Lemonade Book Reviews

CW for discussions of sexual assault in literature. There will be another warning right before and after the part where I talk about it. As if *gestures broadly at the first ~40% of the book* wasn’t bad enough for poor Fitz, things start getting real bad in this section. They also get gayer though, so hooray for that. There are also a couple epigraphs I’ll be discussing this time, which is a first but will almost certainly become routine on this blog.

Summary

Fitz and Chade return to Bayguard and find that Duchess Grace did what Fitz told her to and the watch towers will be funded again. The Six Duchies react to what happened at Forge with horror, but when the common folk need his guidance the most, Shrewd vanishes (doesn’t make an official proclamation about what to do with your loved ones who have been Forged). We learn that Regal has been gaining favor with Shrewd since his mother died. Fitz spends more time with Molly, and it’s obvious that she has a crush on him, but he’s a stupid teenage boy. Fitz also learns how much the common people are coming to resent Shrewd from her.

We and Fitz meet Patience, one of my favorite characters in the whole series, in the kitchens of Buckkeep. Patience has returned to court with her maid, Lacey, to begin overseeing Fitz’s education now that Chivalry is dead. She brow beats Shrewd into forcing Skillmaster Galen to teach Fitz the Skill. She also gives Fitz a terrier puppy named Smithy, who he immediately bonds with. He hides Smithy from Burrich so that he gets to keep Smithy for himself. Patience tries to teach Fitz many Princely skills herself, but she’s not a patient teacher and Fitz doesn’t really understand how to interact with her. Eventually, Fitz gives her a painting of Smithy, and they’re able to connect in the realm of shared interests.

Fitz begins his instruction in the Skill with Galen following many warnings from Burrich and Chade about how they won’t be able to interfere in the training. What follows is months of cult tactics that narrow Fitz’s world entirely to Galen, learning the Skill, and taking abuse. Fitz shows immense strength and promise with the Skill, but he is Galen’s most despised student. Galen believes that Fitz is drawing on some outside source for strength, although Fitz has no idea what he’s talking about. Eventually, Galen and Fitz reach out to each other, and it gives Galen a window into Fitz’s mind and all of his secrets. Fitz, in his panic, realizes he can reach into Galen in the same way, and this causes both of them to nearly get lost in the Skill. Galen beats Fitz half to death and Skills Fitz to kill himself, but thankfully Smithy alerts the Fool and Burrich that Fitz is in distress and they save him.

Burrich cares for Fitz’s wounds and asks him what happened. Fitz tries to explain that Galen beat him because he “deserved” it, and Burrich isn’t having it. Fitz believes that he’s convinced Burrich that it’s “all his fault” that he nearly lost an eye, but thankfully all he’s done is convinced Burrich to beat the shit out of Galen. After two days of bed rest, Fitz spends some time doing chores in the stables for Burrich and visiting with Molly. After a couple more days, Burrich sends Fitz back to lessons with something to prevent infection. Fitz (pictured below) asks
Burrich if he can take on more duties in the stables, but Burrich shuts that shit down. First of all, the hawks don’t like Fitz because he’s too warm and doesn’t mind his own business (which is a totally normal thing for someone without the Wit to say), and second of all, Fitz hasn’t missed any lessons haha no reason why. The Fool tells Fitz what Burrich did to Galen in front of the Witness Stones, and that the Gods chose Burrich to be the victor of the day. This is one of the most satisfying moments in the series in my opinion, even though I wish it had never had to happen in the first place. After this, Fitz believes he cannot Skill.

General Thoughts

The major drama of this section is Fitz learning the Skill from Galen, which I’ll talk about a bit here and then a bit in the neurodivergence section. There are a few other big plot threads that start here, and I’ll focus on those first because the Galen stuff is heavy.

First, Molly and Fitz start having some romantic tension in this section, who could have seen that coming. I really enjoy Robin Hobb and I know she knows how to write a complex woman character. I don’t think Molly ever gets a chance to be complex because she has to be a relatively clean slate for Fitz to project his fantasies of being normal onto. It is intentional that Fitz doesn’t have many women in his life, and this is the only woman (girl, really) in Fitz’s age range that we’ve met at this point in the story. Him having a crush on her makes sense, I just think it’s the most boring heterosexual option for him, and one where he doesn’t have to question himself or think too deeply about his identity. I do appreciate that she’s also an abuse survivor, though. It gives them something real they can connect over. I also think it’s interesting that one of the only examples of hands-on fatherhood that Fitz sees is Molly’s dad, who abuses her but at least he’s there to abuse her every day.

Second, we meet Patience!! I’ve been waiting for her introduction impatiently (aha). She’s an AuDHD icon and she’s bad with kids. What more could you want? I’ll talk about the epigraph about her childhood in the Neurodivergence corner and her interactions with Fitz here. She doesn’t try to meet Fitz where he’s at or understand his likes and dislikes initially. She does what she thinks she’s supposed to do for a prince and child and it doesn’t connect for either of them. She does give Fitz a puppy, but she can’t understand that giving him a puppy is like giving her a new plant. Once Lacey tells Fitz how to make Patience happy, they’re able to meet each other on a more level playing field and connect, and Patience stops trying to “raise” Fitz in the way that’s expected of her. Of course, this is shown by her bursting into tears and running away after Fitz gives her a painting of Smithy, but it’s the beginning of their relationship. I want to specifically note that casting off societal norms about how Fitz should be raised is what brings Fitz and Patience closer together. Two neurodivergents interacting neurodivergently works better, and I love that for them.

That said, this is another difficult relationship with a caretaker for Fitz in a book filled with difficult relationships with caretakers. It would be easy to attribute this to Fitz not knowing how to interact with women because of being raised by almost entirely men, but that’s kind of bioessentialist. I think the real issue is that Patience struggles to connect to people over things outside of her special interests (a common autistic trait). That isn’t her fault, but it’s still not an attachment that Fitz feels he can really trust. I also think it’s hard for him to connect with her as a parental figure because she’s coming into his life relatively late.

We meet Smithy in this section! I love him so much, and he is so important to Fitz not killing himself. I love how Smithy becomes a bit of a therapy dog for Fitz and how we get a magical version of “I can’t kill myself, my cat/dog/other pet needs me”. One of the few good things Fitz has in his life at this point.

This is a great opportunity to start talking about the gender politics of it all. The Six Duchies isn’t a matriarchy or a patriarchy in the sense that both men and women can inherit land and property and there don’t seem to be any gender-segregated professions. Men and women can serve in the army, be minstrels, be candlemakers, be the monarch of the Six Duchies. However, patriarchal ideas still exist and it’s clear that some people are misogynists, like Galen. Also, he/him pronouns are used as the default when referring to an unknown person throughout all 9 of Fitz’s books. This is a nitpick, but if the society is truly gender neutral, why is the default person a man? I don’t know if this is Fitz being slightly blind to cultural misogyny or Hobb not thinking through the assumption that men would still be the default.

In the same vein, Galen treats women as lesser and acts like women have never done anything great with the Skill, which we know is false. Why is this well-educated man in a society with relative gender equality trying to erase women from the history of Skilling? The Skillmaster he learned from was a woman! Minor spoiler I guess, although it has no impact on the plot of the Farseer Trilogy and is mentioned roughly 5 pages into Ship of Magic, but <spoiler/> the Chalcedeans are hella sexist, </spoiler> so I guess he could have learned it from them? Still, it feels odd that he hates women so much and wants to erase them from the history of Skilling. It reminds me of male professors I had in undergrad and grad school who only talked about male scientists and what they discovered.

Fitz’s time learning the Skill actually reminded me a lot of my experience in grad school on a reread. Galen isolates his students, forces them to stop interacting with people outside of their circle (specifically designating them as lesser than the elite few allowed to learn the Skill), tells them they’re awful and barely worth his time, and sets them against each other to create competition for literally no reason. My advisor was not abusive and manipulative the way Galen is, but I knew many faculty members who were, and there was a general sense that we should be spending all our time together, working on homework or research (and if we weren’t doing that, we didn’t care enough/weren’t dedicated enough and didn’t deserve to be there). No one was as special as us for being grad students in UChicago’s chemistry department (I believe in naming and shaming). The people who thrived weren’t necessarily the smartest or most dedicated to their research, but the best situated politically. As someone who refused to play politics, I struggled and was ultimately failed out of the department because I have anxiety and autism and apparently that means I can’t be a scientist. When I first read Assassin’s Apprentice, I didn’t realize how strongly I was relating to Fitz in this part of the book. I just knew that I hated Galen and I loved Burrich beating him up.

Also, this is a touchy subject, so content warning for rape/sexual assault, but the way that Galen’s assault of Fitz with the Skill is described reminds me of how sexual assault is frequently described in fiction. I want to be respectful when talking about this, and I don’t mean to lessen the impact of sexual assault by comparing it to something that could never actually happen in real life. I’m not going to quote the specific lines that remind me of sexual assault because that’s kind of tasteless. But Galen forcing himself into Fitz’s mind and destroying his boundaries, both in what was supposed to be a teaching moment and when Fitz was laying on the ground completely defenseless, leaves Fitz with thick scars and deep trauma. Fitz specifically mentions having no autonomy or control in those moments and feeling violated. This is arguably the worst thing that Fitz goes through in this book, and because Galen physically assaulted him in addition to the Skill assault, Burrich is able to get a small amount of justice for this. It’s not enough though, and Fitz and Burrich’s inability to communicate about emotions stops Burrich from understanding the extent to which Fitz has been violated by Galen. Thank god Smithy was there. End of discussion about rape/sexual assault

Gay Corner

I saw a post on Tumblr recently that said “The thing that makes Fitz so… fitz, is that he is GENUINELY convinced that he is straight which is funny bc like 45% of the books is him having homosexual thoughts”. I think this book is more like 25% gay thoughts, and then they really ramp up in the next two books in the trilogy. We get more Fitz and the Fool content in this section, with the Fool taking care of Smithy for Fitz while he’s being abused by Galen and telling Fitz about Patience’s position and Burrich beating up Galen. Here’s a couple quotes that stuck out to me:

“Chade, I know the Fool is strange. But I like it when he comes to talk to me. He speaks in riddles, and he insults me, and makes fun of me, and gives himself leave to tell me things he thinks I should do, like wash my hair, or not wear yellow.” – page 224, Fitz

“He reached and took both of my hands in his. His grip was oddly cool. A shiver passed over me at his touch. “Would you continue [to go to Galen for lessons], if I asked it of you? As a friend?”
The word sounded so odd from his lips. He spoke it without mockery, carefully, as if the saying of it aloud could shatter the meaning. His colorless eyes held mine. I found I could not say no. So I nodded.” – page 279, The Fool and narrator Fitz

Which could mean nothing. Also,

Just normal straight guy things. I do acknowledge that this episode of Succession came out in like 2019 though, 25 years after Assassin’s Apprentice came out. Anyway, Fitz likes when the Fool makes fun of him, shivers when the Fool touches him, and it sounds weird when the Fool calls him a friend. These are all completely normal things to feel about your bro, nothing gay here at all.

Anyway, Burrich continues to be gay as hell for Chivalry. Here’s another collection of quotes that stood out to me:

“You can’t fool me, Fitz,’ he growled. ‘And I won’t have it. Not in my stables. You won’t pervert my beasts that way. Or degrade Chivalry’s blood. Mind what I’ve told you.” – page 202, Burrich

“The man is a sot and a lecher, and he has cultivated like traits in you. Ever he brings those around him down to his level.” – page 212, Patience about Burrich

“Galen makes no secret that he has no fondness for you. Of course, he doesn’t know you at all, so it’s not your fault. It’s based solely on…what you are, and what you caused, and God knows that wasn’t your fault. But if Galen admitted that, then he’d have to admit it was Chivalry’s fault, and I’ve never known him to admit that Chivalry had any faults…but you can love a man and know better than that about him.’ Burrich took a brisk turn around the room, then came back to the fire.”- page 245, Burrich

“A long time ago I talked to you about that other…magic. The Wit. The being with the beasts, almost becoming one of them.’…’Stay clear of it. I’ve tried my best to get you to see it’s shameful and wrong. But I’ve never really felt that you agreed. Oh, I know you’ve abided my rule against it, most of the time. But a few times I’ve sensed, or suspected, that you were tinkering with things no good man touches. I tell you Fitz, I’d sooner see…I’d sooner see you Forged. Yes, don’t look so shocked, that’s truly how I feel. And as for Galen…Look Fitz, don’t even mention it to him. Don’t speak of it, don’t even think of it near him. It’s little that I know about the Skill and how it works. But sometimes…oh, sometimes, when your father touched me with it, it seemed he knew my heart before I did, and saw things I kept buried even from myself.’
A sudden deep blush suffused Burrich’s dark face, and almost I thought I saw tears stand in his dark eyes.” page 245, Burrich and Narrator Fitz

I too take a brisk turn around the room when I’m not being haunted by homosexual thoughts. It is a shared trait between Burrich and Fitz that they have deeply buried secrets hidden even from themselves that they don’t want someone with the Skill to access. Fitz, who is being trained in the Skill, has the opportunity to protect himself against that, but Burrich didn’t. What did Chivalry see that Burrich had buried deeply? The Wit? It’s implied that that’s what Chivalry sees, and we know how much Burrich hates himself for it. We learn more about Burrich’s past in a future book, so I won’t speculate much, other than to say I think in addition to Burrich’s trauma, Chivlary saw his gay thoughts. We are repeatedly told that Chivalry pursued Patience without regard for the politics of his choice. I doubt anything would stop him from pursuing Burrich privately. WHY ELSE WOULD BURRICH BE BLUSHING WHEN HE BRINGS IT UP??? Someone needs to write a fanfiction IMMEDIATELY.

Also, Burrich taking a lap around the room after admitting he loved Chivalry and blushing when he talks about Chivalry seeing his deepest desires happens ON THE SAME PAGE. Why is he being so weird about their relationship if there were zero gay thoughts about Chivalry? Patience hates him for being gay and topping Chivalry, I said what I said!!! There is no heterosexual explanation for that blush, or for Patience calling him a lecher. Burrich has a reputation as a ladies’ man at the beginning of the book, but he never brings anyone home while Fitz is under his care. His days of lechery are done!

For Fitz, this is pretty upsetting to hear. Burrich saying he’d rather Fitz be Forged than use the Wit is crazy. He would rather Fitz be devoid of all humanity than experience empathy towards all living things. Obviously this literal situation never happened to me in real life, but one of my caretakers would have rather I been a Trump supporter like her in 2016 than figuring out my queerness in 2016. On a different level, it is pretty sad that Fitz is being exposed to quasi-homophobia as a queer man himself. Fitz never explicitly acknowledges how romantically charged Burrich and Chivalry’s relationship was, but I get the impression he understands it (there’s evidence later on in this book for that). He is receiving implicit messages that being gay is not ok from his father’s husband and wife. Yet another trauma for baby Fitz unfortunately.

Finally, we have a cute little parallel between Patience and Burrich and them seeing Chivalry in Fitz.

“She glanced again at the sheets in her hand and fell silent. Then she asked hesitantly, “You like the puppy this much?’
‘Yes,’ I said simply, and our eyes suddenly met. She stared into me in the same distracted way that she often stared out the window. Abruptly, her eyes brimmed with tears.
‘Sometimes, you are so like him that…’ She choked. ‘You should have been mine! It isn’t fair, you should have been mine!” – page 240, Patience and Fitz

“I stood holding the little pot of medicine. A terrible sadness welled up in me, and yet I could find no words to say. Burrich looked at me, scowled, and turned away. ‘Now stop that,” he commanded me angrily.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘You look at me sometimes with my lord’s eyes,’ he said quietly…” – page 276, Narrator Fitz and Burrich

Me when I had a completely heterosexual relationship with the father of my surrogate child. I guess this parallel could be to show how both Patience and Burrich are parental figures to Fitz? Seems less likely than them both loving Chivalry, and Burrich’s love being on the same level as Patience’s.

Neurodivergence corner

There are two big things I want to focus on here: Patience’s introduction and neurodivergent burn out in school. I’ll start with Patience’s intro, since it’s lighter.

The epigraph at the beginning of chapter 13, “Smithy”, tells us about Patience’s childhood as an “eccentric” girl, and to me it reads as the story of an AuDHD child before we had that terminology. Some quick background here: AuDHD is a term used in online spaces to by and about people who have both autism and ADHD. Until the most recent version of the DSM was published in the 2010s, you couldn’t diagnose a person with both disorders. At the time Assassin’s Apprentice was published, Patience wouldn’t have been considered an AuDHD character. When I read this epigraph for the first time, though, I wrote a note that said “damn does everyone in this book have autism????” I actually initially thought that Patience was based on a real person in Hobb’s life because she’s so vibrantly written. Hobb is frequently praised for her character work, and it’s extremely well deserved in my opinion because this is one of several characters who feel like a real person I know. Anyway, here’s a few quotes that stuck out to me that seem like a medieval manifestation of AuDHD.

“As a small child, her nursemaids found her stubbornly independent, and yet lacking the common sense to take care of herself.”

“…interested herself in handicrafts that were very unlikely to prove useful: pottery, tattooing, the making of perfumes, and the growing and propagation of plants, especially foreign ones.”

“She preferred the woodlands and orchards to her mother’s courtyard and gardens. One would have thought this would produce a hardy and practical child. Nothing could be further from the truth. She seemed to be constantly afflicted with rashes, scrapes, and stings, was frequently lost, and never developed any sensible wariness toward man or beast.”

“Tutors were frustrated by her distractible ways and frequent absences that seemed to affect not at all her ability to learn almost anything swiftly and well. Yet the applying of such knowledge interested her not at all. Her head was full of fancies and imaginings, she substituted poetry and music for logic and manners both, she expressed no interest at all in social introductions and coquettish skills”

She has deep interests that are considered eccentric and inappropriate by society. She’s extremely smart, but she doesn’t “apply” herself to her studies. She wants to be in nature but doesn’t care about protecting herself while in nature. She won’t let anyone else do things for her because she needs to be in control (maybe this one is a bit of projection on my part). She is the definition of “book smart but not street smart”, or the dreamy academic with their head in the clouds. If I was a good blogger, I would link to resources about autism and ADHD that prove my point. I’m not though, and she reminds me of several people I know who were diagnosed with ADHD at a young age and now suspect they have autism as well. Shout out to my best friend who sat behind me in every class in high school reading but still understood all the course content. Patience is my AuDHD queen and no one can take her from me.

Now on to the trauma of being really good at school (jk). Something that doesn’t get emphasized in the narrative is how good Fitz is at Skilling before Galen injures him. He doesn’t struggle at all with the exercises Galen sets for his students and he’s very open to Galen’s initial touches with the Skill. He also isn’t even remotely struggling with not reaching out into the Skill (it’s a surprise tool that will help us later).

“I was able to stand before him, waiting, aware of the Skill’s elation, but not giving in to it. Thrice the warmth rushed through me, and thrice I stood before it. And then he withdrew. He gave me a grudging nod, but in his eyes I saw not approval but a trace of fear.” – Narrator Fitz, page 262

Fitz’s native talent with the Skill is so strong that Galen is afraid of him. Fitz is Skill-blocking Galen from his secrets instinctually, which is not an easy feat and certainly not something any of his classmates could accomplish. Galen’s fear gives him an excuse to indulge his hatred even further and spend the next several days/couple weeks bullying Fitz. Fitz is smart enough and understands enough that he knows he’s talented with the Skill. I think it would be fair to say he is stronger in the Skill than Galen, and I think the idea of Chivalry’s bastard being better at the Skill than he is short circuits Galen. This all leads to him assaulting Fitz so badly that it makes his talent erratic (I can’t imagine what part of having his mind invaded made that happen). Galen also refuses to believe that Fitz has this talent innately and instead assumes Fitz must be feeding off of someone else’s power.

I think it’s interesting to read this as a twice exceptional (2E) narrative. Being twice exceptional means that a child is gifted academically but also experiences other cognitive challenges, like autism and ADHD (and neurodivergence generally). Sometimes 2E kids don’t get spotted because their giftedness masks their neurodivergence (or the other way around). Good teachers can make classes engaging for unidentified 2E kids, but bad teachers or stressed out teachers can really harm us. I had a teacher in high school who didn’t want me in her class because I was “too smart for her”. Luckily, there wasn’t anything in the world that I could draw intelligence from in the way that drawing Skill strength seems to work in this universe. Galen refuses to believe that Fitz naturally has the talent he has with the Skill. I think Fitz is experienced with reaching out to other minds because he uses the Wit, so it’s not surprising to me that he has a natural aptitude for this magic as well. Whether or not Fitz is actually drawing on Smithy for power is irrelevant to me here because Fitz is simply receiving Skilled touches and commands from Galen when Galen begins to suspect he has another source of power. He’s just mad that Fitz is more powerful than he is. It has nothing to do with Fitz’s ability and everything to do with who Fitz is as a person. Bad teachers will treat their gifted students this way.

Galen reminds me of several professors I’ve met over the years who have believed women do not have a place in science, to say nothing of queer people, neurodivergent people, or BIPOC people. His systematic erasure of women from the history of skilling reminds me of a professor I had in grad school (David Mazziotti) who spent his entire class (which was supposedly about electronic structure theory) talking about all the scientists he admired and worked with during his time in grad school and his post doc. All of those scientists were men. He also never asked me for my name, despite asking for the names of the men in the class when they answered questions during class. Galen is deeply insecure, and he takes it out on those with less power than him. This is something I saw a lot from teachers who really shouldn’t have been teachers, like those who were more interested in being friends with the athletes than in teaching. Galen is comfortably awful enough that it really feels like there’s no need to add on to the awfulness by interpreting his actions through the lens of having a neurodivergent student, but as a 2E person who has an extremely complicated relationship with school, I saw the parallel without thinking about it much. It’d be really interesting to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

Final thoughts

There was another epigraph that I wanted to mention that didn’t really fit in anywhere else, and it’s the one about El and the Elderlings at the beginning of chapter 11. It tells the story of the Pocked Man, but it also gives us insight into the founding of the Six Duchies. We learn that El, the god of the sea, was the first Elder. What’s an Elder? I don’t think they get brought up ever again in the series. Anyway, El is the god of the sea and he blesses the people in the OutIslands with seamanship and hardiness. The people prosper too greatly and it causes population growth, which leads to the development of agriculture and people who live primarily on land. The land dwellers worship Eda, the goddess of agriculture. Eventually, people move to greener pastures in the Six Duchies and El worship begins to die out in favor of Eda. This results in El creating the Pocked Man. We are told in the epigraph that this is how the Six Duchies were initially settled, OutIslanders wanting better pasturage. I can’t speculate on too much here without spoilers, but this is an interesting piece of lore I totally forgot from my first read through. Even though the only time Elderlings have come up so far is because there’s one on the tapestry in Fitz’s room, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that they become more relevant given that the series is titled “Realm of the Elderlings”.

If you read all the way to this point, thank you! This post was super long, and I don’t think most of them will end up being this long in the future because it took me multiple sessions to write it. I had a lot to say about Galen, though, and Fitz’s instruction in the Skill sets up so many series-long plot threads that I couldn’t stop myself from diving deep. See you next week!