Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb
A few weeks ago I finished Fool's Errand, by Robin Hobb.
This is the first book of The Tawny Man Trilogy, which itself is the third series in her sprawling fantasy series The Realm of the Elderlings.
As I noted earlier, this book really helped me get out of a reading rut I had been in for a while. That's the magic of Robin Hobb's writing. It's been the case for all seven of the books I've read from her.
Fool's Errand returns to the point of view of Fitzchivalry Farseer—the protagonist of the first series, The Farseer Trilogy—15 years later and after a three-book detour with another cast of characters and location (Liveship Traders).
I think Hobb always has a nostalgic and tragic way of writing, but Fool's Errand in particular felt like that from the start. Like most of her books, this is heavy on character and light on plot. For the first 30-40% of the book, there's really not much driving action at all. Instead we're simply reconnecting with Fitz, learning about his life, seeing how he is grappling with his past and his grief and seeing him go through his day-to-day tasks with his Wit-bonded wolf, Nighteyes, and his adopted son, Hap.
It's a testament to Hobb's prose—and her ability to develop incredibly realized characters that you care deeply about—that I was hooked throughout this entire opening sequence. Nighteyes in particular is a character who will always stick with me.
The action picks up a bit later and Fitz finds himself on a brief quest alongside his old friend, The Fool. The duo get re-entangled with Six Duchies politics, reconnect with old friends and find themselves tracking down the lost Prince Dutiful and uncovering a mystery surrounding a group of rebellious Wit users.
Hobb relentlessly finds ways to break your heart in these books, and that's once again the case here. One character's death is foreshadowed and hinted at from the beginning, and yet when the scene actually happens it's somehow still shocking. It might be the most well-written scene I can remember from Hobb, which is really saying something.
I love this book. I love this series. And I can't wait to see what comes next. Bring on the pain, I suppose.
Overall: 65
- Character: 80
- Plot: 50
- Prose: 70
- Worldbuilding: 65
I use the 20-80 scale to rate things.
Highlights
- “You’ve already given me more than I could ever pay back. Including the ability to go after this for myself.” Those were the words we went to bed on, and I was smiling as I closed my eyes. There is monstrous vanity in the pride we take in our children, I told myself. I had bumbled along with Hap, never really giving much thought to what I was or was not teaching him about being a man. Then one evening, a young man meets my eyes and tells me that he can fend for himself if he needs to, and I feel the warm flush of success. The boy had raised himself, I told myself, but I still smiled as I fell asleep.
- Stop longing. You poison today’s ease, reaching always for tomorrow. The boy will come back when he comes back. What is there to grieve over in that? There is nothing wrong with either of us. Tomorrow will come soon enough, one way or another.
- No man can return to being a boy. But there are interludes in a man’s life when, for a time, he can recapture the feeling that the world is a forgiving place and that he is immortal. I have always believed that was the essence of boyhood: believing that mistakes could not be fatal.
- “Regrets are useless,” the Fool replied. “All you can do is start from where you are.
- Life is a balance. We tend to forget that as we go blithely from day to day. We eat and drink and sleep and assume that we will always rise up the next day, that meals and rest will always replenish us. Injuries we expect to heal, and pain to lessen as times goes by. Even when we are faced with wounds that heal more slowly, with pain that lessens by day only to return in full force at nightfall, even when sleep does not leave us rested, we still expect that somehow tomorrow all will come back into balance and that we will go on. At some point, the exquisite balance has tipped, and despite all our flailing efforts, we begin the slow fall from the body that maintains itself to the body that struggles, nails clawing, to cling to what it used to be.
- Don’t fear for us. I’ll force them to kill us quickly. The Fool rolled his shoulders. He lifted his sword in a two-handed grip. He swung it once, experimentally, then held it aloft. “Go quickly, Beloved.” Poised, he looked more a dancer than a warrior. I could either draw my sword or keep a grip on the Prince. The standing stone was right behind me. I gave it one hasty glance over my shoulder. I could not identify the wind-eroded symbol carved in this face of it. Wherever it took me would have to be good enough. I did not recognize my voice as I demanded of the world, “How can the hardest thing I have ever done in my life also be the most cowardly?”