[Book Review] Fool's Assassin

Fool's Assassin (Realm of the Elderlings: Fitz and the Fool Trilogy) / Robin Hobb (Powell's Books)

For those who know FitzChivalry Farseer, this novel is a must.

FitzChivalry—royal bastard and former king’s assassin—has left his life of intrigue behind. As far as the rest of the world knows, FitzChivalry Farseer is dead and buried. Masquerading as Tom Badgerlock, Fitz is now married to his childhood sweetheart, Molly, and leading the quiet life of a country squire.

Though Fitz is haunted by the disappearance of the Fool, who did so much to shape Fitz into the man he has become, such private hurts are put aside in the business of daily life, at least until the appearance of menacing, pale-skinned strangers casts a sinister shadow over Fitz’s past . . . and his future.

Now, to protect his new life, the former assassin must once again take up his old one. . . .

Fitz has grown up from the boy we first meet in Assassin's Apprentice, and has left the life he lived in the following novels.  To the world FitzChivalry Farseer is dead, and he is merely another holder of no notable birth with a wife and children who he loves deeply.  Now, perhaps, Fitz has a chance at normalcy in his life.

Unfortunately, things are not that simple for any Farseer, even one living incognito.  Escaping the past takes more than a new identity, and Fitz has long served as a catalyst, both deliberate and incidental.  Then, when his wife Molly bears him a strange and precocious child, no one could foresee how their lives would change as the past comes crashing into the present bringing upheaval, mysteries, and peril.

Read an excerpt at http://atrandom.com/fools-assassin/

Advanced Reader Copy copy courtesy of Netgalley; differences may exist between uncorrected galley text and the final edition.