Thank you for the magic!

This is the third and final book in the Tawny Man trilogy (after Fool's Errand and the Golden Fool).

Now that Dutiful has accepted the Narcheska's challenge, everyone is getting ready to sail to ice covered island of Aslevjal to slay Icefyre, the last male dragon. But the Fool wants to bring dragons back to the world and so he's strongly against the killing of Icefyre. Fitz is now torn between his duty to his future King and the love of his best friend the Fool. To cap it all, the latter has told him he's foreseen his own death on the glacier. Fitz and Chade have to do everything possible to prevent the Fool from accompanying them to the Out Islands.

The sea voyage to the city of Zylig, their first stopping place on the Out Islands, is not a pleasant one. Thick gets seasick and ill, and takes it all out on an already much guilt stricken Fitz, who's in charge of him. Day after day, the simpleton's Skill-music dampens the crew's spirits and threatens the whole expedition. Fitz will ask Nettle in her Skill-dreams to help Thick go through his ordeal.

They finally arrive at destination, to discover that the Out Islands political system is strongly matriarchal, with customs much different from those of the Six Duchies. There Prince Dutiful meets the hetgurd, a council of warrior clan chiefs and learn that they too are against the slaying of the dragon. Why then does Elliania want the dragon killed? Dutiful faces a terrible dilemma. Must he risk a political blunder? Finally the Prince decides be true to his word to his fiancée, and so they all set out to Aslevjal for a long trek to the heart of the glacier.

Again, what a fantastic, wonderful, amazing story! Of the ones that makes me wonder at the magic of books, and Robin Hobb's in particular: my eyes were following the words and lines and paragraphs, but my mind's eye was always elsewhere, holding on to the railing of a ship, walking on field of bright white snow, taking care not to fall into crevasses, in cold caverns of blue ice... I was seeing the events thought the characters' eyes, living the same emotions. I laughed, I cried of joy, I cried of pain and grief, I suffered with them. Like Fitz I grew fonder of Thick, I wanted to know more about Nettle... and I'm deeply in love with the Fool.

Oh Megan, from the bottom of my heart, thank you!

10/10