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Anyone here a fan of Robin Hobb? Aparently she was a guest at Melbourne's Fantasy and Science Fiction Convention last year - I didn't get to see her though.

But because of that I decided I'd better finally read one of her books. I've just finished The Assassin's Apprentice which is Book 1 of a Trilogy. It took me a long time to get into it - almost a third of the book - and I would've given up on it except that I had a large enough chunk of time to spend reading on one day and I got past the boring bits.

I am glad I finished it, it's a good book. And I'll read the others now too. I just felt in the beginning she gave me absolutely no reason to engage with any of the characters. I found them, and their story, boring and flat. By the end, though, they were a lot more interesting and rounded out.

I don't know how I missed your post...But I've never read Robin Hobb. When I have a break in my reading list, I'll have to pick something up.

I've tried to enjoy Robin Hobb - but just can't get into her writing at all.

I'm reading the second in this trilogy now, and it's off to a much quicker start - picks up exactly where the first left off with a chunky prologue to remind the reader what happened in the first. I'll let you know how it goes.

Oops. I was meant to come back and tell you how I found the second book (Royal Assassin). Well, apart from the serious Deja vu I got at the end of the book (wasn't that almost exactly where the first book left off??? Almost...), I'm really enjoying this series so far. The characters have deepened considerably - I just love the character of The King's Fool. This is one long story, really, rather than three connected stories, so the slowness of the first book reflects the extreme length of this story. Could Hobb have written this as one book? - Perhaps, but I think the length is giving a lot of richness and depth to the story and characters.

I've just found out, too, that there is a second trilogy following this one, involving my favourite character, The Fool. I think I'm hooked enough to want to read those as well, although I'll reserve judgement completely until I've finished the third book in this trilogy.

Robin Hobb is FABULOUS!!! I've read the Assassin trilogy and the sequel trilogy (the Tawney Man) and also her Mad Ship trilogy. All great, with the exception of the ending to the third book of the Assasin trilogy, which left me a little unsatisfied. But the sequel, the Tawney Man trilogy, made up for that a thousand times over.

If it's hard to get into the Robin Hobb books, it's more than worth it!!! I love the way she puts the background information into a separate paragraph at the beginning of each chapter, so after you've done your homework reading that, the actual chapter then is nonstop narration and goes so smoothly. At the end of the Assassin Trilogy I was aching to know what happened to all the carachters, and was SO glad to find out in the Tawney Man trilogy.

I almost never buy books unless I have read them free from the library first, but if I know I'll want to reread them many times, I'll buy them just for the pleasure of owning them. I bought The Assassin Trilogy right away, and when my family asks me what I want for Mother's Day, I'll ask them for the Tawney Man trilogy.

Give these books a try. Some people plunk down thousands of dollars for a travel agent to send them to interesting vacation spots. For the price of six paperbacks, you can visit Robin Hobb's world of the Six Duchies and have just as good an "escape" to adventure!

Good to know. Thanks Rocky!

It's not very often a book makes me cry anymore, but I've just spent the afternoon bawling my eyes out - more because I've finished the book and can't read it anymore than because it was sad. Wow, it was so hard to leave that world and come back.

I would say the third book in the Farseer Trilogy (Assassin's Quest) is the best one in the trilogy. It's so beautiful. A lot that was irrating me in the other books comes together in this one and makes far more sense. I agree, Rocky, that the ending is unsatisfying in many ways, but I don't really care because I'm looking forward to the Tawny Man trilogy too much now <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I am sooo glad I kept reading the first book. It was well worth it. This is the best fantasy series I've read since Eddings' Belgariad.

If anyone's interested, I've posted a review of all three Assassin books to my personal website.

Never heard of her.

She's also known by the pseudonym Megan Lindholm. Her real name is Margaret Ogden.

I thought it was a man.

<img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Apparently she did that on purpose. Her narrator in the Farseer Trilogy is male, so she chose an androgynous pseudonym so that it didn't seem too strange to readers. Personally I love reading books written by women where the Point of View character is a man - Donna Tartt's Secret History is like that.