Fool's Fate

Title: Fool's Fate
Author: Robin Hobb
Published: 2004 by Bantam Books. Ooh, hard cover!
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 631


The last book of the Tawny Man trilogy! The Witted action is put mostly on the back seat and Buckkeep left far behind as the young prince is sent off to prove to his wife-to-be that he is worthy of her. Luckily he can bring help along, for the task set upon him is a pretty damn monumental one. So it's roadboat-trip time for Fitz, towards the frozen north and the quite worrying prophesies the Fool has made of that cold place.

Ah, I still remember buying this book, almost exactly a decade ago, coming home from Interrail. I'd been casually looking for the book wherever we stopped, if we happened to go to a bookshop, but I didn't find it until on the very last evening, in the very last stop, in Stockholm, Sweden. I didn't have a cabin or a bed for the overnight ferry ride over to Finland, so I basically spent half the night sitting in corridors and window sills, reading. By now I'd forgotten all but some big plot points, so it was like reading the whole book (and the one before, really) for the first time! And I finished just in time, for the next book is out the day after tomorrow. Yay!

(Actually, since I haven't been paying enough attention, there are like, four books after this one and before the new, outcoming one (I think they fall between these, anyway), where the story is taken back to Bingtown and the Rain Wilds. But since I don't have these books and I've already pre-ordered the new book to my Kindle-app, I'm reading that first. But it's great to know that there's more to read!)


   "So. I'll live happily ever after, as the minstrel's sing?"
   He twisted his mouth at me and shook his head. "You'll live among people who love you and have expectations of you. That will make your life horribly complicated and they will worry you sick half the time. And the other half, annoy you. And delight you." He turned away from me and took up his cup and looked into it, like a hedge-witch reading tea leaves. "Fate has given up on you, FitzChivalry Farseer. You've won. In the future that you now have found, it's almost likely that you'll live to a ripe old age, rather than that fate will try to sweep you from the playing board at every opportunity."
   I tried to lighten his words. "I was getting a bit tired of being hauled back from death's door and beyond every time I turned around."