I've heard that Robin Hobb is excellent fantasy. I don't think my expectations were especially high, but I don't understand the praise except this is how fantasy is written, or was expected to be written, and she managed to pull it off as well as the sea full of men around her.
Or perhaps it's that I'm too used to readying YA and there is no spark in this story. No emotional connection to the story, no outstanding characters, no intriguing or surprising plot. Everything is told from a distance, the big movements happening on the edges of the day in the life of a boy who grows up to be, I suppose, a young man. The title suggests an apprenticeship but there are no details of his training, simply years of days and being told what it was he learned. The most vibrant connection in the story is his connection to the dogs. And perhaps to Burrich who is something of a mystery in his sense of what Fitz is doing with the Wit. But there is so little explanation of the world building. What is the Wit? Is it actually as bad as Burrich thinks? What would Chade think of it? Or Verity? We don't know because the story never explores those things. And repelling is also a thing that is done, that apparently Burrich can also do, with no explanation given to what or who or why. We know a little of the Skill but Fitz barely uses it. Which makes the few times that he does interesting, and all the rest feel like wasted potential.
Then several parts of the story felt completely useless. Someone tried to kill Burrich. But we're not going to try to figure out who or why. The assassin's apprentice who is a renowned spy does nothing with it. Red-Ship raiders are coming to the coast to use the wells. But that doesn't matter to the story really. We're not going to wonder why or do anything to stop or them or change anything in response. So much of the story had no impact on anything else what was the point?
It also took a while to get into the story. I found the beginning overwritten with not just long sentences, but heavy sentences full of too many descriptions of simple things. And it was all so distant without any grounding in the characters, but rather trying to ground itself in the description of the world and even that in the mundane things of the world. I suppose that was a decent precedent of a story heavy with description that dwelt in the ordinary aspects of life.
And yet, there was this one moment. this little bit of brilliant subtext. It suggested that the rest of the story could have been that subtle, that sophisticated and rife with power and intrigue.
This was the Assassin's Apprentice. It should be full of danger and excitement. It should be clever and subversive. It is very few of those things and again, mostly from a distance. Piled onto the ordinariness of the story is unseemliness and things that would be sad if the story held any emotion. There is very little pleasantness or circumstances turning to good to be found except in the end. I mean, Rurisk is one of the few good men in the story so of course he died. Which is why it seems best to leave this story as it is and not go down another harrowing road into Regal's cruelty and grasping for power or enemies in Red ships that can't be defeated or Forging that can't be undone the way ugly characters are given influence to be awful. Clearly it's an expansively developed world but why would I want to spend more time in it?
I don't understand what is within this story that draws people into the next book or any of the others after that.