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De Eigenzinnige Prinses En De Bonte Prins (2013)

by Robin Hobb(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Uitgeverij Luitingh-Sijthof B.V. Amsterdam

review 1: First let's talk about the book - the physical thing. The edition I have is a Voyager hardback and they have gone to town on it. The cover artist, the excellent Jackie Morris, has additional artwork scattered through the text, including two coloured illustrations at the start, and pen and ink work through the body. Each page ends in a narrow scrolled design too. It's a lovely thing.This is a short book, technically a novella at 38,000 words.You should be aware when picking this up that it's in a different style to most books, including Hobb's other work. Like many of her other books this is written in the 1st person, but it's in the style of an account, which allows it to cover many years and a good number of complex events in such a short space. You pay for this in a loss... more of immediacy and a significant reduction in the amount of dialogue. A common 'rule' of writing is "show don't tell" but when you're as accomplished as Robin Hobb you can bend the rules almost to breaking point, and an account of this sort is primarily an exercise in telling. Hobb works her magic here and makes this a tale that manages to be emotionally engaging even while it covers so much ground.TWP & TPP provides a satisfying background to the Farseer books. If you loved those books, as I did, then you'll probably love this work too. It's entirely possible the novella will work well for someone new to Hobb's work - it certainly doesn't assume any knowledge of the Farseer world - but I'm not in a good position to judge that.For Farseer fans, this isn't more of the same, it takes and amplifies certain aspects and holds less of others. Your reaction to it will depend upon what you liked most in those books. But I think everyone will find things to love in it, and it's a great way to spend some reading time while you wait for Fool's Assassin to come out!
review 2: First of all, if you are unfamiliar with either of Hobb’s trilogies following the character FitzChivalry and the Six Duchies, this may not be much of a read for you. The entire book is only 185 pages, so Hobb spends no time talking about worldbuilding, what the Wit is, or the intricacies of politics.That being said, she has also written this book in such a way as to make all of that window dressing as unnecessary as possible. At the end of the day, this is a special edition novella that was written and published for Hobb’s rather large fanbase, not necessarily potential new readers.The book is the written reminiscence of Felicity, a low born woman who was a companion servant to Princess Cautious Farseer, the heir to the throne of the Six Duchies, and this tale is as much her life story as it is the tale of Cautious and her son Charger. The novella opens at Cautious’ naming ceremony, and in it our narrator strives to be as unbiased as she can.With a work this small, it’s sometimes difficult for me to find things to say without just outright summarizing the book. Hobb also is a master craftsman; her work is clean, tight, well paced, and well executed. Stylistically The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince may be a bit of an odd read for some readers, as Hobb has stayed true to the style seen in historical accounts of those who were there but wrote their experience years after the events. There’s little dialogue here, but Hobb does manage to avoid info dropping in any noticeable or annoying fashion. The myths surrounding the Piebald Prince are not given any great detail in FitzChivalry’s time, so Hobb makes good use of Felicity in this novella by having her comment on the myths growing up around Charger (the Piebald Prince) and either affirming or refuting various claims that have been made about him. This technique has allowed Hobb to enter in dialogue in a few places where Felicity would not have been present for it, but it also allows her to flesh out the story and connect it more fully to characters who are generations in Felicity’s future.My only real critique comes from the latter half of the book, which focuses on Charger. Where Felicity was a close friend and confidant to the protagonist of the first half of the book, she’s only Charger’s nanny and did not make an attempt to be his confidant as he grew into adolescence. The ramifications for the reader in this is that Cautious is a much more real, balanced, and approachable character than Charger is, who is only given the broadest of brushstrokes in terms of personality. There is no moment when Charger reaches out of the book and grabs you (or at least, me), whereas Cautious, for all her faults, managed to convince me of her humanity.If there is a theme to this book, it’s that history is written by the winners, and sometimes that’s to cover up the crimes the winner committed in order to win. Felicity is attempting to correct the historical record that she finds being written around her in the only way she can: ensuring that her tale survives by hiding it in Buckeep’s library where it won’t be found until a significant amount of time has passed. The book also focuses on the ramifications of having history written so that the Piebald Prince was an evil, degenerate man who wielded an evil magic: a lot of innocent people died for the “crime” of having a type of magic called the Wit. Except that all of this is merely a cover for the fact that someone found the Prince a highly inconvenient obstacle to their own ambition.Now, if I’ve convinced you that this is a book you’d like to read, I have some bad news. The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince is a special edition release from Subterranean Press, and both of the bindings are completely sold out. There is, as of yet, no e-book edition. In order to get your hands on it, you’ll need to haunt some libraries (where I found mine), or search through Ebay. Some speciality dealers may also still have a copy for sale. For those of you who make the effort, this is a fun read. less

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