Small, random questions about RotE that still bother you (spoilers all RotE books)

[Farseer]

Hello thar!

G'day Omie and welcome to thePlenty!

I've been a fan of Robin Hobb for a couple of years but I've just got round to re-reading the whole series in one big Hobbathon. I'm smack bang in the middle of the Tawny Man series currently.

Ah, there's nothing in life that a good Hobbathon can't fix...!

- Is it possible to account for the fifteen years spent between the end of the Farseer books and the start of the Tawny Man?

Do you mean that you feel that not enough happened in the books to warrant a passing of fifteen years? Given all that took place during the Liveship Traders, and also what FItz himself covered during his retelling of his experiences to Fool at the beginning of FE, I believe the years are well accounted for.

For myself, the last fifteen years of my life have flown...and I would be hard pressed to explain how I have filled them. Far easier if I had, in the interim, met liveships and Elderlings, sought out a nine-fingered slave boy, walked the Cursed Shores with my wolf or ventured to and from the Mountain Kingdom. Possibly all I share with Fitz, Kettricken or Molly over a fifteen-year timeframe is that I have been busy is the task of child-rearing!

- For that matter, how did the events of the Farseer books last from Fitz's first kill when he was fourteen (I think it said) to when he was twenty? Not enough years seem to have passed in those books, to me.

It is surprising how many weeks slip by for Fitz when he and Nighteyes are just out and about (while some readers consider that some things drag, there are other times when weeks or even months seem to pass in a matter of sentences), particularly 'after' his death. I imagine it took quite some time for him to finally come back to himself initially (from wolf to man) and he got rather waylaid, a number of times, on his way to the Mountain Kingdom and beyond.

Or maybe time flies when you're having fu- er - enduring endless torment in the pusuit of political espionage.

No doubt , though I hope I never find out the truth of that!

- Who or what is the 'Oracle of the Outislanders' mentioned briefly in an italic chapter-header in The Golden Fool? The book's all the long way upstairs and I can't be arsed getting it, but it's mentioned in what seems to be a historical scroll naming interesting tourist destinations of the Out Islands. It describes a cave housing a person who is said to be both beautiful naked woman and old crone, who the Outislanders dote gifts upon. I'm very tempted to think that it is The Black Man in an earlier setting, mainly because I like to think that the Fool is not the only Prophet who displays a lenitude towards gender and identity.

Others' Island is also said to have an oracle however we know that the Others are capable of using glamour to make themselves 'appear' to be a beautiful, naked woman with foretelling abilities that are taken from She Who Remembers (who the Others themselves call 'our oracle').

The evidence shows that Fool is well versed and capable in the ways of glamour, as is The Pale Woman, so there is no reason why it could not be the same for The Black Man/Pilkrop.

Some of us have touched on this topic of an Outislander oracle/Pilkrop etc elsewhere so I will try and find the links to those discussions for you as well.

- How in the name of too many vowels does one go about pronouncing Jhaampe?

Not sure about anyone else but I say it as Jam (rhymes with Sam ) - p. I am certain I have also heard Robin read it or say it as such (??), though she herself says that how we pronounce it is up to us!