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

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The final chapter of the novel, “Emergence,” is prefaced by an excerpt from Bee’s journals. It opens with Bee emerging uncertainly back into existence. She hears the voice of Wolf-Father urging her to rise, and she struggles to do so, assessing herself and her surroundings. Some who made passage through the Skill-pillar with her had not survived; others are stripped utterly of sentience. Dwalia, however, retains herself. As Wolf-Father bids Bee flee toward “one here who will help us if I can wake him” (754), and Bee complies with a remark on the changing season, Dwalia commands her pursuit.

The present chapter is, as is often the case with Bee-centered chapters, brief; in the edition of the text I have, it’s pages 752-54, and it empties onto a brief author-blurb. As such a brief thing, and at the very end of the novel, it functions much as a mid-credit or after-credit scene in a movie, gesturing towards the sequel that the audience knows to expect; I want to think it’s a reaction to the prevalence of such devices in movies, although whether on the part of the author, the editor, or the publisher is not clear to me. The argument could be made that, to keep like with like, the chapter could feature early in the third volume of the trilogy…but I also think that the trilogy structure itself rather demands that Bee’s reappearance (which links back to earlier notes that travel through Skill-pillars can occasion displacement in time and that there are agents in the Skill-stream that take some interest in others, such as this) in the present chapter. The confirmation for readers of something they might well expect–Bee received a lot of narrative attention to be discarded–does occasion some shift in tone for the reader; there is hope yet, and for more than just vengeance by Fitz and what might be something like justice for the Fool.

When I next pick up this series, it will be with what is (presently) its final volume: Assassin’s Fate. After going through that novel, there are several directions I can take. There are a number of other Realm of the Elderlings pieces, including The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince and Words like Coins, as well as some few short stories. There is also the Soldier Son trilogy, which presents a different take on things; I’ve done some work on that series before, and I have had thoughts about returning to that work off and on across time. Further, there are some decidedly different pieces by Hobb of which I happen to own copies, and I’m sure there is other work that I don’t have ready access to–which is all to say that there’s a lot of rereading left for me to do.

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