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

---

Following a passage from the Servants’ histories that articulates a change in terminologies, “The Shaysim” returns to Bee as she recounts the party, led by Dwalia, making off with her and Shun, tracking their progress away from Withywoods to the extent she is able. Bee notes her situation and Shun’s, remarking on the depressed state of the latter, and she notes particular unease with one of the members of the group: Odessa. Regular patterns of her moving captivity are related, as well.

At one point along the journey, Shun breaks her silence to Bee, cautioning her to conceal her physicality from their captors. She relates her suffering and rebukes Bee sharply for her interference, and she notes that they are both being drugged by their captors. Bee accedes to Shun’s directions about deception, and the captivity presses ahead.

Dwalia makes to tend Bee, and Bee reflects on her apprehensions regarding the woman. She also further considers Shun and her situation, finding some sympathy for the woman and attempting to identify avenues through which she can act against her captors. The ensorcellment maintained by those captors continues to work on Bee, however, and something of their rhetoric receives attention, reinforcing to Bee the peril Dwalia represents. When Bee asks about that rhetoric, she is reminded of some of her earlier visions and how she acted upon them, and she considers further her own place in the world. The revelations dizzy her to the point of illness, and Dwalia’s companions find themselves stymied.

As is often the case, I find the chapter-prefatory materials of interest. As I believe I have noted and as I know at least two other scholars have mentioned, the inclusion of such materials works in part to present the narrative as existing within a larger world, something that allows it to deploy a Tolkienian “inner consistency of reality” and facilitate a Coleridgean “willing suspension of disbelief.” That is, having excerpts, often from “outside” sources, at the heads of chapters helps to create the impression that the world in which the Realm of the Elderlings corpus occurs is a “real” one. In the present chapter, the “historian voice” at work comes across, at least to my reading, as a particularly pointed example of doing that; there’s something about it that seems authentically academic as I reread it. The snarky comment in the second paragraph, for example, brings to mind the kind of sniping I have seen–and, if I am honest, participated in–in conference papers and the occasional journal article. The plea to recognize agency also brings to mind a lot of academic discourse with which I am familiar. While Hobb is, avowedly, not an academic, she manages to get right enough of it that the present chapter’s preface “rings true.” It’s not the first time, of course, but it does stand out for me, reading from where I do.

Another note of interest, if a little thing: I’ve commented on several occasions about the use of emblematic names in Hobb’s work, usually but not always among the nobility of the Six Duchies. I find the focus on Odessa in the present chapter to be of interest in that light. The name is one linked to two cities, one in Ukraine and one in Texas. Not being Ukrainian, I am not entirely up on what associates with that city; being Texan, I can note that Odessa, Texas, does loom large in the area’s consciousness. I find, too, that there is an Odessa, Washington, that might well be of interest to the Pacific Northwesterner Hobb. Whether or not there is something being said about any or all of them, I am not sure, but I think it might well be worth looking at. Sometime.

I’m happy to write to order for you! Fill out the form; see what we can do!

Or you can send your support along directly!