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

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An extended excerpt from Bee’s dream journals serves as a prologue for the novel. It speaks of children playing and singing while one, blindfolded, rages in snippets. Wind rises, bursting from the blindfolded child and scattering all. The blindfold remains, its painted eyes staring.

This is it, the beginning of the end…of the Fitz and the Fool trilogy. Fifty chapters remain to reread for this part of the Robin Hobb rereading series…which I seem not to have reviewed or commented on as I had earlier volumes of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus. It’s strange that such is the case, although I will note that I had some…things…going on when the novel emerged into the world and I read it. But not having gone on about the book before, I have the opportunity to approach it more nearly afresh now, and I’m grateful for that opportunity.

More firmly about the text: it is clear that one of the primary narrative foci throughout the Realm of the Elderlings corpus is foreshadowing. Beloved, in whatever guise, is easily the protagonist of the sixteen novel series culminating in the present volume, and Beloved’s core identity is as a prophet who must work to ensure that their prophecies come to pass; foreshadowing could hardly not be a focus in such a case. What is foreshadowed in the present passage, in Bee’s dark dreaming, I recall in broad strokes from my few earlier readings of the text. (What can I say other than that I’ve been busy?) Even without that recall, however, it’s clear that much is set to happen, and most of it will be unpleasant for those involved–but that’s Hobb, whose work I’ve loved across decades.

So, moving ahead…

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