It was a balmy summer afternoon. The weather seemed in a good mood because there was a cool breeze blowing. Mom was chatting with a relative in the drawing room and I was in my bedroom, still innocent, unknowing how my life was going to change in the next few days.
I was coaxed out of the bedroom for the compulsory hi how are you, oh my god you have grown so big, what do you do and other small talk one does with a relative one has never met before or met at a time when one was waddling and couldn’t possibly remember even though the relative is convinced saying ‘do you remember me, you were ye high’ would jog one’s memory.
But the conversation from the banal soon turned to books and libraries and mom and I spent a good five minutes talking about our crammed library which we frequented from time to time.
And then it happened…the life-altering moment. I was told I should read this person called Robin Hobb and the first novel titled Assassin’s Apprentice.
You’d love it, she said.
You’d enjoy it, she said.
What she didn’t tell me, couldn’t possibly have fathomed herself, was that I would go down a rabbit’s hole for three months, devouring book after book after book like a hungry hippo. It was like a world I had hitherto not known existed opened its secret door, grabbed me by the collar and dragged me in.
The series had so thoroughly got its claws into my skin that at one point, I exasperated my colleagues so much they were ready to stage an intervention because I refused to engage with the world outside the books.
And thus, was revealed to me the wonders of The Realms of the Elderlings. Every time I have wanted to speak about this book, the only overwhelming words that come out are: oh god this book! This book!
Even though the books are fat, I have read 6 of the 16 books from the series three times in the past five years. Though they’re violent and EVIL, they’re my comfort reads.
I have never really recommended these books to anyone maybe because they’re too special to me to share. But once I sent my friend on a wild goose chase because I wanted one of the books with its original cover and since she was in the US, I had thought she’d find it.
This is that cover I was looking for. It’s nothing great but it’s special since it’s the original cover and my library book had it too. I have often wondered how my library came to have these books since the first in the series was published in 1995.
My friend couldn’t find the cover for me, much to her dismay and she tried – really hard. But apparently, she remembered my obsession with the series and instead of CONSULTING me, went ahead and bought the fourteenth book in the series! I had to dissuade her from reading it and my exact words were: don’t read this, it is violent and it’ll break you and there’s child cruelty and you’re not ready for it.
I’m still wondering why she hasn’t disowned me as a friend for worshiping this series. But oh well. I guess I must have some redeeming qualities.
There is a reason I feel the best way to learn how to write something is to consume enough of it. This series, this woman and author, is in my – how to write a fantasy, how to do first person narrative right, how to juggle several thousand characters and still give them an arc, and how to be cruel to your characters – guidebook. Because of this series I got my book idea and I wrote my first manuscript.
It is impossible for me to review this book. Every previous attempt has rendered me speechless. Let’s just say even sharing this blogpost is making me nervous – such is my love for this series. And no, I shall take no criticism against it.
God this book! This book!
I’m taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s My Friend Alexa. For the next 1 month, I’ll be sharing some of my favourite bookish memories; hence the title Reading Tales.
tales of Suchita 
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