What can I say? If you’re this far into the series, why are you even reading reviews?

Needless to say, I enjoyed Fool’s Quest. Just like I enjoyed the other 7 novels following Fitz’s life. A word to the wise: Fitzchivalry is a little annoying in this one. But it’s nothing a seasoned Hobb fan won’t be able to handle.

This series is separated into three books mostly because it would be too hard to publish one 3000-page novel. This may well be true for Hobb’s other trilogies, though it’s been so long since I read those that I couldn’t say for certain. With this book, however, I really noticed it. The story just sort of ends, not because it makes sense narratively, but because it needed to end somewhere. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing, necessarily? It’s just kind of weird.

One thing I loved about this book is the exploration of gender and gender identity. Both the Fool/Amber and Spark/Ash seem to be gender fluid and though Fitz seems a little confused at first, he does seem to respect, if not quite understand it. Fitz gives me the vibe of someone who’s been raised in a quite conservative way, but eventually learns to be more open to people who are “different” from him. Like, he doesn’t quite get it, but he loves the Fool and wants him to be happy. Still, I’m currently in the third book, and find myself almost gritting my teeth every time someone mentions Fitz’s relationship with Amber/The Fool. I just know he’s going to be weird about it eventually. It’ll be a whole thing where he’s like “But I’m not gay!!!”. Though this genuinely might have already happened in an earlier book? Anyway, it’s interesting to see the topic of gender tackled in a book that’s not inherently about LGBTQIA+ people.

I do have one note that may be relevant to some readers: there’s a lot of mentions of sexual assault in this book. If that’s not your thing, you may want to avoid this series.