My thoughts on various things **Spoilers for all books

[Lady Persephone]

So.  I love it the way Robin Hobb uses that word throughout her books when a character is coming to a point or about to ask a question or just needs a space filler to their spoken thoughts. 

But I digress!  So.  This is my first started topic thread to discuss various things I wonder at or find marvelous about various characters and revelations, understandings, a sort of place holder for my thoughts of all I've read and the books I've yet to read.  If you don't already know from my intro post, I'm reading the books in a very strange order.  For one thing, I like to know how things will turn out, GIVE me spoilers, I don't mind--I still enjoy the unraveling of how such events came to be and what can be learned of each character and what can I take away from it for myself?  So.  I began by reading the first Farseer trilogy when a co-worker gave me a copy of Assassin's Apprentice and I got so addicted to it I swallowed those books whole, demanding the next one from my co-worker, Mark and throwing a hissy fit when he delayed in getting me his copies.    If we had more time at work I would seek him out more and spend time talking to him about all my thoughts and questions (he's read all the books of course).  After that first trilogy I then went on to read the last trilogy--Fitz and the Fool.  Mark gasped at me when he heard I was doing this--he said he's never heard of anyone reading it so out of order. Hehe!   I'm GLAD I have done this because as I'm now going back and reading The Tawny Man trilogy (just finished Fool's Errand yesterday and have started Golden Fool) so many little details stand out to me and make so much sense.  If I'd read them in order a lot of the finer details would have been lost on me as I devour the books to find out what's going to happen. I know what will be for the most part and now I have time to slowly digest these wonderful books and gather answers to some of my questions or flesh out reflections.

One thing that has really been bothering me (from Fool's Errand) is when Dutiful and Fitz are at Others' Island and Dutiful get's lost in the Skill, Fitz has to go in after him but gets unraveled himself.  What and who is that magnanimous, omniscient type creature who unravels their tangled, lost threads in the Skill like she's unwinding a ball of yarn?  She mentions that she remembers why they enjoyed toying with these silly humans who are all so dramatic.  Is this Presence in the Skill ever mentioned again?  She can't be a human who's "died" in the Skill like Shrewd or caught up in the Skill because she calls them 'humans'.  Is she a dragon?  I don't think so . . my gut instinct tells me no.  She's so kindly towards Fitz and she's so knowledgeable, able to untwine his anma and Dutiful's back into two beings to send them back whole.  That's a very powerful Person. It makes me wonder if she might be a god?  Like Eda or even Sa?  I asked Mark and he has no clue and said she was never mentioned again in any of the other books.  So . . . hmmmm.  He says he thinks she might have been a literary device of Hobb's to move the plot forward.  I could understand this if it is so, but I hope not.  I wish we could learn more about her kind, these Powerful Beings Who Live in the Skill.

I have so many other thoughts, questions, and reflections to share but as I'm at work my time is limited.  I'll try to get online later on at home and post some more here.  But at least now I have a place I can come and dump all my mental musings. 

[Lady Persephone]

Thoughts on the Fool, Fitz, and Nighteyes being one, as in one whole being.  Many I think view the Fool in the light of a sort of a lover but from my reading I can see how very foolish that idea is.    Yes it is so that Fitz feels something deeper than love for the Fool and that is because he senses completeness from him as he does with Nighteyes.  It was very clear from knowing the way Assassin's Fate ends, but as I read Fools Errand it dawned on me even more so.  These three belong together and have ever belonged together.  In Fool's Errand these are the passages that crystallise it the most.  I've bolded the parts I feel really bring this truth home:

Pg: 94, "He swung his pale eyes to meet mine, the gold of them mirroring the firelight.  Light ran up from his cheekbones and dwindled  as it merged with his hair. I gave my head a small shake. 'In the space of a sundown, you show me the whole wide world from a horse's back, and the soul of the world within my own walls.' 'Oh my friend,' he said quietly. No more than that needed to be said.  We are whole. (says Nighteyes)  The Fool cocked his head to that thought.  He looked like a man trying to recall something important.  I shared a glace with the wolf.  He was right.  Like sundered pieces of crockery that snick back together so precisely that the crack becomes invisible, the Fool joined us and completed us.  Whereas Chade's visit had filled me with questions and needs, the Fool's presence was in itself an answer and a satisfaction."

Then on pg. 98: "It was that our circle made us one in a fundamental way we could not share.  Yet once we did, Nighteyes reminded me. Once we did, and it was good.  For a time, our minds had been joined, almost as if he and Nighteyes and I were a true Skill coterie.  

From Assassin's Fate, pg. 840: "'Fool.  What were we?'  It wasn't an idle question.  I need to know it.  I needed to finally understand it to put it in my wolf.  His words were so intense, but that wasn't what I wanted to talk about.  I waved them away. 'Yes, yes.  But there was something else there.  Always.  You were dead, and I called you back.  For that moment, when we returned to our proper bodies, as we passed one another, we . . . '  We were one thing.  Whole.  He was waiting for me to continue.  It seemed ridiculous that he could not hear the wolf.  'We were one thing.  A whole thing.  You and I and Nighteyes.  I felt a strange sort of peace.  As if all the parts of me were finally in one place.  All the missing bits that would make me a complete . . . thing.'  I shook my head.  'Words don't reach that far.'"

Then we see the fate these three were always meant to have at the very end on page 849 helped along by Bee, their daughter,

"He pulled the glove from his hand and let it fall.  He walked uncertainly, like a puppet with strings pulled by an apprentice puppeteer.  He reached my father.  So tenderly, he set his hand into my father's.  Then he leaned down until he lay upon the wolf, his face turned to my father's face.  He put his arm across my father's bony back.  He drew him close and then set his silver fingers to the wolf.  For a moment, all was still.  Then I saw Beloved's fingers stir the soft fur of the wolf's back.  The firelit bodies of my father and Beloved softened and merged.  I felt something I could not describe.  Like the whoosh of air when a door opens, and then closes again, but it was in the Skill-current, and so strong that I saw Nettle flinch at it, too.  Briefer than an instant, I saw light striate out from them.  A nexus, a node on the path of fate.  Then it was finished.  Something finally complete, as it should have been."

Best ending to a story ever!    And it explains Fitz's whiny moodiness throughout all the books better than anything else.  He always needed to be complete with Beloved and Nighteyes.  Together they made one whole person.  <3

[Lady Persephone]

I'm deep near the end of Dragon Keepers and I have to say . . . it has been the most difficult book for me in all of the books I've read so far.

Alise . . what she's going through with Hest.  It is nearly exactly if not exactly what I went through with my ex-husband.  I reached chapter 15 "Curents" . . and I feel as though I'm reading about my own life.  It wasn't the same reading about Fitz.  I could sympathise with a lot of what he was going through, and Beloved, and Bee, and all the characters, but it wasn't quite the same chord it's struck . . I know it'll end well for Alise, I've read Fitz and the Fool trilogy and I know how things end up for her . . but still.  When a person is treated like a possession and extorted as such, you never really get over it.  It's worse than physical torture.  It's like having your personality taken from you, distorted, submerged . . you become like a prisoner within your own self.  Society becomes that which keeps you bound.  Because you're expected to bow to it and accept that this is just how life is.  

It's been the hardest for me to read yet.  There's so much of my former life I have kept suppressed and I wish so much I could put it in a stone dragon, like Fitz did with GOAD, but I know that's not the answer.  

I remember always feeling terrified that if I spoke out of turn, cooked a meal incorrectly or didn't do something quite up to his standards, he would be furious with me, and often he was.  I couldn't have any friends.  I couldn't even go online . . he had deleted both my email account and my facebook account because he couldn't bear the thought of me having any friends.  I had to account for every expense.  I couldn't have a job.  I wasn't allowed to seek a job.  Not with two university degrees to my name, I couldn't seek a job for myself.  I had to be witty and charming at parties, on his arm.  There were other things more disagreeable that I'd rather not talk about.  It all seems like fiction, doesn't it?  And yet that was my life!  I was so miserable.  In 2012, near the end of that year, I tried to end my life because I didn't have the courage to face him and tell him he was killing me slowly, as a person.

Yes I got away, eventually.  I'm fine, I guess.  I found my "Captain Leftrin" you could say, and left Texas for England.  Can you imagine that?  Most people gasp when I tell them that because they can't imagine leaving behind your country, your family and friends for a totally different life.  I left and I NEVER looked back.  Never. I'm lucky that I was strong enough to leave him and that life, but it cost me a great deal, and not in money.  I lost my father in death to cancer last year and where was I?  Across the ocean, a world away.  I know it was for the best, but it still eats away at me.  You know all the torture that Beloved and Fitz went through doesn't come close to this sort of psychological torture.  Not that it is less, just that it is different and the latter seeks to destroy your very soul.

Anyway, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to share that much about me.  This is about 'the Realm of the Elderlings' not me.  I just didn't expect Hobb to write about something like this in RWC . . it was uncanny.  How does she know such things?  I wonder if she knew someone who went through this sort of thing.

[Lady Persephone]

Gosh, I feel a bit exposed now, like I've bared my soul.  I don't know, I don't really mind . . it's my soul to bare after all . . but I did get rather serious here.  I feel I ought to share something light as a counter. 

Rapskal.  Hehe! I find his beginnings so darling!  He's such a light-hearted soul.  In Fool's Quest and Assassin's Fate he's soooooooo overly serious!  I get where he was coming from, defending the dragons, but . . even the other Elderlings thought him super serious and overly confrontational!  But in Dragon's Keeper he's so sweet and smiling and light-heartedly good-natured.  You can't help but love him here.  And the way he defends young Heeby.  I love it.    I love how open his heart is--he just wants to find the good in others!  I recall it didn't take him too long to befriend Fitz when he realised he had him pegged wrong.  When he knew he could trust him, he totally trusted him and entrusted the silver to him.  I wish he could have known Fitz much longer.  They would have been such good friends I think.

[Lady Persephone]

One more thing I'd like to share, and I don't know if it is highly inappropriate here, and if it is I humbly apologise and hope Mervi will delete this comment.  I wish to step on no one's toes.

I know Robin Hobb won't allow her works to be made into movies, I understand her hesitancy to some respect, but given today's technology . . and some very talented, understanding directors . . I think she could find one to undertake it and do it properly.  That said, I found this trailer which I feel is so powerful and beautiful and really does her work justice!  With the exception of the actor chosen for Chade (I believe Charles Dance could play a much better Chade: https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/ima...gdhkxp.jpg).  When I saw this, I ached to see it on screen!   I admitted it to my friend at work, Mark (the one who first put Assassin's Apprentice in my hands) and he said, "Bri, I think you've thought about this quite a bit.  YOU should be the one to direct it." LOL  I wish! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDmHiU3ZIu8

What do you all think of this?   I love the music--that song is spot on! 

[Mervi]

Lady Persephone, I'm truly sorry to hear that you went through all those horrible things. Can't imagine what it feels like to come across a mirror like that in a book, although I find that the best books (like Hobb's) often contain bits and pieces that feel relevant to our own lives.

As to any movie/tv adaptation, I don't think Robin has ever said that there's a hard/blanket "no" to it ever happening. She's answered questions about the possibility many, many times over the years, and it's always a variation of "if it were the right kind of project/director/etc"... although I have noticed that the answers have felt a bit more rejective lately. Many years ago the rumour was that Liveship traders trilogy was the one that had some buzz around it - I don't know if that meant simply that it was in preliminary talks or if any offers were made or anything. These things happen - Peter Jackson bought the rights to the Temeraire books in what must have been over a decade ago, and there hasn't been a word on it since.

[Lady Persephone]

Lady Persephone, I'm truly sorry to hear that you went through all those horrible things. Can't imagine what it feels like to come across a mirror like that in a book, although I find that the best books (like Hobb's) often contain bits and pieces that feel relevant to our own lives.

As to any movie/tv adaptation, I don't think Robin has ever said that there's a hard/blanket "no" to it ever happening. She's answered questions about the possibility many, many times over the years, and it's always a variation of "if it were the right kind of project/director/etc"... although I have noticed that the answers have felt a bit more rejective lately. Many years ago the rumour was that Liveship traders trilogy was the one that had some buzz around it - I don't know if that meant simply that it was in preliminary talks or if any offers were made or anything. These things happen - Peter Jackson bought the rights to the Temeraire books in what must have been over a decade ago, and there hasn't been a word on it since.

Well, it was especially tough reading RWC, but I think it was probably even more enriching because of how much I could really relate and in a way . . it was cathartic facing some of the demons of my past.  That's what makes Hobb's books so compelling, how real she makes the characters and the situations they find themselves faced with. 

I definitely see why there would be buzz around LST to make it into a a movie/tv adaptation--I'm nearly at the end of Ship of Magic!  I'm loving being able to connect the dots mentally about events that happen later on and truly seeing the full character arc of so many of the characters I know and love!  I couldn't help but giggle at Malta and her headstrong, catty, coquettish ways, especially with regards to Reyn!!  I found myself a bit angry with her for being such a rude, nasty little thing to Ronica and her mother . . but I know it'll come right in the end for her and wow, what a character arc!   She really came a looooong way!  Althea is another one who gets a lot of lessons in humility.  She was so rude to Brashen, after sleeping with him and spilling her guts out to him (albeit the cindin), but still! and then she just dumps him and doesn't even go see him at that OCD clean-freak tavern he was staying at to at least tell him how she really felt.  Silly woman! Tut tut!  I must admit, I can really enjoy all the drama since I know it comes out all right in the end.    I can't wait to read about Malta's courtship with Reyn and how all that plays out . . I could understand where Jani was coming from expecting the kiddos to marry right away, but geez was she a spitting cobra to Ronica.  Two very formidable matriarchs there! 

I can't wait to read all about how Amber/Beloved/Fool slowly worms her way into Paragon's heart.  I think she should have just come clean about her childhood and life experiences . . and the fact that she is not human with him.  i think he would have respected her more from the start and it would have put him at his ease.  Well well.

[Lady Persephone]

This is a reply to Mervi's fantastic comment in the RE: The Dragon Keeper "Contraversial?" Hobb and sexuality. *Major Spoilers! thread because I keep getting 403 Forbidden errors constantly when I try to post. Grrrr!

TEST to see if it will give me another 403 error

[Lady Persephone]

Well it looks like it really won't let me post it . . . I'm sad now.  

[Lady Persephone]

So, trying once again, replying to this quote from Mervi: 
Mervi's fantastic words here

Oh wow Mervi . . you put this so beautifully and so perfectly, it gave me goosebumps reading it!   

Well, you know where I stand on all the above as stated in various other threads . . a huge part of me wishes that at the end of FF, when Fool asks Fitz what his plans are, that Fitz could grasp the full reason why it was so hard to let go of Fool:  his love had no limits, and Fitz knew that.  He brought him back from the dead for god's sakes!  If he had just said, "I don't want a life with Molly.  I want a life with you, and my love has no limits."  I know that he could not mostly because he wouldn't have been able to get Bee  and what a loss that would have been for all.  But Bee is the key.  What their unknowing consummation brought forth and she's put the world on a much better path.  But back to the point.  Yes Mervi your explanation is ace.

But I think the F/F relationship makes a pretty rare and important argument that there are other, possibly more important and permanent aspects to the best relationships - whether or not sex is included in the deal.

I just had to quote it again!