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

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After Reyall replies with reservation to Erek’s offer, “Ending a Life” opens with Alise waking in discomfort and surveying the total of her scholarship, “all in one stack.” She muses bitterly on her situation and the assertion by Rapskal that nothing of Elderling make ought to be in the hands of a non-Elderling, but soon rebukes herself for her angsty melancholy and is joined in that rebuke by the touch of Sintara’s mind on her own. Sintara signals some approval of Alise’s response, and Alise heads out to forage and survey her surroundings. While out, she encounters a big cat, which she frightens off. That done, she purposes to return to the keepers’ encampment with a warning about the predator, thinking she has earned a cup of tea as part of her own life.

It is a brief chapter, the present one, and structurally simpler than many in the series, consisting of a single section focusing on a short time in one character’s life–a couple of hours, at most. In that length and simplicity, it serves to ease the reader into reading; even though the novel is but one in a series, and the last rather than the first, it is a new novel, thus a new reading experience, and so an easing-in rather than a dropping-in makes sense. (This is not to say that a novel ought not to start amid action and suddenly; many novels do so, and they do so well. But it is jarring to start such a novel, and jarring is not always the most desirable thing to do to a reader.)

The focus on Alise also calls attention to her ongoing character development. She has clearly had an existence of her own while the narrative has focused on other characters, rather than remaining a static figure against which the others can be measured. To my eye, it is another iteration of the kind of verisimilitude for which Hobb avowedly strives and which she in large measure delivers. (There are exceptions, of course, but, as the adage has it, “Even Homer nods.”) I have certainly had the experience in my life of not seeing someone for a time and being surprised at the ways in which they have changed; I do not think I am alone in it. Accordingly, it rings true for me that Alise has changed a bit since she last occupied Hobb’s pages, and I like even my fantasies to ring true.

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