Assassin's Quest - Robin Hobb

Books are powerful things.  They can transport you to another time, to another world.  They can temporarily change your perception of reality, and permanently change your perception of yourself.  They can make you wish for more in your life, and completely take over your life.

Now that reading is becoming more of a habit for me, I'm managing to become more absorbed in stories.  And as is now tradition, reading the third book of a trilogy meant that many other things moved down the priority order.  The final component in the Farseer trilogy had me reading through my lunch break, and going to bed earlier just to get more chapters in.  One day I even got some reading in before work.

As might be expected from the title, Assassin's Quest follows the storyteller assassin on a quest.  The quest takes different forms as he and the world around him change.  A quest for revenge, a quest for knowledge, a quest to serve, a quest to save.  Much of the story is a journey with changing purpose.  Do you fight to harm your enemy or to help your friends?  How do you know who your friends are at all?

One theme that runs throughout is that of family, friendship and love.  When most of the world thinks you're dead, trusting people with the knowledge of your true identity isn't so simple.  The journey into the mountains that features in the later section of the book brings together a misfit group who are forced to lean on each other to survive.  The struggles they have each faced bring them closer together as a 'pack'.

Ok, so I haven't been the most specific here.  And there's a good reason for that.  I'm not actually sure how I felt about the book.  All I know is that it made me think about what is important.  I guess that has to be a good thing, but along the way there were aspects of the plot I struggled with.  Some of the Skilling got a bit much for me, and while I know it was supposed to be unclear when things were Skill-influenced I still got confused and slightly annoyed.  There were also a few times when I quickly read through pages as they seemed to be background detail on a subject about which I no longer cared.

The characters, as ever, were wonderful in their quirks and secrets.  The ever-evolving relationships between those characters was beautifully written.  And for all I got confused with the Skill aspects of the plot, I couldn't help but feel for its users and those used by it.  For the White Prophet and the Catalyst, the constant struggle to interpret the prophecies and not be disheartened by them also tugged at my emotions.

I think the impact from the trilogy is going to take some processing, and maybe in a few days I will feel a bit clearer about the whole thing.  But I can't dwell for too long, there's another story out there just waiting to pull me in.