destroys the Raiders, and Kettricken assumes the throne. Style The Farseer novels are often described as epic fantasies, and as introspective works that center around the characters' internal conflicts. The series is structured as a quest fantasy; the main character is barred from the throne by his birth, but nonetheless embraces a quest without the reward of the throne. In Fitz's case, the quest is to restore the rightful king and bring stability to the kingdom. A review in Asimov's Science Fiction placed his narrative in the tradition of a "young misfit coming of age". While Fitz's quest has a significant impact on the Six Duchies, his roles as assassin and illegitimate royal force his actions to stay unseen and uncredited, and he is thus portrayed both as a leading and marginal character. The trilogy is described as drawing from Arthurian legend in its characters and narrative motifs: Shrewd's decline recalls the legend of the Fisher King, and Regal bears similarities to Mordred, and Chade to Merlin. Fitz has been termed a melancholy hero, and been discussed as a liminal being, or one who "exists at the threshold of two states". Critics have noted parallels to the character of Hamlet, to Frodo Baggins, and to Severian, the protagonist of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. Scholar Geoffrey Elliot describes the setting of the Elderlings books as following in the "Tolkienian tradition", resembling the society of medieval England, but drawing also from the indigenous societies of the Pacific Northwest. Hobb uses a style within the fantasy genre that casts the fantastic as an unquestioned, familiar aspect of the setting: this creates an "illusion of familiarity" for the reader, according to scholar Susan Mandala. When Fitz first shares a dream with a dog, the narration matches how he experiences the dream – as a perfectly natural, as opposed to fantastic, event – through language that is "lexically coherent" across the human and animal segments, in Mandala's view. Similarly, when Fitz first mentions the telepathic Skill, the narrative does not address the term directly, assuming that its meaning is known in-world, but instead focuses on the Skill's potential effect on Fitz's memory, and its addictive qualities. The story is narrated as a first-person retrospective, with an adult protagonist reflecting on his childhood memories: this has been described as an unusual style in fantasy, and critic John Clute termed it a "painfully