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

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The fifth chapter of Shaman’s Crossing, “The Return,” begins soon after the fourth ends, with Nevare waking as his parents argue about him and what has happened to him. He begins to realize that he is back home and begins to take stock of his physical condition as the argument continues, his mother pressing his father after his motives for placing Nevare with Dewara. His father notes that Nevare has needed to learn distrust, and he cites a historical example for that need; Nevare expounds on the example in his narration.

The argument between Nevare’s parents over placing him with Dewara continues, his mother growing cold and his father matching her temper. Nevare makes clear that he is awake and aware, and his parents begin to tend to him again. Nevare rehearses what he learned of how he returned to his home, delivered roughly and with clear disdain by Dewara, who is pursued but never captured. Nevare convalesces, noticing that Duril has preserved for him one of the stones taken from his body as part of his treatment, and at his father’s questions, he relates some of his experiences with Dewara.

Nevare also lies to his father about some of what happened, partly to cover his own shame, partly to dissuade his father from much pursuit of Dewara, and partly because he cannot make sense of it all. He considers his words carefully, and he muses over the experiences and his confusion about the same. He does try to discuss matters with his sister, Yaril, although the discussion goes awkwardly and ends swiftly.

Months pass, and Nevare continues to regain strength. In the fall, he receives permission to go out hunting and uses the time to retrace his journey with Dewara. As he does, riding Sirlofty, he finds signs of his earlier passage amid the season-changed terrain, and he notes that most or all of what he had made while with Dewara had been destroyed. Of his journey into dream, he finds no sign, and he wonders if he had, in fact, passed into the realm of the Kidona gods, contrasting the notion with his own faith.

Duril joins him not long after, and Nevare has opportunity to reflect on what Dewara taught him.

To address the chapter-length issue: the present chapter, in the edition of the novel I’m rereading, runs 19 pages in length, approximately 3.29% of the novel. Following on the expansion of shorter time-frames in the preceding two chapters–the present covers months, while the preceding two expanded on a few days separated by a few weeks–the present chapter comes off as being a reframing and re-situation, setting up for another section of narrative without being overt and explicit in doing so. Were I still writing lesson plans more frequently (which I’ve discussed here, here, here, and elsewhere–and I’m happy to do for you if you’d like!), I’d divide the novel at the end of the present chapter for ease of study (to that end, approximately 22.18% of the novel is completed); honestly, it works as a novella, although it is not presented in isolation as one.

Also, for indexing purposes, the following: Agu jelly, Battle of Tobale, Captain Dernel, Dernel’s Folly, Duril, Keeksha, Keft Burvelle, Kidona, Landsing, Landsingers, Nevare Burvelle, Plainsbuck, Rock, Selethe Burvelle, Sirlofty, Soot-cat, Taldi, Tobale, Writ, Yaril Burvelle.

At last, five chapters into the work, we have the name of Nevare’s mother: Selethe. And we have it amid a number of reiterations of patriarchal construction, Keft noting that “this concerned Nevare as a soldier son. And where he is a soldier, the boy is mine alone” (109) and “I do not know if you can understand this, Selethe. This once, I will try to explain it to you” (111). More than in the Liveship Traders series, which is as evocative of the early United States as is the Soldier Son, gender roles are a concern, and something in Nevare’s relatively guileless report of events makes the issue stand out more than might otherwise be the case. It is, admittedly, an area of criticism in which I am not well versed, my training having been otherwise; that said, I know that concerns of gender roles are a significant thread in criticism of Hobb’s works, although more of it focuses on the fluid presentation by the Fool in the Realm of the Elderlings novels than on most any other part of Hobb’s writing. As I continue to work towards resuming the Fedwren Project, I will see if more has been done with Soldier Son in that regard since I looked last.

Of note is Keft’s assertion that Nevare has needed to learn to disobey, to stand up for himself and question those in authority over him when their knowledge is clearly uncertain. Nevare’s lack of disobedience is cited as a concern–and understandably; he’s fifteen in the present chapter, and I don’t know many fifteen-year-olds who don’t at least lip back to their parents to some extent (absent significant abuse). I certainly had a mouth on me at that age (and before…and after), and I didn’t really have a rebellious phase as many of my contemporaries did; I was “a good boy,” but I was not as…passive as Nevare. Reading him with some sort of coded difference of ability is tempting…but this is another area of criticism with which I am relatively non-conversant. It’s something else I’ll look for as I get back into more scholarly reading.

Of note, too, is the text’s related dwelling on Dernel’s Folly and the loss by Gernia of the Battle of Tobale (111). The one leads to the other, something held out in-milieu as a lesson on leadership–and not a bad one. Overall plans have to respond to local conditions to succeed. Given some of what I’ve had to remind myself of to put together my response to the chapter, I find myself wondering if there is a specific historical antecedent being referenced; I would not be surprised to find it so, and perhaps it is something that I might come across if I address the scholarly someday of revisiting my old conference paper on the novel and series.

I did find myself falling back into getting lost reading as I reread the present chapter. It’s something I’ve noted happening before, probably so many times that it’s of no use going back to look at examples; it’s something that, back when I was in graduate school, annoyed some members of my cohort, who would find me engrossed in reading one or another of the novels about which I was writing a master’s thesis when they were scrambling to wrap up papers or grading. (It’s not that I didn’t scramble; it’s rather that I limited my social life and spent a lot of time in the office on weekends taking care of what they would generally confine to “regular” working hours. It was a different choice; it may or may not have been a good one.) I’m reminded in doing so of why I pivoted to doing this kind of thing, to learning how to do this kind of thing, when I committed an early failure of professionalization and was obliged to shift my major field of study. It’s not an unpleasant thing, getting caught up in reading, even if it is sometimes a distraction from what I set out to do, but as far as distractions go, it’s one of the better ones.

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