BOOK & BLOG

August 21, 2005

Book of the week: ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE by Robin Hobb

This week I’m reading a book my second son recommended. He’s strictly a sword-and-sorcery reader, and this book is in that tradition. Robin Hobb is a prolific Washington writer, and I’ve enjoyed everything of hers I’ve read. Hobb is a great world-builder and handles complex plots with aplomb. ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE is the first book in the Farseer series, and it follows the life of a young man who has no real name. He’s the bastard son of a prince, dumped on the prince’s doorstep by his mother’s father. He’s also a boy with unusual mental abilities. Through no fault of his own, he’s a polarizing political pawn, too. Called Tom by some, and Fitz by others, the boy struggles through a difficult life with intelligence, and his adventures are enthralling reading. I plan to put the rest of the series into my TBR pile.

Entry of the Week

It’s transition time again. My daughter started back to school yesterday, toting her backpack and her volleyball shoes and her drum, and in a week or two my sons will load their vehicles and go to back to college: one for his senior year, one for his freshman. A friend of my middle child has been living with us, and he’ll sign up for the Navy this month. Our German houseguests have gone back to their own country. My husband and I will begin a new routine, and our house will feel a lot emptier. We’ll go to the county fair in three weeks, and watch the girls competing for Fair Queen, and the farming kids showing their calves and their pigs. It’s a familiar routine, and one that feels very American, somehow.

I don’t often think of my life as a citizen, but our visitors from Germany made me realize I represented the USA, to them. The young man, 17, commented on how large our cars were compared the cars in Europe, and I answered immediately, “Americans like big things.” Unfortunately, “big” can include people; when my son was staying with this same family in May, he reported to me that you don’t see nearly as many fat people in Germany. I am definitely a big person. I also discovered, the morning they were due to arrive, that in my son’s opinion, their house had been “crazy clean,” which is not a description my house will ever earn. It was too late for me to sandblast the house inside and out, and too late for me to loose forty pounds before their plane taxied in, so we did the best we could with hospitality and warmth. I think the brother and sister had a good time. They saw their first lizard and their first turkey and their first raccoon; and I hope we all learned something.

Somehow I feel that my citizenship has been renewed, and it makes me look forward to a season that for me is full of American markers: Labor Day, the county fair, American-style Halloween, Thanksgiving.

I think I’ll go out and wave my flag.