L'Assassin royal, tome 3 : La Nef du crépuscule

Assassin’s Quest starts with an emotional edge. The author spent a lot of time setting up by going over some quite emotionally testing scenes. I like that this wasn't rushed, it was given the time it needed for the reader to process and then move on. It was heavy but in a good way.I will say before I get into my more negative points, the series isn’t bad. In fact, it’s quite good. The writing is engaging, the plot is interesting, and the characters aren’t half bad. But I wouldn’t say too much more than that.The book is filled with frustrating plot points and character decisions. In particular, I found it annoying how painfully obvious it was that Molly was pregnant when she left him in the previous book. I found it even more frustrating that he still didn’t realise it, even when he was thinking about it (really thinking about it). It seemed a little weak in terms of storytelling because the author obviously wants him to do a few other things before he realizes and does anything about it. This book is 2x the size it needs to be. It’s slow, sometimes painfully slow. The book is called Assassin’s Quest but it’s filled with far too many side-quests, rather than the main story.When Fitz is on his own especially, the pace slows right down. It's boring. When characters are together, the pacing of the book works and things actually happen. But when they're apart there's so little going on that you're just reading the same thing over and over until Fitz actually meets up with someone.We read about what he eats, how he washes, what he does with his hair and beard, the things he buys, and what he sees on his road. This happens over and over.When we finally get back to the main plot, it’s filled with frustration and out-of-character happenings. Fitz’s reaction when he speaks to Kettricken about his child (and that his child is hers now) was pathetic. Honestly, it made me angry. He was already a soulless character. He could have redeemed himself in this situation and he didn't. I have no words. I also hate the way Molly was written when it comes to caring for her child. Suddenly she's a child herself again. Seems convenient as a way to make us less angry at Kettricken.The end of the book was…odd. So much gets thrown at you and so many weird things happen. The series actually starts to embody the fantasy genre it claims to be, but you only get this in the last quarter so it doesn’t feel like it makes sense. I’ll mention the red ship raiders again (as I did in my previous reviews). Their presence in the story so far felt less than threatening. After reading this book, I’m convinced they were just created as a plot device. They were there to make sure some things in the story made sense, otherwise, it was all just politics.There was no point to them other than that. They just got eaten in the end. What was the forging? What was the point? I’m not going to invest in more Robin Hobb so I’ll probably never know.I think this series is great if you like this type of fantasy and you're happy to just sit down and take your time with reading it. But if you're someone who likes to consume a lot of books and you have a bunch of others you're excited to read, this one is going to drag you down.For more reviews and book recommendations, check out my YouTube channel