Read the previous entry in the series here.
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Following a discourse on menopause and aging, “Arrival” begins with Fitz musing on the seeming sense in Molly despite what he perceives as her disordered thinking regarding her pregnancy. Prior discussions about fertility are glossed, as is the continued management of Withywoods amid what Fitz regards as his and Molly’s declining years. The death of Patience receives small comment amid the changes befalling Molly and her family and her long protests of being pregnant despite reason and the evidence available to others.

Dynastic matters also proceed in the world around Fitz, and he finds himself carried along by them once again. As he goes, he notes the changes that have taken place in Buck Duchy and the Six Duchies since the unrest of his youth. The needs of the kingdom take him to the Chyurda and Jhaampe, and he sees again the house where the Fool had dwelt in that city. The sight puts him to musing on his past once again, and Fitz confers with one who had known the Fool for a White Prophet. The conference leaves Fitz somewhat stung, though eased to know the Fool yet lives, and he ruminates upon the matter for a time–until his reverie is interrupted by Nettle, who comes to check on him.

Fitz and Nettle travel together, conferring at length, and he learns much of the state of the Six Duchies and of people he has known from her. Notably, dragons are beginning to become a problem for the Six Duchies as they range in from Chalced, and how to deal with them is an open question. No few other topics are treated, and the pair grow closer together than they had been before, leaving Fitz saddened that their travel together must end as it does. But they arrive at Withywoods in good order and better humor, and they are welcomed warmly by Molly, with whom they exchange news at length.

Fitz and Nettle are also obliged to confront Molly’s continued insistence on her pregnancy and the extent of her preparations for a new child. In a moment of Molly’s absence, they talk together of the seeming ending of her sanity, but they do not conclude their talk before she returns and reacts with indignation neither can claim inappropriate. After some time, though, Fitz and Molly arrive at an accord and more.

In a new section, winter arrives at Withywoods, and Fitz makes a point of commending Revel for his excellent service. Soon after, Molly presses upon Fitz in his study, saying that the pregnancy she has harbored for years is ending, that she is going into labor. After some dithering and rebuke from Molly, Fitz makes himself useful against the event, and he returns with supplies to find Molly has delivered a small, small girl. Molly places the child into Fitz’s hands, and he finds a protective instinct that is partly Nighteyes well up in him as he considers the child. Fitz’s magics tell him that the child is and will be well, and he is greatly eased and enheartened.

The present chapter is unusually lengthy; Hobb’s chapters in the Realm of the Elderlings novels are usually around twenty pages as printed, while the present chapter approaches forty (109-46). Some of the unusual length can be explained by the chapter doing much to situate the novel in the broader scope of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus. I’ve noted before, I believe, the challenge later novels in a series face in introducing new readers to characters and milieu; for a novel such as Fool’s Assassin, published nearly twenty years after the first member of its series and with more than a dozen earlier works to synthesize and address, the challenges are particularly strident. To take a double-length chapter to address a number of points that would be expected to come up, to make notes of what has happened with characters who received more or less attention in earlier works and whose situations could well be expected to matter to the protagonist directly and to the setting in which the protagonist operates, is not out of line. For readers who started their journey in the Realm of the Elderlings with the present novel, I can believe that the extended exposition is helpful. For me, it was a reasonably pleasant reminiscence; even though I have been working on this rereading more or less consistently for some time, it has been some time since I’ve looked at some parts of the corpus. (I do occasionally have to do other things, after all–and I even get to do other things now and again!)

As I reread, I find myself doing so affectively once again. The novel was published in 2014, the same year as my daughter’s birth, and while my wife was not pregnant so long as Molly, our child was born small (and early, by some weeks). I admit to having been worried about her young life (and more than once, in the event; she took pneumonia at a year old, which did not help matters), and I think I am far from alone among fathers in feeling a great sense of duty to protect well up once I saw my child. I also do not think I am alone in seeing no small amount of sass in my newborn daughter’s gaze when she looked at me for the first time. The present chapter speaks to such things, or my reading of it does–although, again, I concede that I read affectively more often than I ought, and no readers fail to bring their own biases to bear on what they read when they read it. We cannot help but do so, of course; we read as an aspect of who we are, and who we are is necessarily a product in part of what we have done and seen. Each of our experiences shapes our understanding in some way or another, and the application of that understanding is itself an experience that helps shape the next–recursive, yes, but not necessarily a bad thing, all told.

As I reread, too, I find myself thinking again about biographical criticism. Just as readers necessarily bring their experiences to the act of reading, such that each will find something different from the other in the same words on the same pages, writers bring their experiences to the act of writing. While it is certainly true, as I recall remarking and as I know many others have, that writers can write of things outside their direct experience, there is a reason “Write what you know” remains advice given to them. Knowing what I do about Hobb’s biography (and while I will admit that that knowledge is incomplete, it does offer enough for me to do simple math), I can readily guess than an author in her late fifties to early sixties as the novel was brought into being would be familiar with such concerns as are attributed to Molly, and I do not think I would be wrong to make such a guess. I do not go so far as to say that it is only that experience that informs the character–I do not believe so much is the case–but I do not think it fitting to ignore that experience, either. Something about a baby and bathwater comes to mind–but, again, that’s my experience showing up in my writing.

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

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Following an excerpt from an autobiography by Chade Fallstar, “Preservation” begins with a Skilled conversation between the old assassin and his erstwhile apprentice. Fitz takes care to let Molly sleep where the Skilling from Chade had awakened him as he stalks through hidden corridors to his private study. Conversation between the Skilled assassins turns to writing and potential regrets about it, and Fitz muses on the matter somewhat wryly as Chade lays out his reasons for asking.

An offhanded comment stifles further inquiries about the writing, and Fitz marks the shift in the tone of conversation as Chade asks after the Fool. Fitz reflects on his relationship with the Fool as Chade relates a report of strange visitors in Buckkeep Town who seemed to be searching for the Fool or someone very much like him. Another report ties the pursuit to the messenger Fitz had failed to receive or recover, and Chade leaves Fitz to consider matters.

Ruminating bitterly, Fitz considers Verity’s sword that Dutiful had given him in fulfillment of a promise, and his thoughts turn to other gifts. One of them, the memory-cube given him by the Fool, attracts his attention, and Fitz considers his present situation deeply before returning quietly to bed. There, Molly, having woken to find him absent, invites him to intimacy, after which interlude, she announces her pregnancy to him, and Fitz fears for the coming loss of the woman he has long loved.

The beginning of the chapter is quite the metanarrative commentary; that is, the writing is about writing, something with which a writer must necessarily be concerned. (This webspace is an example of that concern, for reasons I think are obvious to any who look at it for any length of time.) The focus on it is something that has pervaded the Realm of the Elderlings works, not only in Fitz’s own ruminations (attested in no few chapter-beginnings throughout the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies), but also in the correspondences at work in the Rain Wilds Chronicles and, as I’ve noted, in the novella “Words Like Coins.” There’s not necessarily a consistent position espoused in the metanarrative, to be certain; there are valorizations of the act and demonstrations of the need for record-keeping, of course, but there are also warnings against leaving clear records, admonishments that doing so can lead to ruin. I suppose that, if there is a single underlying message to be found in the thread of discussion about writing that weaves through the Realm of the Elderlings tapestry, it is that writing is a useful tool and a neutral one, affording power to who will use it but imposing no morality upon those who do. And I’m not certain what all to make of such a thought.

I will note, though, that the revelation of Molly’s pregnancy once again struck me oddly, even though I knew this time that it was coming. (It’s a rereading, after all.) Now, the use of what seems to be deus ex machina is not itself a bad thing, as I’ve noted, especially for a work in an avowedly medievalist genre. (Even if there are other readings that might actually be better-supported, as I have argued and will argue again, there’s more than enough in place to sustain a reading of the Six Duchies as partaking of the prevailing Tolkienian tradition of fantasy literature; certainly, she acknowledges her indebtedness thereto, even as she is clearly not circumscribed by it.) But it is certainly a surprise upon first reading.

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Read the previous entry in the series here.
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Evidently, too, this is the 1500th post to this webspace. Hooray!

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After a brief quotation regarding secrecy, “The Felling of Fallstar” opens with a shift in season from Winterfest to summer on a day years after that finds Fitz seated in a tavern and reflecting on news from Hearth and Just, two of Molly’s children with Burrich. He considers gifts for family until interrupted by a Skill-sending from Nettle expressing concern for Chade, who has evidently fallen and is comatose. The sending contains a summons from Dutiful, now fully King of the Six Duchies, and an order to travel by portal-stone. Fitz balks, citing earlier experience, but the order is reiterated, and he makes arrangements to comply.

Fitz reluctantly leaves Molly behind to answer his king’s summons and goes trepidatiously through the nearest Skill-stone. He arrives at Buckkeep in as good an order as could be expected and hastens in.

Fitz, in his guise as Tom Badgerlock, reaches Chade’s side, where the halting coterie of which he had been part is assembled, along with Nettle and her half-brother, Steady. Fitz, overstepping, issues orders that Dutiful echoes, compelling compliance, and he assesses Chade’s situation, finding it grim. He confers with those present to learn more details, finding Chade sealed off from the Skill much like Burrich had been. Fitz posits reasons for the action and begins to puzzle at how to address the issue. Kettricken joins the conversation, and suggests that Fitz likely knows or can most likely guess the answer. Fitz makes an initial attempt and fails, after which he and Dutiful confer.

Attempts continue into the night, and Fitz stumbles into the answer to his problem amid continued conversation with Dutiful. Finding it, he pulls Skill-strength from those in his company and works to Chade’s healing, guiding it with the expertise of long anatomical study. Chade regains consciousness and makes some complaints before lapsing into sleep, followed soon by Fitz.

Fitz wakes to Thick tending Chade, and he reports to Dutiful and Kettricken. Kettricken again urges Fitz to spend more time at Buckkeep, which he refuses, and Fitz calls back on Chade. The two converse together for a time, both of them much as they had always been together. Fatigue begins to tell on the old man, and Fitz takes his leave.

The comment from Chade at the beginning of the chapter is an interesting one. The old man is correct, of course, even if it is something of a pat statement; the more people who know a thing, the less of a secret it can be. And I am put in mind of earlier events in Fitz’s narrative, such as noted here, pointing to how much knowledge is and can be lost simply because it is never made available to someone who might keep it. But then, that’s one of the things for which fiction is good; it prompts rumination, and thinking is always a useful thing to do and have done.

Something I notice the chapter doing is musing on the approach of age. There are motions toward it in earlier chapters, of course, explicit mention of Molly passing her childbearing years (to which Fitz’s slowed aging is explicitly juxtaposed) and Patience’s own advancing age. The maturing and going-out of Molly’s younger children is also attested

The present chapter makes note of Kettricken going entirely gray, although the remark is made that it is seemingly early. Chade, on whom the present chapter focuses, had always been older in the series, having been the older brother of Fitz’s grandfather, Shrewd; there had been several comments made about his fading powers in the Tawny Man trilogy, for example. To have him fallen and be unable to rise again, however, points directly toward a commonplace of aging (LifeCall and similar products having made much of it for many years in the consumerist programming typical of the last decades of the twentieth century); even more than in previous entries in the Realm of the Elderlings novels, Chade’s situation in the present chapter comes across as something of a shock. Donne’s Holy Sonnet 6 comes to mind.

Biographical criticism is always fraught–authors can well write of things not in in their direct experience, after all–but it is irresponsible to assert that the circumstances of writers’ lives will have no impact upon the writing they do. I note that the novel is published in 2014, at which point, Hobb was in her 60s. I grew up in Kerrville, Texas, a town that boasts a large population of people at or past retirement age. My own parents, even now, are in their 60s. Experience suggests to me that no few people in that age range give no small thought to their advancing years and the decline of physical and mental capacities that often attend thereupon. I have to wonder the extent to which such was on Hobb’s mind as she composed the text, though I know it is an idle wondering; whether it was, and how much it was if it was, doesn’t much change the effect of the text on the reader or how it is achieved, and that’s really where the focus of criticism has to be.

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