FINDING FITZ

She had me at “Fitz fixes feist’s fits. Fat suffices.”

It seems like whenever I visit a fantasy site, I find euphoric readers rhapsodizing about Fitz and Fool. And since I just finished Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders Trilogy and loved it so much, I felt the time was ripe to plunge into this, Hobb’s first book, Volume One of her Farseer Trilogy, in which the mismatched duo is introduced — and whose unlikely bond begins with that cryptic bit of doggerel mentioned above.

This is more Fitz’s story, FitzChivalry Farseer, that is, bastard son of an elder royal prince. Young Fitz is taken into the castle keep as a 6-year-old stable boy, and basically raised with the hounds, to protect him from becoming a pawn in the subtle but dangerous game of royal succession.

Adept at caring for hawks, hounds, and horses while struggling to learn courtly manners, he’s trained in secret in the delicate art of poisons by the court assassin, and discovers within himself the Farseer ability to link minds with animals, and, at times, other people.

Fool (kept to amuse Fitz’s grandfather, the king) is more of a supporting character here. But his natterings often contain the seeds of truth, as well as prophecy — if Fitz can decode them. More importantly, as the child Fitz matures into a robust youth, he and the mysterious, pale, “colorless” Fool become friends — which both will need as the series and the courtly intrigues continue, I have no doubt!

Imagine the luxury of developing a storyline through three volumes! (Says I, the writer whose first manuscript ran to 900 pages — typed! Sternly edited before publication of course, when cooler heads prevailed!)

Hobb is able to take her own sweet time developing characters, setting, culture, and the intricacies of her plots. Each of her massive trilogies takes place in a separate region of the world she has built (and continues to build). Yet four-and-a-half volumes into her ouvre, I'm only just beginning to realize all the clever ways her separate stories and regions overlap and influence each other.

Talk about a Big Picture! That's why her books, while technically stand-alone (telling one complete story) never seem to end, exactly; they simply reach a plateau so the reader can draw breath before plunging into the next adventure!