And there it was, that stone-dropping-into-a-well plunge of my heart." "Almost 10 years since I'd last seen the Fool. In his private study, he wonders, as enjoyably hopeless as ever, "Why did I come here, alone and sleepless, to dwell on tragedies and disasters that could never be undone … Why was it my duty to recall those I had lost, and mourn them still?" He reflects on the carving done years ago, of himself, the Fool and the wolf he bonded with Nighteyes, his wolf, is dead, but the Fool has been silent for too long. There are hints, though, that this man, once so key to the kingdom, hasn't quite given himself up to happiness. I was a respectable land-holder, a man of grapes and sheep now, a man of ploughs and shears, not knives and swords," he tells us, a little too firmly. "I was no longer an assassin, living to guard my king and carry out his quiet work. Hobb's assassin, trained in secret after being roughly dragged into the world of the royal Farseers as a child, hasn't killed anyone for a decade. Today, Fitz, as ever our depressive, clever-but-obtuse narrator, is in his 40s, enjoying his "haven of rest and peace" in Withywoods. Set in a medieval-esque world of castles and dragons, swords and rare, powerful magic, the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies narrated, respectively, Fitz's fight to save the Farseer kingdom from internal and external threats, and the inscrutable Fool's use of Fitz as a weapon to fulfil his own opaque aims.
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