The Man I was in Love with… is leaving… – The Farseers at Present

Around eleven years ago I fell in love with someone who did not exist. I fell totally headlong and irrevocably. I knew he was just a figment of someone else’s imagination. I knew he never did and never would exist. But I could not help it.

He was far from perfect. Oh gods yes. He was sly, manipulative, a liar and a murderer. He was also a bastard. Literally.

With him, I battled vicious family members, journeyed through hardships and illnesses, came to understand concepts like love, secrecy and death, and also, with him, I grew up.

During the first trilogy he was first a boy, then an adolescent, and then a young man. In the fourth, fifth and sixth books dedicated to his Six Duchies, he was a man in his prime. Full of regrets, failures, moods, and mistakes. And yet, still, I loved him.

Now, more than a decade later, Ms Hobb has finally continued the story of FitzChivalry Farseer, in the book ‘Fool’s Assassin’, the first of the Fitz and Fool Trilogy, and suddenly I realised that in the end, he is going to die. I did not understand this just because he is getting older, or because it is ‘inevitable’. After all, this is just a fictitious fantasy novel, and for those who read all about it and know what I’m talking about, he could extend his life indefinitely with The Skill, that is, his hereditary family magic.

No – I know that he is going to die, because the focus of the story is shifting. He is not the sole fallible narrator anymore. He has a flawed daughter – a genius, who like him, we cannot but love and be intrigued by. I am enchanted in getting to know her, and she is still 9 years old in this book! And yet, I am heartbroken. Because as an experienced reader, and a writer myself, I know how the story goes. Slowly, my dear Fitz will recede as a main character, and little Bee will take his place, until finally he will tiptoe out of the plot, and of my life, forever.

Oh Robin, Robin, why are you doing this to me? Don’t you know that my Fitz had been the foundation of my whole epic fantasy romantic imaginary life? Seriously, it just hit me yesterday, and I’ve been in a daze of depression ever since…

I’m not joking, maybe many think I am, but I am not. I have never found such emotion for someone and I never will, at least the author could have the decency not to kill him off!! Robin you have been my favourite writer ever since I first came across your work, second to none not even at present, and not even to George R R Martin, so WHY, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?