Rating: 
Summary: Another classic Robin Hobb novel
Review: To keep it simple, this book was fantastic!!! If you love well written fantasy fiction, Robin Hobb is without a doubt worth your time. One warning!!! Start back with Assassin's Apprentice.
Rating: 
Summary: I don't like happy endings
Review: For anyone who hasn't read the Farseer Trilogy, which Robin Hobb wrote back in the late 1990's, it's one of the best fantasy trilogies ever. The best part of the series is the way it ends. I don't want to ruin the ending for anyone who hasn't read the book, but the ending is more real, more natural then any the ending nearly any other fantasy novel ever, with the possible exception of "Lord of the Rings". It's neither happy, nor sad. It's bittersweet, yet somewhat appropriate. It was a great ending. Unfortunately the "Tawny Man" series, which continues the adventures of FitzChivalry Farseer, had a true fairy tale happy ending and it kind of soured me on what is otherwise a remarkable book in another remarkable series by Ms. Hobb. Robin Hobb is by far the best fantasy writer today. Her characters possess a realism that no author fantasy author can provide (yes, I am talking about you, Robert Jordan). Even the most minor character leaps out of the page at you. Her writing is crisp, beautiful and makes the book you read after it seem cheap and undesireable. Why she doesn't get more credit is beyond me. If this book was written by any other author, I would have given it five stars and never looked back. However, I have come to expect more from Robin Hobb and outside of the middle third of this book, it just wasn't there. Of course, it was well written. Of course, the characters were as real and fragile as ever. Yet, the book starts off slowly, basically just sort of continuing the slow ending of the previous novel, and it ends even slower. The entire story basically takes place in the middle of the book, in which the plot and story lines basically come to an end. What follows is about a 100 page denouement which gives a happy ending to Fitz' story, which just doesn't seem right. Of course, it's the author's right to end her stories as he or she sees fit and if Ms. Hobb wanted to give Fitz a happy ending, then so be it. However, I liked the bittersweet ending of the first Farseer Trilogy much better and was hoping for something similar. Fitz was not a character that really seemed to know what to do with a happy ending to his life, so it seemed slightly out of character for the book to end this way. Nevertheless, I do hope Robin Hobb keeps writing. She should be awarded and commended for her body of work and I want to see her keep going forever!!!
Rating: 
Summary: compulsively readable, ultimately disappointing
Review: I've waited impatiently for the conclusion to the saga of Fitz and the Fool. While the book was as compulsively readable as all Ms Hobb's work, I found the ending inexpressibly disappointing. Conventional, mundane, even hum-drum. While a hum-drum life is certainly more pleasant living than one full of terrifying adventure, at my age I like something a little more challenging than 'and then they all lived happily ever after'. Too bad - the author wasted a fantastically fraught premise.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat disappointed...
Review: I loved the Farseer trilogy. I enjoyed the Liveship Traders. I was disappointed by the end of this third trilogy. It was so much less than it could have been. After making such a huge deal over the friendship between FitzChivalry and the Fool, to have it end the way it did was frustrating. Rather than exploring new horizons, Hobb seems to have taken the easy way out and tacked a "happily ever after" on the end. I should probably mention that I never liked Molly's character, even in the Farseer trilogy, so her role in this final installment annoyed me no end. At the conclusion of this book, I was not left with any sensation of "Wow! What an ending!" but merely a "Well, now I can stop worrying about it." Hardly the response I expected. Having said that, the book earns points for being well-written and finely crafted. The ending, while not the one I would have chosen, did follow logically from the events of the story. And perhaps it is a mark of how well developed Hobb's characters were that I cared so much about what happened to them. So 4 stars for the series overall.
Rating:
Summary: LOVE<LOVE<LOVE
Review: Thank you, Robin Hobb. Now, can you please write some more? I know you meant for this book to end my favorite series, but I still see little trails where Fitz could pick up...These characters are too real to me - I dreamed about them! It was VERY good, but I have been depressed all weekend to think it is over. I read it too fast -I couldn't make myself slow my reading to savor it, and now my teenager has it and won't do his homework!
Rating:
Summary: Better than I could have hoped!
Review: This is by far one of the best and most satisfying novels (of any genre) I have ever read! I have read scores of fantasy novels and I can't say enough about this beautiful and intricate storyline. Robin Hobb has done a masterful job in continuing the story of FitzChivalry Farseer.
Never have I had an author take me through so many clearly drawn emotions. Trilogy endings rarely live up to their predecessors. . . this one does. You do need to read the first two books, and preferably, the entire first trilogy as well. This is the only way to fully capture the story being drawn. These are characters who will live forever to me. I can't recommend this novel strongly enough! This is what storytelling should be.
Rating:
Summary: great book - made me reconsider my 4 knife policy
Review: It made me - a very macho commie stabber - all sissified. I like the character of the fool and of the assasin. This book brought the trilogy to an awesome conculsion. You know how people say endings are always stupid because they are too simple or too complex or unrealistic? Well, this book made me recosider that. I had closure. I wish the author had more courage to write about what actual fools and assasins do, and not to sissify the book with feelings. But I guess feelings is good once in a while. I'll need to take a bath though.
Rating:
Summary: Satisfying wrapping of the threads
Review: Robin Hobb writes very quickly. Some places in this final volume of the second trilogy show that she could use a bit of editting. However, the story carries you past the rough parts with ease. The relationships that we have come to care so much about from earlier volumes are all given solid conclusions. Hobb lingers just the right amount of time with each. Although some feel a bit contrived, it is easy to forgive her for she and we are saying goodbye to friends that we have cared about for 3000 pages. At times the story is exciting and mysterious. At times the story is introspective and romantic. While on the surface this book is about a Prince's quest to slay a dragon, the book is really about making new beginnings from scarred endings. Hobb does a masterful job of carrying the symbolism of scars and scarring throughout the book. There are some surprises here and some people we have not seen since the first trilogy return. Highly recommend this volume if you like the series and recommend the series if you like fantasy with some thought in it.
Rating:
Summary: Ending of a world:
Review: In my humble opinion this is an amazing read. It kept you trying to figure out things until the very end. It was an amazing way of wrapping up everything in Fitz's life, and of the characters of the world. I found the book to live upto Robin Hobb's normal style of greatness.
From starting the series from the beginning so long ago, I had always hoped for this second trilogy to continue everything in the world and to give Fitz a true end that he deserved. This does that in spades. In humble beginnings with the finding of him in the campaign that Verity is on in Assassin's Apprentice, to the end of the world it seemed like in Assassin's Quest, to an island truly in the middle of no where. The world has been built and truly gave deversity and extreme realism to the characters and their lives.
Rating:
Summary: one star
Review: The third book of the tawnyman series is a good read, couldn't put it down. Although I am not happy with the posibilities that could of been more realistic and more facinating than what mz HOBB seems to end this poor trilogy.
It is dificult to make Fitz a different person in a nw series. The Farseer trilogy was such a great trilogy, near the top of my list. In this series, fitz is never the fitz of old, where your always wishing he would be. I think it is folly for mz Hobb to change a charcter because of his past and his age. She could of used a new character for this series that she draws poeple to read because of the former Fitz.
If you have read the farseer trilogy do not read this one. I wish that someone could of told me to skip this one. And they lived happily ever after is a poor ending, as real life never does.
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