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

---

The fifteenth chapter of Shaman’s Crossing, “Séance,” opens as Nevare, Epiny, and Spink reach the older Burvelle estate, where each goes to prepare for dinner. Spink asks Nevare if he had been too forward with Epiny, and the two confer somewhat awkwardly about Nevare’s cousin and about Nevare’s own strange behaviors. Their talk soon turns to family estates, Spink laying out details of his home in Bittersprings; he notes that the land does not yield much agriculturally but that it produces stone in abundance. The perceived perils of such thoughts receive attention, and Nevare returns the conversation to the safer topic of Bittersprings’s history, upon which Spink readily expounds.

The conversation is interrupted by Epiny at the door, breathing through a whistle while waiting for a lull in the cadets’ talk to summon them to dinner. After a barbed exchange, Epiny goes on ahead of her cousin and his friend, leaving the two to confer about her oddity and Nevare to muse on his sisters as they follow. Sefert begins the meal, and Nevare tucks in, enjoying the food, which is described in some detail. Spink talks at some length with Sefert about the estate throughout the meal. Both join Sefert, Epiny, and Purissa for games of Towsers afterward, the play of which is glossed until Sefert, taking the excuse of seeing Purissa to bed, departs.

Nevare attempts to extricate himself from the game at that point, but Spink determines to remain with Epiny, so he himself remains at the game until after Sefert briefly returns to remind the three of the next morning’s services. When he retires from doing so, Epiny suggests the three conduct a séance, explaining the concept to Spink. Discussion ensues, not entirely pleasantly, and Nevare finds himself reluctantly engaged in one with his cousin and his friend, his own use of the keep fast charm common among the cavalla and borrowed from the Plainsfolk engaged against him.

As the three sit to the event, Nevare and Epiny encounter strange resistance to joining hands. A strange voice speaks from Nevare’s mouth, shocking all present, and Epiny breaks the ceremony. In its wake, the three confer about the event, purposing to seek further into the presence that has attached itself to Nevare. They soon all retire for the night, Nevare finding sleep gratefully.

To address the chapter-length issue: the present chapter, in the edition of the novel I’m rereading, runs 18 pages in length, approximately 3.12% of the novel. While not the shortest chapter in the novel, it is one of the shorter ones, and I find myself wondering if it might not have done well conjoined to the preceding chapter; I do not know that the pacing is necessarily well served by the divison. I do not know that it is not, however, and I do know that, having been otherwise busy, I appreciate having some shorter work to treat, even if I remain as prolix as ever while treating it.

Also, for indexing purposes, the following: Bittersprings, Cavalla, Council of Lords, Daraleen Burvelle, Epiny Burvelle, Guide Porilet, Holy Writ, Hotorn Burvelle, Keep Fast Charm, Keft Burvelle, Kellon Spinrek Kester, Medium, Nevare Burvelle, Offeri, Old Square, Old Thares, Otter, Plainsfolk, Purissa Burvelle, Séance, Sebanese, Sebany, Sefert Burvelle, Selethe Burvelle, Sergeant Duril, Speck, Spinrek “Spink” Kester, Stone, Tobacco, Towsers, Widevale. As a shorter chapter, it might well be expected that there are fewer indexable items to find in it.

It is perhaps the brevity of the chapter that makes its iteration of something like second-wave feminist discourse stand out. As Nevare, Epiny, and Spink discuss the propriety of conducting a séance (360-61), Nevare, concerned most with adherence to convention and the rules* notes that the prospect of one “sounds unholy, and completely unfit for a girl to be interested in.” Epiny retorts with a comment about the Gernian queen’s** engagement with such practices and her comment that “much of what is judged ‘unfit for women to pursue’ are the very sciences and disciplines that lead to power,” and she finds some agreement from Spink, who adds “The complete texts of the Holy Writ are forbidden to them; they only study the writings given specifically for women. The arts and sciences of war are judged unfit…if those be the paths to power, then, yes, perhaps women are denied those paths when they are denied those disciplines.” The conversation continues, leading to the idea–which Nevare cannot answer–that it is only because men have women upon whom to rely that they can pursue those paths which they deny to women; Epiny presents as in opposition to the rightness of such an idea, to the idea that she is and must be less because she is a she. It is an agitation against institutional inequality based on perceptions of proper roles assigned to genders, and if it is something that Hobb has treated in her works before†, it is nonetheless something that bears continued consideration.

It is also perhaps due to the brevity of the chapter that a typographical error stands out: at one point (365), Spink is rendered as “Speck.” It would be easy enough to regard it as only a typographical error were it not clear that the strange voice speaking through Nevare–and, indeed, attempting to work magic through him–is the Tree Woman of the Dappled People who has claimed Nevare. More than a slip of the keys seems to be at work, although I do not think it a deliberate thing.‡

---

*Of course, Nevare is not so concerned with adherence to the rules as all that, as evidenced by his selective adherence to the honor code at his school, as witness his refusal to report the fight between Trist and Spink over the former’s defacing of the latter’s textbook in “Bessom Gord,” among others. He seems to rely on rules as a means to protect himself and his perceptions more than as a matter of actual principle; to his credit, he does at several points in the novel contemplate the degree to which he is a coward for doing so.

**I note that, as with Selethe Burvelle before, the queen of Gernia has been repeatedly referenced by title but not by name. The same is not true of Gernia’s king, Troven, whose name appears before even that of Nevare’s mother, in “Crossing the Bridge.” It is, I think, another indication of the prevailing sexism at work in Gernia, something unfortunately true to the milieu’s antecedents. That does not make the milieu or the writing bad; it is not a bad thing to be confronted by the uncomfortable or the outright wrong in a work of fiction, especially when such is held up as something to be questioned or repudiated.

†See, for example, “Ephron Vestrit,” “The Liveship Ophelia,” “Immersions,” “Tidings,” “Dragon and Satrap,” “Vows,” and “Discoveries.” Related is the gender fluidity of the Fool in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus. It is also worth noting that scholarship on Hobb’s works has treated such matters, as witness Bokne, Borowska-Szerszun, and Flegel and Roth, among others. And I am reminded again that I need to update some of my bibliographic works…as time allows.

‡Insofar as “deliberate” matters with such things. Although it is curious that it slipped by so many as it did, given circumstances of textual production…a lot of eyes missed it, and while the old adage reminds us that “Even Homer nods,” the equally Classical Argus reminds us that too many eyes closing is a perilous thing. (And it reminds me of a bit of a joke, to boot.)

Want writing done without AI theft-slop? Fill out the form below!

Or you can send your support along directly!