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

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The Solder Son trilogy begins with the novel Shaman’s Crossing. The work begins, as might be expected, with some front matter. Said front matter consists of a half-title page with a list of other works by the author on the reverse, a title page with copyright information (citing the novel as belonging to Megan Lindholm) on its reverse, a dedication, a map, a table of contents, acknowledgments, and another half-title page.

I‘ll admit that I’ve been less diligent in getting back to this text than I perhaps ought to have been. I did read it when it came out, picking up the hardcover pictured above not long after the novel’s release and reading it in short order. I’m sure that, in my personal journals (yes, I keep a journal, which should not be a surprise), I comment about the experience of the initial reading; I’m not able to find any earlier commentary in my online writing I have that still can lay eyes on. And I know I’ve reread the book for reasons that I make clear below. (You might guess from this that I don’t necessarily compose “in order.” That is, I don’t start at the beginning and work through consistently; instead, I jump around. But I’ve commented about my writing process a few times–here, here, and here, for examples–so I don’t need to much belabor the point.) But after years attending to the Realm of the Elderlings corpus (and there is still some work to do with it; there are a few other pieces it contains of which I’m aware, and there might be a few things I’ve missed along the way), shifting over to another series and another narrative milieu…I’m less eager than ought to be the case. I don’t know why.

As noted, I am aware at this point of only a few pieces of criticism that treat the Soldier Son series. From the linked piece (n39), they are Siobhan Carroll’s “Honor-bound: Self and Other in the Honor Culture of Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son Series,” Anna Metsäpelto’s Attitudes to Fat Characters in Fantasy Literature—Cases from The Soldier Son by Robin Hobb and A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, and Helen Young’s “Critiques of Colonialism in Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son Trilogy.” I also presented a paper, “Manifest Destiny and Other Western Ideas in Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son,” which is abstracted here. There may be more work on the series and its component novels at this point; I am still winding back up into work on the Fedwren Project, which I have left alone for too long. I look forward to seeing what work has been done since I last looked, as well as to adding to the same; I do have ideas for how to expand on my older paper.

In any event, while I am not certain why it did so, the front matter of the novel struck me. (Perhaps it is because, with it being graduation season, I have school on the mind, and it occurs to me that, were I teaching a class on the novel or preparing a lesson plan for it along the model I used to get paid to do, there are things in it that would come up for assessment.) Although the copyright date of the novel is clear enough–2005 for the edition I have–it was useful to see where Shaman’s Crossing falls in relation to Hobb’s other works (after Tawny Man but before Rain Wilds). With that information in mind, seeing how Hobb’s front matter shifts into her next series (witness this, this, this, and this) offers some interest; the Rain Wilds novels give different details in their front matter than does Shaman’s Crossing, offering dramatis personæ and narrative prologues but not maps and not always dedications. It might be another scholarly someday, some short piece of criticism, to articulate the different effects on the narratives that such difference have, although it would need to follow my rereading; I’ve read the Soldier Son novels before, but it has been a while, after all.

It might be because of the dedication that I found myself attending to the front matter:

To Caffeine and Sugar

my companions through many a long night of writing

I’ve made such comments myself a few times, and it gave me a bit of a chuckle to be reminded that, in so doing, I’ve been part of a greater writerly community. I believe I’ve noted that no small part of why I do what I do as a scholar (insofar as I was or am one) is because I find delight in what I read. I like to laugh, and I like to look at what prompts laughter from me. Perhaps that is enough.

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