I’m glad you’ve made a friend

* i’ll have to admit i was not sold much on the fool as a character during the og trilogy. obviously he was important and well-written but for some reason he didn’t stand out to me. i believe now he’s one of those characters you need to know a lot about to fully appreciate his arc.

* i did enjoy lord golden’s extravaganza a great deal. tawny man really shines when it lingers on fitz & fool together.

* despite that, i did not appreciate the choice of killing the fool just for fitz to bring him back to life. i’m really not a fan of reversed death unless it’s a very specific situation. hobb’s not the type to kill her characters for cheap shock value, i know she had a purpose. still didn’t like it

* burrich. oh burrich. ngl, i still don’t like the whole molly situation, makes my skin crawl. having her pregnant that many times was literally not necessary. nevertheless, i expected hobb to indulge in some tragedy and kill burrich off before he and fitz could even reunite. but like i said, she’s not an advocate for mindless killing, so she didn’t. loved their reunion, despised everything else. molly chandler is the worst character hobb ever wrote so far.

* i’m probably in the minority who likes sterling but didn’t care about hap. obviously he served his purpose during fitz’s emo era in the cabin and he drew some nice parallels with burrich & fitz, but he’s such a nothing burger of a character. i went through the entirety of fool’s fate not recalling he even existed. you know how much it takes for me to dislike a good parent-child dynamic? a lot.

* despite that, his last conversation with fitz was sweet. hated sterling being pregnant. generally hobb is so good at writing women that i forget she can also be a misogynist.

* dutiful & eliana are very boring to me. hobb’s weakest point by a long shot is het romance. in another life she would’ve made for a great shonen writer.

* the fool calling the horse malta is still the funniest rote easter egg. oh amber i love you.

* fitzy fitz calling patience mother made me weep. my autistic queen and her problematic son.

* speaking of problematic men. oooh chade folestar i love you. truly, hobb’s arguably strongest point is incorporating a cast with a range variety of different ideals and character flaws. seeing characters through their different relationships is essential to understand their values and personalities, and you can see that extremely well in fitz’s moral dilemma when he’s forced to choose between the fool and chade. it is possible now that i think about it that i don’t care about molly & dutiful because they don’t seem to have any particular drive of their own. they almost always feel like plot devices, even dutiful yes. of course every character IS a plot device, the trick is developing them like they’re impersonating real people. writing is an act of deceit. you cannot deceit me into liking dutiful and molly.

* the finale is . . . eh? it’s ironic that hobb’s trilogies always go like this for me: 1st book, amazing. 2nd, fantastic, my favourite. 3rd book, meh. it probably doesn’t help that every happy ending is basically just het marriage + a wealth of kids which kinda undermines the underlying themes about love having many shapes and home not being a physical place. i’m not a fitzloved shipper admittedly because fitz is the most painfully heterosexual man to have ever walked the six duchies but also because the fool deserves better. despite that, theirs is among the best relationships in the whole series.