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

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Following a brief excerpt from Prilkop’s writings, “Revelations” begins with Fitz recuperating slowly from his exertions in the Skill. Residents of Kelsingra continue to ply him for healing that he dares not open himself to perform, and Amber joins Fitz in his chambers for brandy one evening, resuming the identity of the Fool when the pair are in private. They confer about Fitz’s unwillingness to resume Skilling while in Kelsingra, surrounded by the memory stone, and Fitz guides conversation toward the Fool’s experience of Clerres. Prilkop’s ancientry is noted along the way, as are tendencies of Kelsingrans and Rain Wilders to become lost in the memories that are stored in the stones of the Elderling cities. Parallels are drawn to August and Verity Farseer, and the pair discuss the Fool’s resumption of being marked by Skill.

With some guild, Fitz steers conversation back towards Clerres, and the Fool reminisces about his upbringing and his introduction to Clerres. Details of the island and its inhabitants are provided, and some information about the prophecies that led the Fool to Buckkeep emerges. More details of Clerres are evoked, although to the Fool’s pain, and Fitz learns the Pale Woman’s name, Ilistore. He also learns of how the Fool and Prilkop were treated and won over when they returned to Clerres at length, with the Fool remarking on how he had managed to conceal Fitz even amid his accounts to the Servants. Fitz’s fraught presence in prophecy receives more attention, and the Fool somewhat drunkenly opines on the strangeness of being cared for by Farseers. Still sodden, the Fool tucks up against a willing Fitz who watches as he falls asleep.

The present chapter is not the first in the Realm of the Elderlings novels to bear the title “Revelations.” Indeed, it’s one of the more common, if not the most common, chapter-title Hobb uses; it appears in Assassin’s Apprentice, Golden Fool, and Dragon Haven. Had I the time at the moment to read the four chapters against one another, I think it would prove of interest; I’m not sure there’s any presentation or independent publication potential in such a work, but that hardly stops me from doing much or any of what I do to dabble in literary criticism and interpretation anymore. Time constraints, however, do, so I will add this to the towering pile of scholarly somedays that has grown up as I have worked through my rereading. I really do have a lot to do, and far less time to do it in than I might prefer…but that’s true of all of us, I think.

As might be expected from a chapter titled “Revelations,” there is much exposition in the present chapter. Details of Clerres are welcome, even if they reinforce what seems to me still to be a simplistic ponerological stance as regards the place and its people. More nuanced, perhaps, is the treatment of Prilkop in the present chapter. I believe I’ve commented before about Hobb’s tendency to have characters who are pushed into positions of subservience and opprobrium be marked, to have color and tincture added to them; Jamaillian and Chalcedean enslavement practices come to mind as examples, and I’m sure that skimming my records would point out more. (Another scholarly someday is indexing all of this stuff, which will be a project on its own, to be sure.) Here, Prilkop is a counter-example, the eldest of his people and the most successful in his goals being denoted specifically by his darker skin. It is a neat inversion of the fantasy commonplace of whitening with greater achievement (eg Gandalf’s transformation from the Grey to the White), and I’m sure there’s some reading thereof that will annoy no few people with its putative wokeness. There’s yet another scholarly someday to plumb therein (and if someone’s already done it, I’d love to know).

I seem to collect more and more of them. Ah, to have time for them all!

School’s back in session, which means writing needs doing–and I’m here to help!

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