The Golden Fool by Robin Hobb

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Summary The middle chapter of the trilogy sets up the story beautifully for the conclusion.

The Golden Fool is the second book in Robin Hobb’s The Tawny Man series. First published in Great Britain by Voyager in 2002.

Fitz has succeeded in rescuing Prince Dutiful from the clutches of the Piebald rebels. But once again the cost of protecting the Farseer line has been dear: Nighteyes is dead.
A grieving and reluctant Fitz is assigned to protect Fitz and, at the urging of the mercurial old assassin, Chade, take on the mantle of Skillmaster. But Fitz’s efforts to locate Skill-users for Dutiful’s coterie attract some unlikely, and potentially dangerous, recruits…
Kettricken’s plans to marry Prince Dutiful to the Outislander Princess, Elliania, can now proceed, securing a lasting peace with the former enemies of the Six Duchies. But before Elliania will accept, she challenges Dutiful to undertake an impossible quest. He must travel to the Out Islands and slay a legendary Outislander dragon.

Fool’s Errand was a great beginning to a trilogy, it shared much with Assassin’s Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy) in that it set the scene, introduced (or re-introduced) the characters and created a perfect platform for the rest of the series. I started the second book, The Golden Fool, hoping that there may be happiness and a well-deserved peace for Fitz, but very much doubting that it was on its way, at least not until the third and final book.

The prologue is called Losses Sustained and the opening of The Golden Fool deals with the loss that Fitz feels following the loss of his bond beast Nighteyes. There is also a sense of loss for the reader; the departure of Nighteyes leaves the series without one of its major characters, a gap which new characters such as Dutiful, Hap and Jianna simply do not fill to the same degree. The opening three hundred pages are OK but not as exciting and enthralling as you would hope. It is then, however, that two trilogies collide. The Farseer Trilogy and The Liveship Traders are separate series set in the same world. Suddenly, the major players from Bingtown (The Liveship Traders) appear in Buckkeep and the events of the two stories are like two great rivers meeting and forming a great lake.

The first 300 pages, as I have already said, did not set my pulse racing. It is not often that a fantasy story will stay in one location (Buckkeep) for so long. The “quest” has long been a pre-requisite, perhaps a cliché also, but its main advantage is of moving the story along and introducing the reader to new locations. However, once the politics and domestic dramas of Buckkeep have been covered, Hobb gives the reader the excitement and adventure that they are waiting for.

There was time for the author to reacquaint us with an old and very dear friend in Burrich. This is a genuinely moving chapter, it still amazes me how attached you can become to an author’s creation. In Burrich, Robin Hobb gave us a person that all would like to know and it was lovely to see (read) him again and this event also opened up many more exciting possibilities for future stories.

The Golden Fool is another excellent book by Robin Hobb; the middle chapter of the trilogy sets up the story beautifully for the conclusion.

The Golden Fool: Book Two of the Tawny Man (Tawny Man 2) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Robin Hobb
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 712
Publication date: 2008-10-06
Publisher: HarperVoyager

RRP: £7.99
Lowest new price: £3.21
Lowest used price: £1.68

The Golden Fool, the second volume of Robin Hobb's Tawny Man trilogy, is explicitly a sequel to both the Farseer and Liveship trilogies. The palace intrigues, which Fitz has found himself dragged back into, have as much to do with the politics of trade and conquest--the war between the Bingtown traders and their living ships and the theocratic bullies of Chalced--as with the oppression of the beast-speaking Witted by the majority and the terrorism of the Piebald faction among the Witted. Fitz has always been a deeply flawed hero--growing up as a royal bastard trained in assassination has not been good for his character--and his inability to understand how deeply he is loved upsets all the people around him.

One of Robin Hobb's strengths is her capacity to set up an interesting dialogue between metaphor and the literal; at both levels, The Golden Fool is a novel about moving through estrangement to reconciliation, about finding out the truth and then finding a way of living with it. This thoughtfulness means that, as always with Hobb, Fitz's role as tutor of a magically gifted prince, is as exciting as the book's occasional explosions of violence. --Roz Kaveney
Amazon.co.uk Review

The Golden Fool: Book Two of the Tawny Man (Tawny Man 2) (Amazon.com)

Author: Robin Hobb
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 712
Publication date: 2003-10-06
Publisher: HarperVoyager

RRP: $16.50
Lowest new price: $9.24
Lowest used price: $2.20

The second in the thrilling fantasy series returning readers to the Six Duchies and the magical world of the Farseers, from the author of the bestselling Assassin's Apprentice. Fitz has succeeded in rescuing Prince Dutiful from the clutches of the Piebald rebels, and has returned with him to Buckkeep castle. With Dutiful safe again, Queen Kettricken can proceed with plans to marry him to the Outislander princess, Elliania, but with tensions building among the peoples of the Six Duchies over Kettricken's tolerance of the Wittted, even Buckkeep is no longer safe. A reluctant Fitz is assigned to protect the young prince, and also train him in the Skill, and in doing so he finally makes contact not only with his estranged daughter, Nettle, but with someone in Buckkeep who may possess a greater Skill talent than Fitz. And who may represent a terrible threat to the Farseers. Meanwhile, Elliania arrives, and before she will accept Prince Dutiful's betrothal challenges him to undertake an impossible quest. He must kill a legendary Outislander dragon.
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