Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy, Vol. 1)
FitzChivalry Farseer, the royal bastard trained as an assassin, is the most emotionally rich protagonist in epic fantasy. Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings is a world where people are psychologically real, which makes everything that happens to them devastating.
Fitz’s passivity is the most named complaint, a hero who “generally does not drive the plot” while nearly every adult pushes him around. Pacing is the second fault line, “a seemingly unending training montage with nary a purpose,” one reader “70% into the book and still didn’t know what it was about.” Anyone expecting a fast story about an assassin finds instead “the most chill, less action-driven book about an assassin’s education” they have ever read. The tone is relentlessly hard on him, wearing even for readers who rate it highly.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
