Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb

My Robin Hobb odyssey continues with the Tawny Man trilogy. I'm pretty sure the Liveship Traders trilogy is set between Farseer and Tawny Man but I don't own those books, though I have read the Rain Wilds Chronicles which also reference them. I should probably read them. Maybe for my birthday.

FitzChivalry Farseer is no more. He has embraced his public death and adopted the life of Tom Badgerlock, a hermit and sometime scribe living with his pet wolf, Nighteyes, and his adopted son, Hap. But a man cannot outrun his past and soon the time comes for Tom Badgerlock to act again as the Catalyst of the White Prophet. Young Prince Dutiful, heir to the Farseer throne, has gone missing just before his betrothal ceremony. Queen Kettricken and her advisor, Chade, dispatch Tom with the prince's retrieval. The Fool has also changed his identity for Lord Golden, a rich nobleman who takes Tom on as a servant and bodyguard. Together, they search for the prince, stumbling right into the machinations of a faction of Witted calling themselves the Piebalds after a disgraced prince of the Farseer line. But Dutiful has not merely been kidnapped. Fitz suspects something much more dangerous and wrong at work.

I had also read this series before but I have less memories of it than the Farseer books. In that way, it did feel much more like I was reading it for the first time. The Fool is such an interesting character. The androgyny creates so many possibilities to be explored. I also am deeply awed at the amount of world building in each entry. The Six Duchies feels like a real place set within an even larger world.

It's hard to maintain a sense of tension over more than one book, much less multiple series, but Hobb puts together stories brick by brick, building to a monument of storytelling.

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