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

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After a somewhat extended commentary from the Servant Symphe regarding the Fool, “Paragon‘s Bargain” begins with Fitz trying to fill his days aboard the liveship with useful tasks, only to find himself wracked with regrets regarding Bee. Fitz does learn some details about the Rain Wild river and how the liveship operates upon it, and the patterns of his days aboard and of his company’s are related.

An evening comes that interrupts the regular pattern, with Brashen and Althea requiring Fitz to dine with them. They explain their concerns about the Paragon‘s behavior on the trip to him, relating some of the ship’s history and expressing unease at the increasing association between the liveship and Amber. Their talk together is interrupted by upset from the liveship, the visage of which has transformed to something more draconic. The Fool as Amber had administered Silver to the liveship, which surges with power and unrealized desires. Fitz realizes the truth of the ship’s words about its draconic nature, and he and others begin to be overwhelmed by the latent power in the dragons that make up Paragon.

A brief fracas ensues, after which conference is undertaken about events. The Fool as Amber explains the reasoning behind the events; the Paragon has been to Clerres and can return there, willingly in exchange for the opportunity to drink enough Silver to become the dragons that should have been. Brashen and Althea recognize that they will be professionally undone by such an event, contracts they had made broken by the preemption of their vessel and work, and the Fool asserts that Bee yet lives, so that the haste for Clerres becomes important. Fitz is obliged to reveal more of himself and his daughter than he would have done, to his cold anger, and he finds himself confronting the liveship again, if briefly.

Returning to his cabin, Fitz finds that the Silver he had been given remains intact, and he returns to Brashen, Althea, and Amber. More difficult discussion follows, and Fitz is convinced, at last, that his daughter yet lives.

The present chapter makes use of the deus ex machina trope, and pointedly. It’s not the first time the Realm of the Elderlings novels have engaged in it–examples present themselves here, here, and here, among others–and it’s not necessarily a bad thing that it happens, as I’ve noted elsewhere. I am somewhat struck by it in the present chapter, however, because it appears to contradict earlier in-milieu assertions, and without enough cause to excuse it. That the Silver the Fool-as-Amber administers would have powerful effects upon the Paragon is to be expected; the substance is repeatedly asserted to be singularly potent, and the wizardwood of which the liveship is made is itself more than moderately magically active. That it would have transformative effects is not beyond expectation, either; it is noted earlier in the Realm of the Elderlings works that the dragons were themselves enhanced by access to it, that enhancement doing much to explain their possessiveness regarding it.

The notion that it could restore to life creatures long dead from their reshaped and incomplete cocoons–because that is what wizardwood is, and it surpasses expectation that every scrap of both cocoons made into the Paragon is present within the vessel–is, to my reading, too much, however. I find myself wondering if the bargain that has been struck is an authorial oversight or a lie on the part of the Fool-as-Amber. In the former case, it would be an unfortunate lapse, one that diminishes the quality of otherwise excellent work. In the latter case, it would seem to be a substantial deviation of character behavior, and while that might be explicable as a result of urgency, it is still strange to consider against more than a dozen novels that don’t exactly lack for urgency in their events; it still comes off as a weak point in the writing, which is always sad to see.

I’ve spent a lot of time reading Hobb’s writing. I’ve spent a lot of money to get to do so. I point both of these out as support for the idea that I am fond of Hobb’s work; I return to it again and again for reason. I do not make comments against it because I dislike it; I make the comments that I do because, despite my overall enjoyment of and appreciation for the work, there are places where it does not do as well as others, and it would be dishonest of me to ignore them.

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