I feel like I read a lot of fantasy for someone who's regularly irritated by fantasy tropes. This is perhaps why I often gravitate towards series that either mock the conventions or play around with them. There's certainly plenty of Terry Pratchett books in my collection.

Robin Hobb seems at odds with a lot of the style of popular fantasy. This book is more personal than fantastical, more concerned with intimacy, experience, and emotion than with epic action and vast plot lines. Assassin's Apprentice is fantasy from ground level when most works in this genre view things from a 1000 feet up.

And the structure itself seems to actually call out one of the core issues I have with a lot of epic fantasy: really boring character agency. There are so many series where the hero's quest isn't something related to their own personal wants, but a prophecy, or a mission handed down by a god, a king, or often a god king.

Fitz is bastard directly tied to the king's service, but much of the plot involves him growing up and trying to determine when his orders make sense and when doing what he's told will get him killed. It's not a series with any authority that's completely trustworthy, and no mission that's above questioning.

Beyond anything else I just love the style of this book. Hobb's pacing is slow but insistent, with little details that transport me to the setting, and a concern for emotion and experience that makes it so much closer than much of the work in this genre.

After finishing this, I looked at the other books in my to-do pile, and kind of just wished I was reading more Robin Hobb.