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Fool's Assassin cover art

Fool's Assassin

By: Robin Hobb
Narrated by: Lee Maxwell-Simpson, Avita Jay
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Summary

Tom Badgerlock has been living peaceably in the manor house at Withywoods with his beloved wife Molly these many years, the estate a reward to his family for loyal service to the crown.

But behind the facade of respectable middle-age lies a turbulent and violent past. For Tom Badgerlock is actually FitzChivalry Farseer, bastard scion of the Farseer line, convicted user of Beast-magic, and assassin. A man who has risked much for his king and lost more…

On a shelf in his den sits a triptych carved in memory stone of a man, a wolf and a fool. Once, these three were inseparable friends: Fitz, Nighteyes and the Fool. But one is long dead, and one long-missing.

Then one Winterfest night a messenger arrives to seek out Fitz, but mysteriously disappears, leaving nothing but a blood-trail. What was the message? Who was the sender? And what has happened to the messenger?

Suddenly Fitz's violent old life erupts into the peace of his new world, and nothing and no one is safe.

©2015 Robin Hobb (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"Robin Hobb is without question among the two or three finest writers of fantasy working today." (SFX)

"Fantasy as it ought to be written." (George R. R. Martin)

"Fantasy writers don't come much bigger than Robin Hobb." (Independent)

What listeners say about Fool's Assassin

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    2 out of 5 stars

Awful Narration of a Frustrating Story

The narrator, Lee Maxwell-Simpson is truely the worst I've ever heard. He somehow manages to put the incorrect inflection on everything, and reads each word without context, as if it isn't part of a sentence, or like he has no idea what he is reading. I had to speed him up to a silly degree just to get it over with.

Unfortunately the story isn't up to much either, very little happens, and somehow since we last joined Fitz he has lost the ability to reason or make good decisions, becoming frustratingly short sighted.

I sped through this in the hope that the sequel would be better, but I didn't enjoy it.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Pity about lee and avita

Good book to set the seen, but narrators lacking in Quality, past narrators have made these books amazing - everyone sounds the same in these :(

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Mis pronounced words all over they place

Brilliant book fantastically written.
The problem is that the actors reading the book were awful. I am not sure if they had a badly written transcript to read. The actor incorrectly pronounced Gray as Gary. Another actor incorrectly pronounced Challaced as callaced. Chade is pronounced by the actor like the girls name instead of Shade. Liveship should be pronounced live like ' live animal 'not live as in 'where we live'. The actor should have researched this or been told this. Also the actors voice work is terrible. They also don't seem to understand the text and get the tone of sentences wrong, it's like like they don't understand grammar. The bad actors didn't ruin the book for me , their performance was just annoying and rediculous at times.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

good but a bit harder going with new narrators

I enjoyed the previous books and got used to the narrator and characters so this change made the book a bit of a drag to start but great story all the same

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Nit the best

Lots of repetition, very slow to get started, narrators sucks hairy Goats balls. Nit the best book . Shame it was a return to Robin Hobb after the assassins apprentice trilogy, which were excellent. Bring back the old narrator.,

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6 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Not as engaging as the previous books

This felt like one long intro to the new series. The narration could have been better, the narration of fitz seemed young and lacked depth for me and the female narrators little girl voice could be grating at times.
I don't regret buying, as I think the story will hot up in the next book and Hobb is always good, but I had very high expectations that weren't quite met.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

This trilogy contains the storyline of one book

I'm a great fan of Robin Hobb and listened to most of her books. But was utterly disappointed by this trilogy. I wish I could "unread" this. The story arch would have held for one book but reads like it was stretched across three books for commercial reasons. It changes/ blemishes some of my favorite characters and don't feel true to the world previously created. It left me bored and annoyed.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Slow and plodding until the final 10%

Never before have I read or listened to a book and felt I had to finish it out of a sense of duty rather than because I was enthralled by it. Alas this has now happened. I was curious as to where this book would lead, given that many unanswered questions in the Farseer trilogy were explained in the Tawny Man trilogy. It feels like this book was created with the idea of continuing a story that had already, satisfyingly, ended with Fitz and the Fool. The majority of this book is slow and clunky and doesn't provide the excitement and intrigue that the previous books involving Fitz and the Fool did, instead there are hints of the story finally taking off, before it's then followed by a dull plodding until the final 10% when the story becomes gripping. After this final 10% I'm confident the next two books will be as exiciting as their predecessors, it's just unfortunate you need to swim through treacle to get there.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

terrible

This is the worst narrator ever he has succeeded in making an excellent book awful

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Spoiled by narrator

The narrator isn't bad but is unfortunately handicapped by not being the same narrator as the previous series. No matter how good they are they are not the same as the previous books so it is jarring, unfortunate as the performance is actually pretty good they are just set up to fail by being compared to previous narrators. Characters have different voices and it is hard to get used to.

The book is just as good as you would expect in all other aspects, the narrator isnt a deal breaker in this instance and its well worth buying.

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2 people found this helpful