Taking on My Fantasy TBR – Assassin’s Apprentice and The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

With ever less time for blogging due to various physical annoyances, I’m limited in what I can contribute to Wyrd & Wonder this time around and so decided to offer an overview of two books in my stretchable comfort zone. I may return to one or both of these for fuller discussion at some point, but for now I just wanted to give my appreciation for these remarkable novels: Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb and The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence.

Assassin’s Apprentice (1995).

Robin Hobb’s The Farseer Trilogy, of which this is the first book, has achieved classic status along with multiple successor trilogies in the same world. But this is my first immersion in the unforgettable saga of Fitz, the royal bastard, whose very existence is a political problem for the ruling families of the Six Duchies. Fitz narrates his own story, starting with his introduction to the complex world of the court at the age of six.

This is powerful character-driven fiction at its best. We see how this neglected child is suddenly brought to Buckkeep castle after being raised by a country family that only wants to be rid of the illegitimate offspring of their daughter and Prince Chivalry, heir to the throne now occupied by King Shrewd. To keep him out of royal politics, which could endanger his life, the boy is entrusted to the care of the stable master, Burrich. He proves a stern master but also a caring one who sees to it that the boy, whom he calls Fitz (he has no other name), is well trained in caring for animals and also in using basic weapons. It turns out that Fitz has a special sense that enables him to “quest” with animals, getting inside their thoughts and feelings, but Burrich fiercely forbids him to use this power lest he descend to the level of animals himself.

It is not long before the King decides that Fitz should have a higher standing so he puts him in the care of an older man named Chade, who is the King’s assassin. Chade has many skills which he teaches Fitz, but only in secret in the dead of night. The scene that really grabbed me during this early phase of Fitz’s story occurs when Chade sets him a task of stealing something from the King’s own quarters. There is something about this that feels so wrong to Fitz that he goes into a tailspin of depression. For a long time, he cannot function in his work, but one night Chade seeks him out and, admitting he was wrong to test him in this way, takes him in a close embrace. After being kept at a distance by everyone he has ever known, this is a stunning moment for Fitz. Human closeness has been so lacking in his life that it struck me with special force in this brief but powerful scene.

After some years of training, Fitz is sent on a mission with Prince Verity (all the royals have names of moral qualities) to determine whether one of the Dukes of the realm is a threat or merely careless of his obligations. By then Fitz is in his teen years, has learned to read and has cultivated important political sensitivities that are just as crucial as the deadly arts of the assassin. He demonstrates his acumen on this mission as well as his reluctance to simply kill off potential enemies of the king. It’s the first of many situations he will be placed in where he has to make a critical choice.

From the beginning of Assassin’s Apprentice, I felt I was in the hands of a master story-teller, and I want to continue this trilogy to see what Fitz makes of the strange and dangerous opportunities that come his way. I have the anniversary edition, and I urge you to get this one too. It has beautiful illustrations that capture the special quality of human interaction that mark different phases of Fitz’s life.

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn.

Here is a recent book by another master of contemporary fantasy — and it’s my introduction to Mark Lawrence’s fiction. Unlike Hobb’s work, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn alternates its story between two points of view, told in the third person.

First we see the world of a young high-spirited girl, Livira, who can’t stop asking questions, pushing boundaries and breaking rules. She is one of the people known by city-folk as the dusters, people who live a hardscrabble life in the midst of a dried-up lake bed where water and food are scarce and dust is a constant. One day Livira’s small village is attacked by an inhuman group of scavenging killers known as sabbers. Livira is among a group of children who survive the massacre. The sabbers march them off for some dire purpose, but they are, in turn, attacked by a group of soldiers from the city who rescue the children and take them to the urban stronghold that has only been a rumor in their minds until now. It rises like a mountain out of the nearby plains and is closely guarded from attacks by the sabbers.

Once there, the “duster” children are to be allocated to certain jobs according to their status in society, but Livira breaks away from the lowest class and demands to be chosen from the ranks of the highest. Her bravado and intelligence catch the eye of Master Yute, a librarian, who takes her on as one of his many trainees. She gradually gets friendly with a group of children from higher status families and starts learning how to read and study books and the ways of librarians.

One day her group is given what seems an impossible assignment, to find an obscure book in the “real” library in a period of two days. This is the moment when Livira realizes the vast extent of the institution she has been training to work in. Instead of the orderly training rooms she is used to, the real library is a place of vast extent, measured in miles, with stack of books so high and numerous that huge shelves are devoted simply to catalogues, each prepared under a different system, none of them giving a clue to how the children can possibly find what they are looking for.

Meanwhile, we see a very different library through the eyes of Evar, a young man in his twenties who has spent his life with three brothers and a sister in a vast structure with a forest consisting of great stacks of books. At the center is a pool surrounded by fields of crops, and also within this huge space is something called the Mechanism. When someone goes inside this entity with a book, they come out with the contents of the book so completely absorbed into their being that they live its qualities.

Many years before the beginning of this story, Evar and his siblings were trapped inside the Mechanism as kids, during which time they did not age. Then they were spat out and over the years as they grew up came to think of themselves as siblings. This group of five has the aid of the Assistant and the Soldier, who speak and move like people but are made of a hard substance the color of old ivory. Their purpose is to instruct the siblings and help them survive the dangers of this world. For every so often, the Mechanism spits out monstrous beings called Escapes, great beings of darkness who pursue the humans and try to kill them.

Like the man in Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, these young people have no clue about the origins of the library they live in, but believe they might be able to get out through a series of white doors in distant walls. But thus far, no one has been able to get through or communicate with anyone outside the structure. While the other siblings have absorbed specific skills from their time inside the Mechanism, Evar emerged lacking any such highly developed talent. What he did have was a conviction that there was someone he had to save, someone who was in real danger. It’s not hard to guess that Evar, trying hard to find a way out, will at some point meet Livira, as she scrambles across the tops of huge book stacks in her version of the library.

Lawrence has created a brilliant story about how these two different realities might join at certain points and the great adventures that Evar and Livira have to endure. The second volume in this trilogy (The Book That Broke the World) has recently come out, and I’ll be getting a copy as soon as I can. The characters are endlessly fascinating as they learn who they are and how to define themselves through their actions.

Wyrd & Wonder artwork by Elena Zakharchuk.