Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb (Farseer #2)

Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As many of you know I read a lot of books at the same time and I am a pretty fast reader. That is until I came in contact with Robin Hobb and the amazing Farseer series. There are not words to describe just how good this series is and how wonderful a writer Hobb is. She forces me to slow down and savor every word and scene.
Royal Assassin, second in the Farseer trilogy was amazing. I am saddened that it took me this long to discover the richness that these stories are imbued with. The characters have become family and the history and peoples of the Six Duchies are as real as our own. There is power in this kind of storytelling.

Royal Assassin opens immediately after the events of Assassin's Apprentice. Fitz, is a shadow of who he was before and must return to Buckkeep and resume his life under the shadow of the treacherous Prince Regal. RA is full of plots and counterplots, love and laughter and many ideas on what one's word means as well as what it ultimately means to be oneself. Heavy stuff wrapped in an engrossing story that takes us to a shocking conclusion.

I really do not like spoilers in reviews. Just trust me. If you haven't read Robin Hobb, begin today. Pick up Assassin's Apprentice and enter a fantastic adventure that you will not want to end.

Then let's talk about it. I love to share ideas and points of view in reading.



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Sleeping Giants!!! You have to read this book by Sylvain Neuvel!!

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received an advance reader copy of Sleeping Giants on the 12th and started reading it that night to see how it was. I finished it last night. Needless to say I could not put this book down. Sylvain Neuvel has created a compulsive novel that I was sad to see end. But, what an ending! I am very glad there will be more, but really sad to have to wait two years for the next book.

The story is told through a series of interviews, journal entries and various other official reports. The majority of the book are the interviews with a very enigmatic Interviewer whose identity we are never told and whose motivation and authority we can only guess at. But he is quite fascinating and it appears quite powerful.

The book begins with an 11 year old girl in South Dakota, riding her new bike into the woods after her birthday party. She sees a strange turquoise glow below her in the trees and investigates. She ends up falling and the next thing she knows she is laying on her back looking up the hill at her father and firemen who are trying to get to her from the hole she is in. She is rescued but all of her questions about what happened are dismissed by her parents. It seems no one wants to talk about it. Until one day when she is visited by one of the firemen who rescued her. He had taken some pictures of the accident and thought she would like to see them. She sees a picture of herself lying on her back in the hole, on the palm of a giant metal hand.

You can see now why I kept reading. 17 years later, the girl is now Dr. Rose Franklin and is put in charge of just what the hand is and why it was there by our Interviewer. Suffice it to say that there is more than one hand buried on the earth, and it will be up to Rose and her team to find the rest of the body parts that make up a very large metal person.

This book is to good to spoil and I think that this may be enough to convince you that this would be well worth your time. I can see this being a huge besteller and the start of a new phenomenom like Hunger Games or Harry Potter. Or it should be.

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The Eternal World by Christopher Farnsworth

The Eternal World: A Novel by Christopher Farnsworth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was the first book by Christopher Farnsworth that I have read. I know my good friend, Jason Frost loves this guy and has been a big fan since his first book, Blood Oath. The Eternal World was great fun! Imagine almost 500 year old conquistadors heading a billion dollar biotech company which is trying to reformulate the water from the Fountain of Youth which they are running out of. A brilliant young researcher who just might pull it off and a beautiful native woman whose great mistake was saving the life of one of the conquistadors with the Water those many years ago and is now seeking the deaths of those responsible for murdering her whole clan and stealing the Water.
The novel weaves a fast paced and compelling story about one of the most enduring myths of this continent. Farnsworth seamlessly handles the modern day story with flashbacks to the arrival of the Spanish in Florida and their brutal treatment of the indigenous people.
The book has a wonderfully exciting and satisfying conclusion, but I would recommend it for readers 18 and up due to language and adult content.

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