Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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Following a clandestine message from Kim to Trader Finbok, Hest’s father, “Illumination” begins with Carson rousing with some annoyance as Tats calls on him and Sedric in the night. Tats reports the absence of Thymara and Rapskal, noting his suspicion that they and their dragons are on the other side of the river, in Kelsingra. Carson reports observations that support that suspicion, and Tats confides his jealousy of Rapskal in the older man, encountering a bit of gentle teasing from Carson and receiving a bit of solid avuncular advice. The conversation is interrupted by the clear awakening of Kelsingra, shining light into the darkness and rumbling into the night.

Alise is awakened by the commotion. She rushes out to see what has transpired and guesses that Rapskal is at the heart of it. Her scholar’s mind asserts itself, and she begins trying to fix features in memory.

Aboard the Tarman, Leftrin confers with his crew about how to address the issues with which Reyn, Malta, and their child present him. The Chalcedean entanglements attendant upon assisting the Khuprus family receive attention, and Reyn relates what he knows and guesses about the genesis of Elderlings. Reyn pleads to depart, and Leftrin agrees in principle but notes the exigencies faced by the group in Kelsingra. Reyn offers the Khuprus coffers to outfit the Tarman and resupply the expedition. Leftrin agrees to take the Khupruses to Kelsingra pending the resupply, and Reyn suggests employing Althea and Brashen to assist. The idea is commended by Tillamon, whose presence had been unmarked. She rails at the treatment she suffers for being marked by the Rain Wilds as she is, and she purposes to emigrate to Kelsingra, herself. Leftrin gives orders and retires.

Alise wakes in the morning and pines for Leftrin as she attends to beginning the business of the day. After eating breakfast, she heads out and surveys her surroundings, musing on the course of action she will take. Her reverie is broken by the overflight of a dragon–Sintara, who delights in Alise’s appreciation.

A few things attract my attention in the present chapter. One of them is the parallel for race relations that emerges in Tillamon’s monologue aboard the Tarman. The discrimination–not legal, but not less present for not being formalized–she describes seems to me to be somewhat reminiscent of how earlier populations in the United States have been and still are treated. Indigenous peoples and people of Spanish colonial descent (a phrase I acknowledge is somewhat awkward but which has the benefit of being descriptive) predate Anglophone settlers and their descendants in the United States by millennia and centuries, something openly acknowledged, and they still suffer discrimination (that unfortunately often takes the form of physical violence tacitly condoned if not outright sanctioned by state actors) from the more junior populations. And that parallel is in addition to others already pointed out, which, while frustrating some one-to-one correspondences still highlights the ubiquity of the execrable phenomenon.

A couple of others have to do with names. I’ve noted Hobb’s use of emblematic names before, principally among the social elite of the Six Duchies (representative examples here and here), but also among the Traders (representative examples here and here). It strikes me, then, that Hobb seems to favor starting women protagonists’ names with A (Althea, Amber, and Alise come to mind, though only two are noted in the present chapter); what emblematic function is served here? It also strikes me as somewhat interesting that Leftrin seems to put so much stock as he does in Hennessey, whose name suggests a liquor associated with ostentatious consumption in popular culture contemporary to the publication of City of Dragons. Sailors are stereotypically associated with heavy drink, of course, and various forms of brandy not occasionally. Still, it seems a pointed choice of name, the kind of thing that scans to my eye as a quiet joke. (Oh, to have the time to sit and explicate such things again, as I used to do!)

I look forward to a time in which I have the time to sit and focus on such things more than I do or did. It is perhaps one with my failure to be a “real” academic that I did not do enough to look at and examine such little bits of text and other media, finding the nuggets of joy in them; it is a regret I yet carry, one of many such–not that I did, but that I did not do enough. Things might have been different, else.

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