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

A content warning applies regarding suicidal ideation.

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Following commentary from Chade regarding the degradation of Skill knowledge in the Six Duchies, “The Tarman” opens with Fitz and his companions watching the titular liveship arrive. Fitz contrasts the arrival of the vessel with his experience of the docks at Buckkeep as the situation is described, and the Fool as Amber lays out some of the liveship’s nature and history.

The Tarman ties off, and Fitz and his companions are greeted by Leftrin and Alise. Introductions are made, and Fitz finds the liveship registering to his magics, and Fitz finds himself the subject of the ship’s own inquiry. Leftrin notes the oddity of the event and guides Fitz to commune with the ship. The Tarman, in turn, recognizes Fitz as claimed by a dragon, Verity. Fitz accepts the claim, and the liveship agrees to bear him downstream. So much noted, Leftrin shows Fitz about the ship and lays out the schedule that must be followed for the plans that have been made to be enacted.

The next day sees preparations made for departure and gifts given to Fitz and his companions. Fitz learns something of the liveships and compares them to his experience of stone dragons, and he sits amiably with several of his companions, Leftrin, and Alise as they begin downstream. Soon enough, as the trip downriver commences, Fitz’s companions find themselves engaged with the crew, and Fitz takes comfort in the relative boredom of the trip. He also learns from the Fool more of Clerres and his youth there, including the efforts to convince him that he was not the White Prophet of the age and his introduction to Ilistore.

The effort of recall pushes the Fool to panic, and Fitz offers such comfort as he can, relating his own experience of desiring death and not desiring it. Given the possibilities they face, Fitz does agree to prepare something the Fool can use to die rather than suffer in Clerres again.

The downriver journey continues, the scenery described and contrasted with the terrain of the Six Duchies. Fitz begins to think of his home, and he and the Fool confer privately and ominously while the crew overnights ashore along the way.

The present chapter is not the first to carry the name of the eponymous liveship; that, I believe, happens back in Dragon Haven, here. As is ever the case with chapters titled the same or substantively similarly (here, the earlier chapter lacks the article that the present chapter has), there is a temptation to read them against each other, to see how the one foreshadows the other or the other references the one. As is often the case with me, such things have to be left to some scholarly someday; I write what I can when I can, and that doesn’t often or always allow me as much time to do the writing or the kind of writing that I would like to do. But if it is the case that someone else does such work and beats me to it, I’d love to see it; I’ve got places to refer to it and other writing that I can do in response, and I’m always glad to have more to say about the Realm of the Elderlings novels.

The present chapter also offers a useful indication of the chronology at work in the Realm of the Elderlngs novels, Leftrin noting “we’ve had close to a score of years” to improve the Tarman‘s passenger quarters since the vents of the Rain Wilds novels. I’ve not done the work (yet?) to slot matters together more firmly, although I know Hobb makes enough mention of other events–Fitz’s estimated age, the time needed for Dutiful and Elliania to have children who grow to adulthood as defined in the milieu, and the the like–to allow for at least a rough reckoning. I know, too, that there’s not an exact calendar necessarily at work throughout the texts, no parallel to Appendices B and D of Lord of the Rings. It’s not so much a surprise, really; I’ve said once or twice before that Hobb moves away from the Tolkienian fantasy tradition, so one more way in which she does so is not to be wondered at.

I think also that the present chapter does somewhat to reaffirm the setting-divergence from which I make the argument about Hobb’s divergence from the Tolkienian fantasy tradition. If nothing else, there’s a lot of physical description of the Rain Wild River and its course that repeats what appears in earlier series, so it reinforces the claims I make about those earlier novels and their functions. I’d have to (re-)re-read the earlier works to be sure, admittedly, but I have some cause to do so. Not all of my scholarly efforts are consigned to unknown somedays; some of them actually have deadlines and set dates, and while I can’t necessarily discuss them at length beforehand, I do have a tendency to put here what I deliver first elsewhere. I’ll doubtlessly do so again.

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