawny Man trilogy is the second half of Fitz' story. (There's also a more controversial third set of Fitz books, which I think aren't as good.)
I'm currently on like book 14 of this series lol, long journey but pretty enjoyable!
I've read all the way through to the end of The Tawny Man series. Generally really enjoyed them all although maybe it was becoming a bit of a grind towards the end of the last book. A bit samey- lots of suffering and angst.
Do I call it a day now or crack on with Rain Wild Chronicles?
Yes read all of the rest, Rain Wild Chronicles and Fitz & the Fool. They're all great, with Assassin's Fate being a phenomenal ending for the series and denouement for characters from both subseries.
I'm on the rain wild, I know they don't seem as well received but that are interesting to me, if you want to know more about dragons stuff go for it!
The Rain Wild Chronicles is probably Robin Hobb's weakest work. There are some good ideas there, but it feels like she didn't have a clear idea of how to tie them together into a coherent story. The narrative lacks a real driving force so major plot events just kinda...happen and a number of plot threads get tied up in unsatisfying ways because the publisher wasn't going to let the series go into a fifth volume.
The first three books are the strongest. I think that the final two series are more for the true fans of the series. If you aren't really certain, then it's perfectly reasonable to skip them. The first three trilogies tell a complete story.
I almost stopped reading midway through the first book. So glad I didn't. Then proceeded to inhale all 16. It was a ride.
I enjoyed the first 2 books but I found the last book too slow for me and it didn’t give me the pay off I wanted :(
Beautiful writing style though, and I love Fitz so much.
I thought I was the only one. Lots of people gush over the trilogy, but I wasn't a fan of the third book.
I think that in the end, every book / series ends up highly dependent on the reader. The various Fitz books are by far my favorite fantasy novels ever, I've reread them a lot over the years - but at the same time a bunch of the popular books on here I've disliked. That's part of the beauty of books, there's something out there for everyone :)
100% agree. I just don't often hear about people disliking time trilogy, especially for the exact reasons I didn't.
I've seen some people post about disliking it in the past, or not enjoying it - but I think we're in one of the waves of more popularity for Hobb in this subreddit, so there's more positive views towards her work.
I would assume most who stopped reading did so within first or second book.
Books 1 and 2 are awesome. The first quarter and last quarter of Assassins Quest are also awesome. It’s that middle half that just really really drags.
That said, I don’t think I have anything more than a nitpick with Liveship Traders. Those should be classics.
I've seen many disliking the third book here. Personally I loved it, maybe even more because of the slow parts, not in spite of them. Don't know if it has anything to do with it, but I was quite young when I read them the first time and had all the time in the world, so long and slow books didn't bother me as much as they do nowadays.
Third was my favorite of the opening trilogy by far.
The last book did get pretty slow, and Fitz got unusually stupid, but the payoff was there at the end. I did appreciate that Hobb managed to keep the ending unpredictable while still resolving most of the loose ends.
you think? I didn't mind the slow parts but the finale bugged me very much. The great climax that 3 books were building towards was over in...12 pages or something? I liked the books but the endling left a very sour taste in my mouth and has kept me from reading more farseer.
This was my problem, too. I know it's more character driven than plot driven, but the ending to the raiders story was so abrupt
The raiders do get considerably elaborated on in the later books.
Farseer trilogy has one of my favorite combat scenes in all of Fantasy. Fitz and his companions are attacked by bandits, Fitz instinctually draws his sword and strikes one of them down... and thats it, rest if the page is dedicated to giving weight to what happened, I believed it was the first live human he had killed. The actual combat was like two lines, over in a heartbeat.
First Law, Malazan, and ASOIAF get lots of mentions because they are also great. They are not over hyped. I'm glad you liked some Hobb, she's a wonderfully talented writer.
Well two of them are great, and one is overhyped. But yeah Hobb ought to be up there.
Don’t make us guess!
Which one
One of them is great but all three are overhyped.
ASOIAF cannot be great because it will not be finished. I will die on this hill.
Yeah, a pure 10 to me as well. Easily one of the high watermarks for the genre. I had no complaints though. At all. The third book was absolutely stunning.
I feel like I'm in the very small minority for these books. To me they became immensely grating and many times they felt like torture porn or despair porn (and therefore somewhat one dimensional) because of the main character's (Fitz?) constant misfortunes.
Same, the farseer trilogy has to be in my top 3 most hated series…. Whole series was depressing and I hated the characters, they all just piss you off…
This is a staggeringly popular opinion on this sub. FWIW, I disagree with the very notion of 'misery porn', but I can understand why excessive suffering might feel gratuitous and take away from the impact of the story.
Did not know it was staggeringly popular.
What do you mean you disagree with the very notion?
I wasn’t saying it was gratuitous. I was saying I did not find it enjoyable … warranted or not.
Yeah, it's very, very common in this subreddit, and is one of the main criticisms I see of Hobb/ROTE.
?
What do you mean? You called the books "somewhat one dimensional because of [Fitz's] constant misfortunes". Surely the implication there is that some of that suffering weakened the integrity of the story, and so was unnecessary from a storytelling POV.
Oh, the 'misery porn' thing is definitely a pet peeve of mine lol, so I'm not having a go at you here.
But I find terms like 'torture porn' and 'misery porn' don't often add anything to the discussion.
For one, I find them maddeningly vague. What does 'misery porn' even mean? "Farseer was misery porn" or "Tess of the D'Urbervilles was misery porn" doesn't tell me anything about which specific parts the person found overwrought or why, or engage much with what the author might have intended. It could mean anything from "I hate tragedy and tragic arcs" (which is fine, but then what are you doing reading tragedies?) to "I found the part whereFitz is tortured by Regal's cronies to be unnecessarily long and graphic" or "The whole book read like a whump fanfic" (in which case why not just say that?). Consequently, it just feels like a lazy, throwaway jab and a cheap way to blame the author for the reader's subjective opinion without actually saying anything specific about the text.
For two, the very word 'porn' implies those kinds of scenes are solely there for the reader to get off on the suffering of the character (emotionally speaking), and that's A Bad Thing (TM). But isn't that the point of all entertainment? It's fine to criticise weak writing, of course. But 'misery porn' implies, not just that the quality of the product is inferior, but that the reader being entertained is in itself objectionable somehow.
I have seen 'popcorn' used fairly neutrally and even positively, but 'misery porn' is pretty much always a criticism.
I get that it's a shorthand way to say that the tragedy/suffering wasn't effective because it was poorly written. But it always reminds me of those weird purity-culture-esque takes on tiktok that fictional characters doing something awful must mean the author is a horrible person who deserves to be cancelled. Because we have to have good morals in our books at all times, for the sake of the kiddies.
/soapbox. I told you it was a pet peeve ;)
Oh boy. You seem to care about this way more than me. And you’re reading way too much into what I said.
I didn’t like the 6 books I read so I decided not to read the other 12.
The entire RoTE is one of my favorite things in fantasy.
The next series, Liveship Traders is probably her best, imo. You're in for a treat. Enjoy.
Good news is there are plenty more Fitz books—and others in the RotE series. While I'm not a fan of the Rain Wild Chronicles, the Liveship Trader Series—which comes after Farseer in the reading order—is an incredible trilogy in its own right.
Its fantastic. But for some reason, with Hobb I always feel let down at the end.
The whole series has been great. All the way through to the last book I’ve enjoyed it. But the last book I’m maybe halfway finished & I’m just done. Idk. And Soldier Son is the worst series I have ever finished
Very well written, she'd be one of my favorite authors if not for how awfully she treats her characters. I just don't like characters constantly losing no matter what, even if it's incredibly well written and makes sense.
One of my favorite things about an anime called Ancient Magus Bride is the plot revolves around everyone around the main character convincing her not to set herself on fire to keep others warm, whereas the Farseer Trilogy is basically everyone around Fitz letting him or leading him into setting himself on fire, with the few that really do care for him aren't able to help or understand.
It's funny because that's definite Fitz's viewpoint, but as I see it, he tends to blame the people around him for realities that aren't their fault and that he ought to have been able to figure out on his own. The quiet life he wanted to lead withMolly and Nettle was obviously impossible when Nettle was the last living Farseer heir. . That was kind of my biggest problem with the third book, was that Fitz's IQ seemed to drop sharply around halfway through the book.
The thing is while part of it is Fitz perspective, that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fact that every adult in his life except Burrich and... I forget her name, Verity's wife, I think, think first of how to use Fitz rather than how to raise him to deal with life.
Burrich is a good man but poorly equipped to help Fitz, despite sharing the Wit. He traumatizes Fitz in an attempt to help him, and rather than chase Fitz away from his Wit it serves to sever a lot of Fitz's trust in the only adult who stands in as a parent.
In fact, the third book specifically exemplifies this when his "IQ drops". Fitz has rarely had to do any of the things he does in book 3 without guidance. He's completely unready to do the things he's doing. Partially because he's had nobody to really raise him as a person, and partially because his training wasn't anywhere near complete to be the one directing his own actions.
Some things are the fault of his own stubbornness, but for example the... wizard trainer guy, part of the problem was Fitz didn't have a single adult he could really go to for advice or help. Sure, he probably should have bothered Chade more or got to Verity or something, but my point is every adult in his life failed him, even if unintentionally. There's a whole bit in that arc where he goes to adults that might help him and they brush him off.
The entire series is a saga of careless craftsmen breaking a tool by stressing and straining it before it's ready. For good reason, of course, because Hobb is an excellent writer. Plus the sheer bad luck of being introduced to a drug that would cripple his magical ability without being informed. At most I think he's told not to use it for a prolonged period, but not the reason why.
He's a boy that no one has taught or shown how to be a man, saddled with a man's duties and responsibilities that break him. This part is important, he's still a boy. With nobody to ask for help or advice except for a man he can't fully trust, and a man more concerned with making him a weapon than a man. Even though Chade cares for him, and tries to do his best along the line that he was raised, Chade didn't have to grow up in a crisis and be wielded before being tempered
And it's made so much worse by the quality of Hobb's writing. It's so utterly believable and makes complete sense, and nobody is really to blame but chance or fate. She set out to write a tragedy and is wildly successful. It's just that I don't like reading tragedies very often. Hell, everybody but Fitz gets something of a happy ending.
This is an excellent breakdown of the series.
It's exactly why I disagree with so many readers that most of Fitz's choices early in the series were "dumb", as I've heard so many refer to them. People say he "makes such stupid decisions" - which I take to mean they think he makes contrived decisions to serve the plot rather than acting in the most rational way. But this is one of the strongest parts of the series to me because I could rarely see Fitz making any other choice with the options he was given and his nature. Maybe I'm just not a critical reader or maybe these people wanted a main character with more agency, but to me, looking through his eyes, Fitz is that kind of character. He's the kind of person who just drifts into things, more or less, because the people around him steer him that way. It's one of the most compelling aspects of the series for me: the idea of the threads of destiny, the mind manipulation, the questions about whether we are ever in control of anything that happens to us.
One of the strengths of the character, IMO, is that Fitz fundamentally lacks the drive to strike out on his own like a hero, as do most of us. He reads very much as an everyman to me. Progression fantasy this is not.
Theromance arc/pining over Molly until practically the last page is where my suspension of disbelief comes to a screeching halt, but apart from that I think you're spot on. It is a tragedy through and through, and we all know how those end.
It's also whyVerity's final fate is one of the most heartrending in the entire series.
I think a lot of people fall for the hype, don't get whatever hyper-competent hero they were expecting and come away disappointed.
Kettricken
Seconding the people saying you have to read Liveship Traders and Tawny Man! They're the two trilogies I wish I could erase from my memory and experience for the first time again.
I'm upvoting you because this post is not about First Law, Dungeon Crawler Carl or Cradle.
Thanks! You have to be reasonable about these things. ;)
Honestly, if we're picking flaws, I do find the end of the second very anticlimactic and the third really struggles to get going.
That said, I agree. This series has completely blown wide my expectations of how good a series can be and it's leapfrogged into my favourites of anything, including outside of books. I can't stop myself just thinking about it all the time.
On book 5 currently. Have no idea where we're headed. Can't wait.
I reallly don't get why you'd suggest Farseer is so much better than Malazan.
Glad you enjoyed it. It’s definitely a top 10 series for me.
Tawny Man is even better imo
im sorry for the pain we have caused you. Regal is evil we hate him. Now the rest of the books.
Just make sure you rehydrate before reading any of the further series. 😀
Gonna take a break from Farseer for a bit. I started Nuclear War: A Scenario and will probably do Dune Messiah after that. And then I will have to reassess my tsundoku pile before I start picking up more Hobb books.
Hobb's writing style is phenomenal. As a non-regular SFF reader, I often find the prose in epic fantasy or hard SF overlong, overexplainy, or dry as dust. ROTE goes down like a good cup of masala chai.
Good news: The books get even better.
I adore Robin Hobbs' writing. Except for the Soldier Son trilogy which was awful.
The last trilogy in Fitz & the Fool's story, OMG I sobbed and sobbed.