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

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Following a clandestine message from Kim to Trader Finbok, Hest’s father, “Illumination” begins with Carson rousing with some annoyance as Tats calls on him and Sedric in the night. Tats reports the absence of Thymara and Rapskal, noting his suspicion that they and their dragons are on the other side of the river, in Kelsingra. Carson reports observations that support that suspicion, and Tats confides his jealousy of Rapskal in the older man, encountering a bit of gentle teasing from Carson and receiving a bit of solid avuncular advice. The conversation is interrupted by the clear awakening of Kelsingra, shining light into the darkness and rumbling into the night.

Alise is awakened by the commotion. She rushes out to see what has transpired and guesses that Rapskal is at the heart of it. Her scholar’s mind asserts itself, and she begins trying to fix features in memory.

Aboard the Tarman, Leftrin confers with his crew about how to address the issues with which Reyn, Malta, and their child present him. The Chalcedean entanglements attendant upon assisting the Khuprus family receive attention, and Reyn relates what he knows and guesses about the genesis of Elderlings. Reyn pleads to depart, and Leftrin agrees in principle but notes the exigencies faced by the group in Kelsingra. Reyn offers the Khuprus coffers to outfit the Tarman and resupply the expedition. Leftrin agrees to take the Khupruses to Kelsingra pending the resupply, and Reyn suggests employing Althea and Brashen to assist. The idea is commended by Tillamon, whose presence had been unmarked. She rails at the treatment she suffers for being marked by the Rain Wilds as she is, and she purposes to emigrate to Kelsingra, herself. Leftrin gives orders and retires.

Alise wakes in the morning and pines for Leftrin as she attends to beginning the business of the day. After eating breakfast, she heads out and surveys her surroundings, musing on the course of action she will take. Her reverie is broken by the overflight of a dragon–Sintara, who delights in Alise’s appreciation.

A few things attract my attention in the present chapter. One of them is the parallel for race relations that emerges in Tillamon’s monologue aboard the Tarman. The discrimination–not legal, but not less present for not being formalized–she describes seems to me to be somewhat reminiscent of how earlier populations in the United States have been and still are treated. Indigenous peoples and people of Spanish colonial descent (a phrase I acknowledge is somewhat awkward but which has the benefit of being descriptive) predate Anglophone settlers and their descendants in the United States by millennia and centuries, something openly acknowledged, and they still suffer discrimination (that unfortunately often takes the form of physical violence tacitly condoned if not outright sanctioned by state actors) from the more junior populations. And that parallel is in addition to others already pointed out, which, while frustrating some one-to-one correspondences still highlights the ubiquity of the execrable phenomenon.

A couple of others have to do with names. I’ve noted Hobb’s use of emblematic names before, principally among the social elite of the Six Duchies (representative examples here and here), but also among the Traders (representative examples here and here). It strikes me, then, that Hobb seems to favor starting women protagonists’ names with A (Althea, Amber, and Alise come to mind, though only two are noted in the present chapter); what emblematic function is served here? It also strikes me as somewhat interesting that Leftrin seems to put so much stock as he does in Hennessey, whose name suggests a liquor associated with ostentatious consumption in popular culture contemporary to the publication of City of Dragons. Sailors are stereotypically associated with heavy drink, of course, and various forms of brandy not occasionally. Still, it seems a pointed choice of name, the kind of thing that scans to my eye as a quiet joke. (Oh, to have the time to sit and explicate such things again, as I used to do!)

I look forward to a time in which I have the time to sit and focus on such things more than I do or did. It is perhaps one with my failure to be a “real” academic that I did not do enough to look at and examine such little bits of text and other media, finding the nuggets of joy in them; it is a regret I yet carry, one of many such–not that I did, but that I did not do enough. Things might have been different, else.

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

---

A boat-borne message from Reyall to Detozi and Erek discussing the state of messenger birds among the Traders precedes “Flight,” which opens with Sintara still exulting in having flown and killed from the wing. She takes to the skies again, though she feels a pang of panic, from which she has to work to untangle herself. She soon begins to be aware of the strain on her body of flight and makes to land in Kelsingra, but errant winds push her astray, and she lands in the river to be caught by the currents. She feels Thymara cry out, disdaining it and flattered by it at once, and she struggles to shore in the ancient city, if with some injury.

In Cassarick, Malta carries her child through the storm, reeling from her exertions, and she strives to head downward towards the Tarman. With difficulty, she reaches the foundations of the city, and she achieves the liveship at last. Welcomed by the ship, Malta and her child are taken in by the crew.

Thymara speeds through the streets of Kelsingra, answering to Sintara’s distress and feeling the pull of the memories in the worked stones around her. Reaching the dragon, Thymara is cheered by the report of Sintara’s success, even as she is stricken by her physical condition, and the two make for a shelter that will admit the dragon. Ancestral memories guide the pair along, and Sintara’s presence among the buildings wakens the lingering magic within them in light and warmth, in which Sintara immerses herself with pleasure and Thymara with awe. After a time, Thymara is surprised to be joined by Heeby and Rapskal, and Rapskal notes the changes and strengthening that have come upon both dragon and keeper. He also resumes his pursuit of Thymara, to her annoyance, and she explores more of the city. Rapskal joins her, and, amid their explorations, they fall into an assignation.

Reyn, having been advised of Malta’s presence on the liveship, reaches and boards the Tarman, where Malta relates events to him and notes that their child lives, though he is in dire straits. As Reyn and Malta return to their child, she notes that the liveship is keeping him alive. Leftrin joins them then and demands a report, which begins to be offered by his crew, and Reyn listens greedily to his wife’s words.

The fact that Sintara experiences panic upon crossing a river, even while a-wing, marks an interesting insight into dragon psychology; evidently, Hobb’s dragons can experience PTSD. That a trauma could befall such a creature perhaps strains credulity, except that it seems to have been occasioned by a flood when Sintara and the other dragons could not save themselves as they “ought” to have been able to do. Having experienced flash flooding, albeit not of acidic waters (even if they were somewhat septic, drainage systems being what they are), I well understand the power of such phenomena, and having had my own bit of fun at a place the crossing of which still tightens my chest just a little, I’m strangely sympathetic to Sintara. My affective reading catches me out again.

Too, I find myself sympathizing, affectively, with Malta and Reyn, as well. Again, it’s an issue of experience. My daughter is no Elderling, though I think her marvelous and special, indeed. But she was born before she “ought” to have been, and so she spent some time being assisted in her breathing by outside devices. She’s fine, now, and more than fine (about which I will write soon, I think), but I have felt helpless to give my girl what she needed (as I expect I will again, being who I am), and so I find myself feeling, once again, for fictional characters, despite hearing echoes of others’ words that I am a damned fool (and I onliy paraphrase slightly) for doing so.

One more issue: “ought.” I’ve used it twice in my discussion, both in the context of normalizing things. It’s probably not an ideal use; in the case of the dragons, it could well be read as ableist (insofar as dragons, wholly fictional, can be said to fall under such rubrics), while in the case of my daughter, things seem to have worked out well enough that would “ought” to have been is, in fact, what happened (be it luck or wyrd or some providential hand or whatever). I don’t have a better word ready to hand, which is my problem, but I’m supposed to be trained in and attentive enough to the use of language that I ought–note the lack of quotes on this one–to have a better handle on the words I use and their impact upon others.

So much said, the “ought” with the dragons, no less than the treatment of Thick early on, speaks to a need for disability-studies reading of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus. As I’ve noted before, none of us can do all of the reading that needs to be done, and it may be the case that there has been some treatment of the body of work in the light of disability studies; I’ve not attended to the Fedwren Project in far too long, so there’s doubtlessly stuff of which I’m unaware waiting for me to uncover. (If you know of any, please let me know.)

Ah, to have the time to explore in such ways again!

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

---

Following an exceptionally brief entry in Detozi’s log, “Kidnapped” begins with Malta and Reyn conferring about Leftrin and the Tarman and the message Malta had received. Reyn departs to confer with the captain, leaving Malta to pick her way back to their home with some difficulty. After he does, and as a storm builds, Malta begins to experience contractions and calls out for help.

Reyn hustles towards the Tarman in the growing storm, worried about Malta but pressing on from the urgency of his errand. He is able to find Leftrin, and the two confer aboard the liveship. Noting Leftrin’s maneuvering with his crew, Reyn recalls a kinship bond between himself and Leftrin, and the two reminisce briefly before Reyn presses for news of the dragons and their keepers. Leftrin attempts to defer a visit to the Khuprus holdings, and Reyn reflects on his wife’s insights. Leftrin’s niece inserts herself into the discussion, and Leftrin reluctantly accedes to her request and Reyn’s.

Malta continues to struggle to shelter, trying to comfort herself amid the storm as her incipient labor reminds her of the changes to her physiology occasioned by becoming an Elderling. She calls for help again and is answered by a man with a Chalcedean accent who hustles her along to a shelter of which she disapproves.

Reyn chafes at Leftrin’s delays and makes arrangements to hasten their travel to his lodgings. When they arrive thereat, they mark Malta’s absence, and the search for her begins.

In her “rescuer’s” room, Malta continues to undergo labor, and that “rescuer” ducks out. When he returns, he is accompanied, and the two men–Begatsi Cored and Sinad Arich–confer about her as her labor pains continue. Their plan–to harvest Malta and her child and present them as if parts of dragons–is laid out as Malta delivers and attempts to conceal her child. Arich departs, and Begatsi makes to slaughter Malta and her newborn; she takes the chance of attacking him as soon as she can, stabbing him in the throat. At length, she is able to regard her newborn son, and she sorrows at his appearance. Bundling him up, she flees back into the stormy night.

This is not, of course, the first time that Malta has been captured by Chalcedeans; she spends a fair bit of Ship of Destiny in such circumstances, beginning here. It is therefore not a surprise to me, not only because I have read the book before (even if it was a while back), but because I have much more recently reread the earlier-published novel, that Malta has the reactions she does. That Chalced is openly, belligerently misogynist is long-established, not least by Malta’s experience; that it has no real regard for human life, engaging in chattel slavery as it does, is similarly long-established (that part goes back to Assassin’s Apprentice, in fact, if obliquely; it is clearer at the beginning of Assassin’s Quest). The level of depravity involved is not quite as clear–or as deep–in the earlier works, however, and I wonder as I reread the text if Hobb is not reaching for some new sensationalistic overture here or if this is not how Chalced has “always” been.

(Yes, I am aware that I am writing about a fictional place as if it is a real one. Yes, I know it is affective at best, and that things are not at their best. I have been many times accused of not knowing what “the real world” is like–but then, I never have gotten a straight answer from those I’ve asked what “the real world” is.)

(Yes, that is distinct from the MTV reality series. Quotes and no capitals rather than italics and title case.)

If I wanted to read the chapter as a commentary on current concerns–which reading would be doable, certainly; looking at how works speak to times that follow their release is a commonplace, after all–I might note that the presence of a brothel in the Rain Wilds (and presumably more than one, though only one appears in the present chapter) and its easy acceptance or of failure to see the depravity looming in its own chambers can be interpreted as a natural outgrowth of the mercantilist tendencies at work not only in the primary milieu, but also in the real-world (that term again) societies of which that milieu is analogue. While there are certainly many who control wealth in the Rain Wilds, most of that wealth derives from the exploitation of graveyards and the slaughter of nascent children–something that might well be read as mimetic of abortions. (It’s not much of a stretch, really, from a society that quietly but unashamedly practices eugenicist infanticide.)

The question always does arise, of course, when reading fictional analogues of real-world groups of how much is commentary on the source and how much is differentiation from it. Are the practices depicted rebukes of the society upon which the primary milieu is based, or are they deliberate insertions that proceed, perhaps, from necessity within the milieu and which serve to frustrate the one-to-one correspondence between “real” and “fictional” cultures that overly-simplistic readings (and writings!) would suggest?

Such answers exceed the confines of a single blog post, necessarily. The medium does not invite the kind of reflection and interpretation such answers require for their derivation. Length alone becomes an issue; this post is approaching 1,000 words at this point and already seems to drag on, while fuller investigation gets verbose. This paper is a short example at around 2,200 words. But that the answers need to be elsewhere and that they need to have time and space to grow do not mean they do not need to be given.

Maybe, someday, I’ll work on them.

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