Voyages of discovery? (spoilers for all RotE books)

[Farseer]

I agree and, having finished 'Shaman's Crossing', would go so far as to say that it's pretty concrete for the reasons you mention, thul. Thanks and welcome to thePlenty! I also apologise as I believe my earlier posts may have been a little misleading as I didn't truly believe that Gernia does have anything to do with the Elderling realm based on past comments from fellow Hobb fans and Robin herself (more like wishful thinking on my part!).

While I do think there are quite a number of similarities to some plot points, characters, roles, circumstances etc between the two worlds (I will compile a comparative list based on these in a Gernia thread when I finally get the SS series finished!), my previous comment that "I have found a number of links to the RotE" was more with regard to Robin's style of writing, and word/phrase choices, rather than any true connection to the worlds or plots.

Without wanting to post any sort of Soldier Son spoilers here, some examples of this would be using the name 'Raven' for one of the boys found in the first chapter; numerous cat references throughout; describing the river water as 'silver'; the use of words such as 'motley', 'mottled', 'dappled' and 'piebald' etc. If I had read the SS series first, these little things would have meant nothing at all to me but, after not only having read but also closely studied all of the RotE books to find exactly these sorts of little links and clues to solve umpteen riddles, I can't help latching on to them no matter how inconsequential they are to the SS world.

I hope we do get to find out something more about the expanded parts of the RotE world. While I am intrigued by Chalced, I'd also like to discover more about the source of the Great Sail Fleet, not to mention Fool's home, the Spice Isles etc.