it was powerful, seductive, but also dangerous.
At first, you think it’s just another medieval fantasy tale, but the way the story unfolds, the way it follows Fitz, this boy who’s basically thrown into a world he didn’t ask for, it hits differently. Fitz is the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, and you know how bastards are treated in those courtly times—like an inconvenience people would rather forget. From the moment Fitz is brought to the keep, he doesn’t quite belong anywhere. That feeling of being in-between—neither commoner nor fully royal—was so real to me. I felt it, like when you walk into a room and no matter what you do, you don’t quite fit.
The most memorable scenes to me were the quiet and lonely ones when Fitz is growing up and discovering that Fitz has only Burrich, the stableman of his father, to take care of him. Burrich is stern, does not pull his punches, and is occasionally even harsh, yet there is love in there. You might have guessed how Fitz wished to belong, and it pained me to think of him. In my mind, I continued thinking, “Damn, this boy does not deserve this. The court did not pay attention to him but his life influenced everything in their vicinity.
And then there is the entire scene in which Fitz is being trained clandestinely by the royal assassin Chade. That was actually one of my favorite twists, because suppose you are a child who only wants acceptance, and the role assigned to you is to be the murderer in silence to the same people who treat you almost like they do not exist. Chade himself is a very interesting character - mysterious, intelligent, and in a kind of perverted sense a father/mentor figure. Some of the best scenes were the training scenes--watching without being watched, how to sneak in and put on poison without detection, how to sneak about. It was not action, it was the making of Fitz into a weapon. And yet, despite all that, I could tell that deep within Fitz was a boy who wanted someone to give him a glance and tell him that he was part of the group.
And next, the Wit--the magic of communing with the animals. That was another emotional blow. Fitz is a dog person and the manner in which he identified with the dogs was almost more genuine than his association with people. When Burrich caught him in the act of its use, I felt myself breathing in the expectation that he would kill him, so bitter was he against the Wit, which he regarded as low and dirty. And Fitz, who is already lacking in affection, finds that sort of comfort with animals--and is chastised over it.
That broke me, honestly. I sat there thinking about how often people find peace in things the world tells them are wrong or shameful.
The Skill, the royal magic, was a whole other layer. When Fitz starts learning it, I feel that same sense of unease he did—it was powerful, seductive, but also dangerous. The way Verity and Regal played into it made the court politics even juicier. Regal especially made my blood boil; he had that smug, slippery way about him, the type of character you love to hate. I caught myself muttering under my breath when Regal made his power plays, thinking, “This man is going to ruin everything.”
There is this specific scene that I still remember, during one of his missions Fitz is poisoned. The manner in which Hobb explains the creeping death, helplessness, and how Fitz clung to it was crude. And not only was it the physical suffering, but the isolation of realizing that even most people would not raise an eyebrow when he died. I found that scene thinking how sometimes people struggle the most not to gain glory but only to prove they are alive, they do count.
At the end, Fitz had grown, yet he remained that same boy on the brink of belonging, with an encumbrance he never sought. The plots were not always about killings or politics--it was about what survival costs, what it costs to love, how duty can devour you. I left the book very heavy, as I had just walked in the shoes of Fitz and tasted that bitterness of wishing to fit and being used.
And you know the crazy thing? I was comforted by the strength of Fitz even in all the darkness. He was weak, shattered, reckless at times but he survived. It got me to consider how we are all over the world with our own invisible scars, and are doing what is expected but deep inside we just want somebody to see us as who we are.
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