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

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Following a letter from Chivalry to Burrich dating to just after the former’s abdication, “Withywoods” begins with Fitz looking out over guests arriving for Winterfest amid falling snow. Molly chides him for his delay in getting ready for the event, and he, grumbling about changes to fashion, starts to dress. Banter between the pair continues, and Molly leaves to attend to guests as Fitz ruminates upon his situation in life. Festivities continue in earnest as Fitz finishes getting ready, and as he makes to join them, he is pulled aside by his steward, Revel, who warns of uninvited guests acting suspiciously and of a messenger whose arrival was announced and unheard. Fitz issues directives to see to each, and he joins the revelry.

The festivities are described as Fitz joins them, and though he is not an adroit dancer, he does what he can in the midst of things. Molly and Fitz confer about events and about Patience, who yet lives with them. Patience then takes Fitz aside, and they confer until interrupted by the arrival of Web and Swift, whom they welcome warmly. Fitz considers Web’s continued insistence that he bond through the Wit again, not wanting to replace Nighteyes, and the two confer about the uninvited guests who seem not to show up to their Wit.

As festivities continue, Fitz steps quietly aside for a moment before resuming his conversation with Web. Web urges Fitz to seek a new bond, and Fitz demurs, considering what he has and what he has lost. But his answers seem to satisfy Web, and matters between them are eased. Further conversation between the two is halted by an urgent summons from Molly, delivered by one of her sons; Fitz hastens off to attend to his wife.

The present chapter, first in the novel and in the series, carries out well its expected explicatory role. The novel is situated in the larger chronology of the Six Duchies, with explicit references back to both the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies. Changes most relevant to Fitz and the characters most closely connected to him from the previous series are noted in passing in a way that lays them out sensibly without being heavy-handed, and explanations for the current state of Fitz’s life are provided without them seeming abusive or insulting. (Both are often problematic, if the readings I have done of other books in continuing series are any indications. There’s a challenge in setting things up to reward returning readers while not confusing new ones. Not everyone addresses that challenge well.)

The chapter also begins to hint at a driving conflict, something gestured towards in the prologue of the novel: the perils of complacency. Fitz is in a position in which he could be expected to be at some ease–and he is, in fact, at ease, perhaps overly so. The neglect of the messenger and the not-very-hesitant admission of the uninvited and clearly lying guests to his holiday celebration both speak to a certain desultory or lackadaisical attitude at odds with Fitz’s presentation in the earlier novels, although it might well be argued that a decade of married life as the petty noble of a country estate, a life that is a retirement from intense and fatally perilous public service, justifies so much. It is no small thing, after all, to remain properly paranoid across years of little happening, and my own experience suggests that the pleasantry of life with an agreeable spouse is decidedly softening–and it is not a bad thing, in itself, to be soft.

So much said, this is a Six Duchies novel, and it is Fitz. He has to find trouble, or it him, one way or another. (Honestly, there wouldn’t be quite so much story, else.) And it is clear in the present chapter that there are at least two sources of trouble waiting for him, if not more (although, since this is a rereading, I may be remembering rather than anticipating). There’s a lot of novel to go, though, and a lot of rereading yet to do–and I find, again, that I look forward to doing it!

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