The Failings of the Second Book of a Trilogy: A Review of Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb

Royal Assassin is the second book in The Farseer Trilogy. It is the second book of a trilogy, which is all that needs to be said of it, unfortunately. It is well written. It advances the plot well enough. Unfortunately, it suffers from the condition of being the second book in a trilogy with the author is sure that there will be a third. By which, I mean that it is not a book on its own, but more of a setup for the third. The first book has to stand on its own, since there is no guarantee that the author will ever get a shot at any other books. The third one does too, to some degree. The author cannot depend on the reader to have read the previous books (doing otherwise would mean that the book would not be able to get more readers than the previous installment, a bad state of affairs). The third book is also responsible for wrapping up the plot since it is the end of the trilogy. That leaves the second book in the trilogy.

The second book has just enough of an introduction to the setting for the reader to be able to understand the motivations of characters. It then proceeds to start advancing the characters from the first book and setting up plot threads for the third book... and then it stops. It has to resolution. It has no conclusion. It is the author reaching a page count that she feels is sufficient to sell it as a full novel, reaches a point where the reader can stop for a bit and still pick up the book later, and puts in a “To be concluded in the next book.”

The author is under no obligation to give any of the plot threads and closure or conclusion. It is likely better for the author that she did not since it leaves the reader that much more tempted to keep reading the series. It is sufferable if one has the third book already or expects to read it in reasonable time. It also leaves one feeling cheated. The reader has taken the time to read the book and yet is left with a story that is unfinished. It feels like the book is nothing more than a marketing ploy for the third book. It is as if the author left it unfinished to force the reader to finish reading the series or face a situation when the effort of reading the second book was for naught. I suspect that it is not the case and it is just that the author had crafted a plot that requires multiple books to convey and did not take the effort to separate it into self-contained installments.

As I was coming to this opinion, I thought to find examples of trilogies that did not fall into the same pattern of a middle book that does not stand on its own, and I found many series that did not suffer thus, but I also found that many successful plots do have the same problem. Look at the original Star Wars films for example: A New Hope does a magnificent job of introducing characters, establishing the motivations of the major factions, creating a plot that draws the viewer in, and coming to a satisfying --- if not finalizing --- conclusion. Return of the Jedi takes all the plots and conflicts from the previous two films and brings them together on a single battle field to have then resolved totally and decisively. The Empire Strikes Back is a magnificent film; unfortunately it does not have much of a conclusion: Han is on his way to Jabba so he can be rescued in the beginning of the next film, Luke’s training is not yet completed, and the movie drops its biggest surprise --- the relationship between Luke and Vader --- in the last moments of the third act leaving the implications unexplored.

Royal Assassin is very much the same; it advances the plot significantly and sets up a great deal of conflict, but leaves the user unsatisfied. The ending is just a point where the protagonist is out of immediate mortal danger, but the state of the plot is completely unresolved. Too many of the plot threads that the books sets up are left unexplored, left for the third book to pull together.

Assassin‘s Quest, a Quest With no Assassination

To say that Assassin‘s Quest is a bad book would be wrong. It is well quite written. The story flows well. The plot seems predictable at times, but caught me off guard with twists at major junctures. The major characters, though some are annoying, seem fairly fleshed out and each has a reasonable back story and motivations.

Hobb does a good job of connecting with the user on an emotional level in the previous books and this one is no different. As the characters progress through their quest, I felt that I could relate to the feeling. The desire to complete ones task, no matter the cost, resonates prominently throughout the final act of the book. At a major juncture in the book, a character was forced to give up his passions and emotions to power an ultimate spell. To me, the moment resonated as Hobb doing the same for this book.

My biggest objection with the book is not even with the book itself, it is with the series as a whole. It feels like every book is trying to take a plot in a new direction. It is not that the plots do not flow into each other, they do, it is just that each of the books in the series presents the protagonist does a radical turn in terms of characterization. In the first book he is an assassin trainee and the series looks to focus on the stealth and politics of his profession. In the second book, the main character becomes a valiant warrior, defending his motherland from threats both external and internal and fighting for love and honor. In the last book, the protagonist is reduced to a single rogue agent with no purpose, no direction, few natural talents, and a single minded devotion to the task that he is set upon. In many ways, the books do not feel consistent between each other in term of plot direction, like the author who wrote each of them was in a different mental state than the author who wrote the previous.

The series also has some issues defining the central conflict and getting good pacing. The major conflict that drove the other two books and should have been the focus of this book is treated as a secondary one and relegated to the final half of the last chapter. The problem that the characters encounter in the climax, the one that the plot should be building to, is a secondary one. Until just before the climax, the problem seemed to me to be nothing more than just a tool to stretch out the plot and develop the characters. It is not that the major conflict is not mentioned often, it is more that the characters for the most part do not seem to care about it until they are near the finish line. Most characters are simply doing it out of duty and have other quests that they are working towards. If anything, the main conflict is just a hurdle that the characters have to overcome before they can move on to what they really want to do and what drives them. Unfortunately, by the time that the quest is over and done, there is almost no book left and the author includes a scant few pages about how they did. This is unfortunate since the secondary problems are not only more interesting to the characters, but they are also more interesting to the reader. These are the life and world changing conflicts that the reader wants to read about, it is not that the major conflict was not important, it was, it is just that it is not as exiting and interesting as the secondary ones that are never addressed.

Overall, the book is well written, but the plot is badly paced and creates and concludes owing the reader resolution to a number of plot threads that it must scramble in the end to finish.