[Dragaera] Jhegaala and Robin Hobb's Assassin series spoilers

[Philip Hart]

I'm
enjoying
the
Cycle
t-shirt
I
got
from
Cafe
Press
though
as
usual
I'm
an
in-between
size.


I alluded to this in an earlier thread, but might as well flesh out
the comment a bit: Robin Hobb's Assassin series is of interest to
readers of the Vladiad.  SKZB wrote a blurb for the Hobb trilogy,
part of the reason I recently picked it up.  I don't know if there
was any influence, but the Assassin books share a lot of similarities
with the earlier works.  The main character is a sometime-user of the
dominant magic in the world but deeply tied to a wilder magic 
(inherited on his mother's side) which ties him to a familiar and marks 
him as Other, or would if he wasn't already so marked.  He's raised, an 
orphan, as a tool for killing, and comes to be the center of political 
events.  He has no memory at all of his mother.  He spends the last 
volume in exile.

_Jhegaala_ has several features that reminded me of that book.  At
one point the hero/antihero (unable to return to the love of his life
because he'll be killed by the power structure that built him) is 
captured and taken to the edge-of-the-map near-mountain town where he 
was abandoned as a young boy. The naive reader expects to learn more 
about his background, but after some extreme violence (including a fire) 
he flees, nearly killed by one of his own (shot in the back no less), 
having learned nothing.  He shelters for a time with an old friend who 
is undergoing a mysterious metamorphosis, and must spend a long time 
recuperating.  Well, and the book is one long beatdown, both of the main 
character and the reader, whose expectations are constantly frustrated 
and who must watch a lot of thoughtless behavior get punished.