This book was a really solid start for a trilogy. I really enjoyed Hobb’s more character driven writing style, which is somewhat different to how a lot of high fantasy is set up. Especially during the first half of the book, the politics and external circumstances that drive Fitz’ life and his tasks are more in the background while we get to know him and the people that are most important in his life. Only in the second half of the book does Fitz realize how the kingdom‘s politics and specific peoples decisions can affect the fate of the whole realm. While the cast of main characters is between 10 and 20 people, we get to know most of them in much depth and I especially enjoyed Burrich’s character arc over the course of the book. The pacing starts to pick up especially in the last 30% of the book and while the end resolves many pressing questions, the bigger question of the future of the kingdom and of our main character is still open.

I want to give this book bonus points for its narration which was very well executed and made the book even more of a short and exciting read, even though it lasted over 16 hours. I think this book would be suitable both for fantasy beginners as well as weathered fantasy connoisseurs, as its cast of characters is not too big and no more than one or two characters are introduced at the same time.

Generally, this book sets a great stage for the opening of a trilogy, and I am excited to delve into the second book and into the rest of Robin Hobb’s realm of the Elderlings. I’m especially excited to get to know more about the magic system, which has been hinted at but not deeper explored yet and I think that this might get way more complex in the following books

I didn’t love this as much as I wanted to, but I still think it had a really well built story with characters that integrated well with the world. The world building was complex, really well explained and easy to understand, but it didn’t have enough of a grip on me to keep my interest throughout the whole book. For the last maybe 20%, I was already kinda dragging through it hoping for something to pull me back into enjoying the story.

I was expecting more from the romance, and while I know it’s not a focal point of the story, I didn’t feel like there were enough moments between the characters to give the impression that they had strong feelings for each other.

None of the characters landed a big impression on me, and I don’t feel compelled to learn more about them or what they’re planning on doing next, which also doesn't make me want to continue this series.

Filing this solidly under "meh." It was a book. There was fantasy. There was romance. It was formulaic, at best. The most interesting thing it had going for it was the Leonardo DiCaprio-ass plot point where the FMC is fated to die at 27 (which, like, yeah), but that wasn't even really explored by the book. I think I'll read the next one only because of my compulsion towards series completionism, but honestly if someone just texted me a paragraph summarizing the plot of the rest of the books I'd probably be satisfied by that.