I have mentioned I have had some trouble this year beginning my reading proper.  Partially this is because I went on an amazing holiday from ~14 December 2015 to ~16 January 2016 and also, admittedly, because I have been in something of a reading funk.  I am very good at creating reading plans, and much less skilled at sticking to them.

So, after almost the entire month of reading spurts of books, but not completing any, I decided to dip into the fantasy genre, to kind of kick-start my reading, with the intention that something I knew I would enjoy on a purely pleasurable level would be what I needed to really get back into reading.

And so I chose Robin Hobb’s new trilogy.  I have read the previous two trilogies, and the first trilogy, which I have in my bookshelves, remains a trilogy of fantasy books I can actually enjoy into the present.  I don’t really like or dislike the second trilogy – it’s fine – but the first holds sentimental value to me and, surprisingly, also captures well, I think, the competing ties of friendship, family and loyalty that a young person experiences as they mature and age.

Now, Fool’s Assassin concerns a middle-aged Fitz, and it is the seventh book in this trilogy of trilogies, so there is both a lot of baggage attached to the series, and to the character.  And, I found, Hobb can’t quite deal with a mature character as well as she can someone young.  This was beginning to become evident in the second trilogy, but there it’s quite striking.  Reading about a 50ish man bumbling and over-feeling his way through events is a bit much.  And everyone keeping secrets to themselves when they could just have a conversation and and resolve plots points is also a bit much.  And the convolutions of it all is a bit much.

But and but and but.  When Fitz and the Fool, in the last 80 pages, come together again – ah, my youth!  It came back to me, and I raced through the pages.  I savoured the plot.  And I am not a plot person.  But there it was.  So, really, for the first 500 pages, I was not going to bother with the second book (which has been published), or the third (which has not – yet).  With the Fool back, well – well!  I don’t know.

But I’m reading again, and that’s nice, too.  I also starting an Adorno book, Minima Moralia, which, really, coming off this book is a bit heavy.  But I’m back.  And that’s the big thing.

The Books, Read page contains a list of all of the books I have read over the years.