Thoughts on The Tawny Man trilogy
Say one thing for Robin Hobb, say she knows how to write a trilogy.
The Tawny Man trilogy is the third three-book collection set in the "Realm of the Elderlings". After Liveship Traders took us south to the Satrap's lands of Bingtown, the Rain Wilds and Jamaillia, Tawny Man takes us back North to the Six Duchies. It was here the story kicked off with the Farseer Trilogy.
Tawny Man is a reunion. It centres around the same main cast of characters as the original trilogy, but not without adding new ones to the mix.
As with both previous trilogies, I found myself unconvinced at the outset. Hobb takes her time to set the scene. But, also as with both previous trilogies, this one grew. And grew. By the middle of the second book, I had a good idea of where the story was going. I was hooked. I didn't get many pages (or locs, to be more precise) into Fool's Fate before I was struggling to put the book down.
This is not unusual with Robin Hobb. All of the three trilogies I've read so far all have the feel of one big book split into three, rather than three distinct stories. The middle books in particular don't even pretend to be stand-alone stories. Instead, they build on the foundation of the first book and creates momentum in the story towards the eventual climax in the final third.
I think it's great.
Although Tawny Man doesn't reach the heights of Liveship Traders, it was a very enjoyable read. In terms of where it falls short, I think there's something about the first person storytelling that is limiting. You don't really get enough perspectives to make all the characters (bar one) feel as real and fully fleshed out. That said, I enjoyed getting closer to what is the most interesting character of all of them throughout these stories.
All in all, this felt like a worthy send off for both Fitz and the Fool. But I still wonder if we aren't going to get to hear more about the former's maternal origin. There's a story yet to be told there, I think, and there are some hints that we will learn more about "Keppet" in time.
I'll close with some of my highlighted quotes and passages from the books:
It could not compare to that moment of completion when minds joined and one sensed the wholeness of the world as a great entity in which one's own body was no more than a mote of dust.
Fool's Errand
Hobb has a way with framing that sense of belonging to something greater than just yourself that one can sometimes experience.
Sometimes I think there is more rest in that place between wakefulness and sleep than there is in true sleep. The mind walks in the twilight of both states, and finds the truths that are hidden alike by daylight and dreams. Things we are not ready to know abide in that place, awaiting that unguarded frame of mind.
Fool's Errand
It is a magical place.
It was a boy's thing to do, this immediate offering to share a prized possession, and my heart answered it, knowing that no matter how long or how far apart we had been, nothing important had changed between us.
Fool's Errand
That's true friendship.
His air of petulant command mimed perfectly that of a foppish dandy of the noble class.
Fool's Errand
I just loved that sentence. Poetic.
… (I) knew that, as it always would, the past had broken free of my effort to define and understand it. History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.
The Golden Fool
The more history I read, the more I come to agree with this world view.
How many words have I set down on paper or vellum, thinking to trap the truth thereby? And of those words, how many have I myself consigned to the flames as worthless and wrong? I do as I have done so many times. I write, I sand the wet ink, I consider my own words. Then I burn them. Perhaps when I do so, the truth goes up the chimney as smoke. Is it destroyed, or set free in the world?
Fool's Fate
More on the futility of capturing the moment, of defining it, and the truth. Doesn't mean we should stop trying. Just that we can never fully succeed.
Every small, unselfish action nudges the world into a better path. An accumulation of small acts can change the world.
Fool's Fate
It is. And it can.
Give him to me, she said with a woman's weariness at a man's incompetence.
Fool's Fate
Close to home!
No man, in the fullness of his years, should have to experience afresh all the passion that a youngster is capable of embracing. Our hearts grow brittle as we age.
Fool's Fate
I've been pondering this. Is it true? Is it self defence that our emotions dwindle as we age?
Home is people. Not a place. If you back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore.
Fool's Fate
Home is people.