Chade is way too mad about Fitz not protecting Shun for someone just casually interested in what becomes of her. I loved the fact that this book gave us so many moments alone with Fitz because he is definitely the driving force of this whole series. For reasons I can't fathom, many people seem to skip the excellent Liveship Traders series and more have skipped the quite enjoyable Rainwild Chronicles.

Of course Fitz would tell the Fool he merely cleaned out his wounds and bandaged them, when in reality, he ended up taking the Fool’s wounds onto himself while trying to heal his friend! I doubt the Fool had the time for detailed correspondence while being tortured, so who is she working for? Much as any other Robin Hobb novel Fool's Quest excels at making the reader not just understand what is happening in the story but feel the emotions that are evoked in the characters at each event. He's always a character who bounces back and manages to have resilience, but Fitz is OLD by this story and theres always a lingering question of will he make it?I waited even longer to begin Fool's Quest, mainly because I struggled so with the pace of Fool's Assassin.

It is a structure I like, and in this book it is emphasised because it is the third time she has done it with these characters. Realizing some sort of skill spell has been placed on them, Chade and Fitz revive the staff's memory with elfbark tea. The first portions of the book were agonizing because Fitz just didn't know that his daughter had been taken and his keep raided, his people brutalized, raped, or killed. The journey that you get to take with Fitz, following him from a little boy into a grown man - and the cast of characters that surrounds him, is remarkably perfect.

It took quite a while for the plot to really develop, but when it did the setup felt extremely well done and it made the payoff of these pivotal moments even more important to the reader. He used to be subtle whenever he had to change the fate through his catalyst but here he has this single object that he was hell bent on achieving, means be damned. He has certainly been through a lot of horrendous stuff and this book proves just how tough things can get and how depression can seep in. We got a super cool scene where the crown was able to use the Wit to their advantage and track Bee, and we got some Wit-related scenes with Fleeter and Motley, but nothing really substantial. Fitz in the meantime is told by Chade, Dutiful and Nettle that they have figured out where Bee and Shine are.