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Maud Moonshine posted:Once you're done with those, I can't recommend Robin Hobb enough. She has a lot of different books to choose from, but I'd say start with Assassin's Apprentice. It's similar to Name of the Wind in that you've got a framing device, a single-person narrator, good prose. I get to go have a book signed by her tomorrow, I'm totally excited. Seconding this, the protagonist of the Assassin's Apprentice series has a lot of surface similarities to Kvothe - tough childhood, unusual skills and aptitudes, telling the story from an perspective that reveals that at least some of his ambitions were unfulfilled - but I feel like they play out in a more plausible way. I think the key difference from Kvothe is that even though Fitz is a character with a lot of the potential Mary Sue qualities like semi-royal parentage, having both special magics in their world including being able to talk to animals , etc., he seems to gently caress up as much or more than anyone else. He's impulsive and makes a lot of unilateral decisions that cause problems in a realistic way. When he gets beaten up, it takes time for him to recover. When he lashes out at people or keeps secrets from them, it drives them away. He has a teenager's rock-solid belief that nobody else understands his problems like he does, and it bites him in the rear end repeatedly. There are other characters who are better at everything he does, and will kick his rear end if needed. This all comes together to make a character who's interestingly capable, but not boring to read, because the reader has a pretty clear sense of his limitations as well as his abilities.
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Sep 2, 2014 12:14
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DurosKlav posted:I've always hated the ending to the Farseer trilogy. I know its stupid but it put me in a funk for nearly a week. Such a bad, and creepy ending and not really necessary. It went a bit too far. Fitz's adoptive father doesnt need to marry Fitz's formerly pregnant girlfriend who's old enough to be his daughter as well. They could has easily passed off as a father and his daughter who lost her husband to the recent events, they didnt need to hook up to avoid a controversy, Ugh. It didnt have to be happy but it didnt need to be that! I'm shocked how much it still irritates me and its been a good 10+ years since I read it the first time. Oh, I didn't read that interaction that way at all, as what needed to happen rather than what naturally happened out of their circumstances. I thought it was just how the conversation flowed - Burrich was like "we can say that we were together before we were married" trying not to put any obligations on her and Molly was already interested in him so she's like "since you bring it up..." and makes a move on him. We also get hints through the Farseer trilogy that Burrich is actually relatively young, maybe 15 years older than Fitz - he just seems old and asexual to Fitz like how your parents seem old and asexual when you're a kid. Even Molly specifically repeats the gossip that Fitz is "the best thing to come out of the stables since Burrich" and indicates that his attractiveness is pretty well-established among the women, and they've been thrown together through very stressful, intense times in their lives and spent a lot of time together. Fitz had nothing to offer her then or anytime prior because of the "one horse can't wear two saddles" problem, whereas Burrich had finally moved past that conflict in his life. Somebody please make a Robin Hobb thread, for the new book and the older 9, there's plenty to say.
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Sep 6, 2014 23:54
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