Weekend Reads #88: Mourning My Favorite Character…for no good reason

Weekend Reads is a weekly post in which I discuss a variety of topics and mention the books I plan to read on the weekend.

This weekend’s topic:

I want Fitz back!

**Quick note: Spoilers below for Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy, Liveship Traders trilogy, and Tawney Man trilogy. DO NOT spoil me for anything that comes after those books. Thanks!

Do you mourn your books? Do you lament stories you’ve completed? Do you grieve for plots that have petered to an end, never to flow forth in a story again? Do you pine for the moments you spent with characters you love and for the wondrous events you read, emotions you felt, epic friendships that seemed as if they’d last forever, love so true that nothing would come between them, and quests so grand and heroic that you had to pause a moment and take a breath when reading about them?

I can’t remember if I’ve ever mourned the end of a book. I know I have regretted completing some books and have longed for stories I’ve completed or can no longer remember, but I can’t recall reading of a happy ending and feeling grieved that a character’s story has come to an end. But so it feels to me now. Fitz got a happy ending to his story. I am happy for him. Really, I am. But I’m sad. So sad. Because the end of Fool’s Fate has a ring of finality to it. I get the impression that this is the end of Fitz’s story. No longer will the story follow his adventures. As the Fool said, their time has ended. Never again, it seems, will I read from Fitz’s perspective, or hear his voice speak out from Hobb’s tales.

I might me wrong — it’s highly likely that I am — and all this sadness and melancholic feelings are all for naught because two more series filled with hefty books follow this one and the last is called Fitz and the Fool. It’s obvious that there’re more adventures to be had in this world with other characters mentioned in the three series I’ve completed. But still I get a bitter taste at the end of Fool’s Fate as if the story could stop here and everyone lives happily ever after. I get the impression that no longer will I be privy to the thoughts of one of my favorite characters and that makes me sad. It makes me grieve. It makes me nostalgic for the books that set me on this path and makes me long to return to them. I guess it’s usually at this time in a series that I’d turn back and reread the earlier books instead of continuing and facing the finality of an ending that promises no future books.

So that’s where I stand now, curious to know what happens next yet yearning to revisit Fitz and the Fool when I first met them and just stay there instead of moving on. Fitz and the Fool wouldn’t approve of my dawdling. They would encourage me to push on and face the end with as brave a face as I can muster. Who knows what the next series might bring. I might enjoy those adventures more than the ones I’ve read. Yet still I am sad and so I pause wondering and reminiscing about the first time I read about these characters.

…

Emily from Embuhlee liest and I have been reading Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series for some time now. I can’t recall how long, but we happened to be reading the first two books in the Farseer trilogy around the same time and decided to jump into the third book — Assassin’s Quest — together. We’ve buddy-read the series since then, and we recently completed the Tawney Man trilogy, which, as you’ve read above, has left me feeling a bit sad that the story might no longer focus on my two favorite characters.

Emily has assured me many times that this is not true and we will most likely revisit Fitz and the Fool in the last trilogy of the series since it’s named for them and there’s a huge picture of Fitz on the cover, but the irrational side of my brain has taken over and for now I’m stuck thinking that Fitz is content and the Fool is off spreading the word of his journeys so they’ve both retired from the story.

If not for this buddy-read, I’m pretty sure I’d stop reading the series here. I’m notorious for not completing series and I think this is the reason why: I get to a point where I don’t want to let go of the characters or see them or the plot change or learn that the story will end. I just want it to continue in the way it is at the moment I stopped reading. That must be why because that’s how I feel right now.

But we will continue, Emily and I. After all, I am curious to see what becomes of the dragons.

What I’m currently reading:

 

Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus

I’m on the last third of the book, speeding to the end though I took a break to complete two other books. I love the writing in this and love that the characters have more depth than in the movie.

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

In the midst of reading a bunch of other stuff, I forgot about this. But I’m back on it now and hopefully I’ll be able to complete it before it’s due back at the library.

What are you reading this weekend? And let me know if you too mourn your favorite characters.

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