The Robin Hobb Collection discussion

For those of you who are already speeding ahead in this book: is it necessary or helpful to read the Rain Wild Chronicles first? I so desperately want to dive into this one but hesitate to spoil the other series for myself or not get 100% out of Fool's Assassin!

(I've read Farseer, Liveships, and Tawny Man, so I've got all of the Fitz/Fool books read already.)

Yeah, I would read the Rain Wilds Chronicles first. It keeps the whole chronology consistent, and there are some spoilers in Fool's Assassin.

If there are rain wild spoilers, I either missed them or they are at the very end of the book. Now I'm curious what they are.

I would be inclined to say you can at least read this one without worry, but I still have 2% left.

Actually, I'm only like 50 pages in and I've encountered some. Subtle stuff, but it's there.

Seemed to me everything referred back to tawny man, not rain wild.

I'm a big proponent of reading things in publish order, but in my opinion it's safe to read this one if she just can't wait.

Certainly more so than shipping live ship. Tawny man spoiled a bunch of stuff from that.

It mentions stuff about Chalced.

Ah, yeah that. Good point.

I think that's a rather minor spoiler. If you don't want to wade through 4 books - as good as they were - to get to this then the spoiler mentioned is so minor that you won't know or remember what's being spoiled if you do go back to Rainwilds.

Yeah, I overlooked it. I'd agree with David.

i'm in agreement too, i saw the mention of the empress in chalced but it's such a minor thing that you won't miss anything really. (i'm only 20% in though, so not fully informed yet :))

The mention of certain things in the plural is rather a spoiler for the chronicles, though not one that you couldn't guess going in...

Thanks for the input, everyone! I've decided to read Rain Wilds and Fool's Assassin concurrently. Sort of speeding through Dragon Keeper and savoring Fool's Assassin (if that's possible... Fitz's POV draws me in!).