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

---

Following the text of a binding resolution from the Traders’ Council of Bingtown, “The Changer” begins with Fitz musing over the possible effects the Fool will experience from drinking dragon’s blood and conferring with the Fool about current conditions. The Fool reports feeling more energized, and Fitz prepares a medicine as he settles in to get more information from his friend. Conversation is uncomfortable, ranging to many questions that find few answers, although the Fool is able to lay out some of the social structure in which Dwalia and her company are enmeshed.

Fitz lays out much of Bee’s early history, and the Fool’s belated acceptance of the idea of Bee as the Unexpected Son allows him to understand much of what has happened at last. Fitz, however, does not take the news as calmly. After laughing uproariously, the Fool attempts again to explain matters before turning to the destination towards which Bee is headed–Clerres–and how to intercept her captors. Fitz takes his leave and ruminates on the Fool’s explanations and some implications of the same, and his thoughts turn to Patience in the court where he now resides.

The present chapter brings to mind once again something I found…vexatious…in my first readings of the present novel and its immediate predecessor. On the rereading, or on this rereading, I find myself less vexed and more open to the ideas of 1) magic mucking about with things and 2) longer exposure and engagement prompting different circumstances. After all, I am older, now, than I was then, by more than a decade, and the differences between what I was and what I am are in many cases only those of greater familiarity. I am a better father now than I was then, for instance, but largely because I’ve had more time to learn how to parent. (It’s mostly because I have an excellent daughter who has, so far, made the work of parenting relatively easy. Credit where it is due.)

I am struck once again by the mismatch between the Fool’s understanding of Bee as the Unexpected Son and the Fool’s own gender fluidity (let alone Fitz’s visceral reaction to the Fool’s assertions of their mingling). I know that it is a humanizing thing to give characters blindnesses, and I know that Hobb is much concerned with imparting verisimilitude into her work; both such lend themselves to the Fool having trouble accepting the idea (and Fitz, to be certain). Still, for that to be the sticking point…it is a splinter between my fingers, and I don’t have the tweezers to address it well.

Help me keep this going; hire my pen!

Or you can send your support along directly!

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

---

Following commentary from Chade about medicinal uses of dragon-parts, “Blood” begins with Fitz relating a remarkably vivid image to describe the sensation of his plunging through the standing stones and of reconstructing himself and Chade as they travel poorly therein. He emerges into the world, pulled thence by Dutiful and his coterie, and as he returns to normal consciousness, he makes such report of his experiences and recent events as his condition allows him to do. He subsequently stumbles through initial tending to his injuries, and he sleeps under pharmaceutical influence.

Fitz wakes to greater certainty and reaches out through the Skill, conferring with Dutiful and Nettle, although both urge him to restrain his Skill because he is not yet in control of himself. Nettle joins him in person, helping him to steady his magic, and the two confer briefly before food arrives and Fitz’s attention focuses entirely on it. After, Dutiful lays out to Fitz what actions he has taken and is taking, and Fitz gains greater control over himself, although with effort. Dutiful and Nettle also inform Fitz of what has befallen the Fool.

Fitz makes his way to the Fool, assessing his old friend as Kettricken looks on, and he quizzes Ash on what he has given the Fool. Ash reports in detail, and Fitz learns that the Fool has been dosed with dragon’s blood purloined from a supply meant for Andronicus Kent.

The prefatory materials to the present chapter, as often, attract my attention. In the present case, two major reasons obtain for their doing so. The first is the comment that “this scroll has been translated many times, to the extent that seventeen of the [twenty-seven substantiated] remedies make no sense,” which is given an accompanying example. While I know that the commentary is fabricated–and I have more to say about such constructions elsewhere–I also know that the kind of nonsense presented is the result of word-to-word translation, rather than sentence-to-sentence or idiomatic renderings. In the long-ago days when I had students and had occasion to discuss such things with them, I would ask Spanish speakers in my class if “¿Quién cortó el queso?” had the same valence as “Who cut the cheese?”; the answer was always a laughing “no.”

Chade’s comments about the “fifty-two unsubstantiated remedies” are also on-point. The regard for attestation that he uses as a rubric for contrasting the unsubstantiated remedies with the substantiated ones is, perhaps, something of an analytical bias (because, after all, user testimonies can be faked), but it is at least something. Too, the comments about manuscript positions–the unsubstantiated remedies are described as add-ons in the text from which Chade works–check out with what I have seen in discussions of even such august works as Beowulf; there’s a whole big thing about how the section of the poem dealing with the dragon is someone else’s work than who wrote of Grendel and his mother. So there is more than a bit of verisimilitude at work in the prefatory materials, which I appreciate seeing.

I note in the main line of the present chapter a return of one of Hobb’s narrative techniques, one previously deployed on the Skill-road to the stone-quarry and which has occasioned some readerly comment. In the present chapter, as in the earlier, Fitz’s experience with the Skill leaves him confused and befuddled, finding it difficult to conceive of thoughts and to convey them to others in any way they can easily parse. The present chapter, which notes Chade doing much the same thing, suggests that it is the Skill itself that has such an effect, rather than it simply being Fitz’s limits. I note, too, the similarities between Fitz’s narrated experience and the Fool’s report of the Skill-silvering; the intense, intimate focus on even the smallest details is another thing that seems to be of the Skill rather than of its users. I am put in mind of other media; Hobb here seems to be using a particular trope, although she uses it well in the present chapter–and I am taken with the notion that Fitz finds himself lessened by his return to himself after his Skill experience. There is something worth exploring there…

Do you need some writing done?
Hire me; I am the one
Who will steer your words aright–
And at a price you’ll think is right!

Or you can send your support along directly!

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

---

Following more commentary about the Servants and their machinations, “The Journey” returns to Bee as she begins to recover from her illness, tended as she can be amid the demands of travel in haste. Thoughts of escape for her and Shun are quashed by vile threats from Dwalia, and her illness is ascribed to the kind of change that marks the lives of the Fool and Prilkop. Bee is urged to record her dreams again, using materials provided by her captors, and the Wolf-Father within her urges her to caution. Bee, who has dreamt prophecies, manages to dissemble.

It seems treatment of Bee has moved back to shorter chapters with the present one; in the edition I am reading, it is only five pages long, and while it is the case that I have still not done the work to examine chapter-lengths in any kind of rigorous way, there is still something striking about just how brief the present chapter is. I am still not sure what the function of the brevity is, although I am convinced there is some function, some purpose (chimerical as I know discussion of intent and purpose are). It seems to me to be too consistently the case that the Bee-centered chapters are short that it is without some reason. But uncovering it looks like it will remain a scholarly someday for now.

I’m happy to write to order for you! Fill out the form to begin!

Or you can send your support along directly!

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

Something of a content warning (torture) applies to the chapter and, to a lesser extent, the discussion following.

---

Following a brief note that lays out some of the Servants’ methodology, “Surprises” begins with Chade and Fitz continuing to dose and question members of the Withywoods household. The pair discuss theories about their daughters’ abduction, and Fitz determines to return to Buckkeep and confer with the Fool. Chade determines to accompany him after they finish questioning the members of the household.

Fitz stalks through the estate, musing on his failures once again, and he directs the members of the household he encounters to attend to a diversity of tasks, thinking that occupying them would help them not focus on their own sufferings. Successors to slain members of the household are named, and matters begin to be set to rights until after dinner, when the remaining members of the household are dosed and questioned, the information they provide slotted in among what Chade and Fitz already knew.

As Fitz bears witness, Skilled members of Dutiful’s court join him through that magic, and they confer along with Chade about next steps. A report of the Fool’s declining condition is made to Fitz, and Chade steels him against acting rashly once again. At Chade’s urging, Fitz retires to a fitful, fretful night, after which the pair take breakfast along with the officers of Chade’s rough unit. Preparations are made for setting out, and Chade and Fitz confer as they ride along. Unexpected members of the rough unit join them, attempting to assail them. Battle is joined, and Fitz messily and brutally dispatches of his opponents. Chade is far less kind to his own opponent, extracting information from him, before the two plunge through a standing stone towards Buckkeep.

The present chapter is a reminder, as if one was needed, that Fitz and Chade both are very, very dangerous people within the milieu. The fight, even though it left Fitz injured and Chade in a perilous position, saw the pair of them fight off superior numbers that had the element of surprise in their favor–albeit not so much as they had thought they would. That Fitz is yet capable of savagery is, perhaps, foreshadowing, something with which the Realm of the Elderlings corpus as a whole is concerned and on which the present series focuses more narrowly. If it is, however, it’s not terribly illuminating; it does not take much to guess that a trained killer, magically empowered, hunting for his daughter would resort to no small amount of violence. But then, despite its motions away from it, Hobb’s work is part of the Tolkienian tradition.

Another commonplace in Hobb’s work reemerges in the present chapter, as well: torture. That it pops up in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus is amply noted (see this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, for examples; Selden in Chalced also offers examples). It also pops up in her non-Elderlings work; a contribution to Warriors comes to mind, and I recall it being a factor in the Soldier Son novels. That it sticks out for me is something of uncertain importance. It may well be that it sticks out for me, that my eye finds it because it is primed, for whatever reason, to search out such things. It may well be that it is part of Hobb’s work towards verisimilitude; torture is, certainly and unfortunately, part of the world her readers inhabit, and so working to create a milieu that immerses readers will necessarily involve it. It may well be, however, that there is some authorial preoccupation with it, and while I have noted more than once that biographical criticism is fraught, that it is so does not mean that it is without value, even if I’m not in a position to be able to do much to follow it.

Many are my scholarly somedays, and no few of them will never come.

I’m still happy to write for you! Fill out the form below to hire my pen!

Or you can send your support along directly!