Inside the Skill Pillars? (Spoilers Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies)

['thul]

This is probably one area where it will not come to any certain agreement unless RH says something...

but look at it this way... Fitz was clearly lost in the skill current. He had no way out. He did not "belong" there per se.
Would you not, if a fly kept buzzing around your ear, swat at it to get it away?
Because he did not belong there, in the current, he was such a fly. Being a selfish creature, Tintaglia would at first try to ignore the problem. Hence the month wait. When that did not work. she took care of it. She tossed him out. on his face.

City of Dragons class spoiler

If you recall the arrow Tintaglia got shot with during the prologue. What did she do with it?
She did not at first attempt to pull it out. She instead left it there, ignoring it. In the end (the epilogue, in fact...) it proved too painful, possibly festering, so she resolved to go back to the rain wilds to get it taken out. The arrow, like fitz floundering in the skill current, was like a small fly buzzing around her head. She ignored it till it would no longer be ignored.

[Valarya]

Welcome to thePlenty Brad!

So good to have you here and what a wonderful opening thread!

My first time reading the books I, like you, went straight from Farseer to Tawny Man completely skipping over the Liveship books. There were a LOT of things that just didn't make sense to me doing it that way.. which is so so unfortunate.

In fact, it's probably one of the things about these books that annoy me the MOST.. that Robin Hobb didn't list them in the appendix as a 9-book series (pre Rain Wild Chronicles). Because it is. It's one long story.

I don't feel you can read one of the trilogies alone and get the full story. Nor can you read 2 of those trilogies to get the full story. There are 9 'main' books before the RWC. Hobb is so cyclical with her writing that things will come together for you eventually, you'll see!!

See, when I read the LST books after reading all the Fitz books... they became my favorite. I couldn't believe I had skipped them and so many things fell in to place. Even better, on my 2nd re-read I read all 9 books in a row and the Tawny Man trilogy became EVEN BETTER after having all the puzzle pieces in order.

In regards to what everyone else is saying (in answer to your question)... I've always thought it was Tintaglia, and still do.

You will SO enjoy your read of Liveship!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Farseer]

welcome to the plenty...

Yes, welcome to thePlenty, LegionOfBrad ...nice to have you with us!

LOB has put a spoiler tag up for F and TM so I'm thinking I'm okay letting these out here...

There's another theory that has popped up here somewhere that it was indeed this goddess Eda, but that Eda is in fact a dragon spirit. or perhaps that the various gods are in fact all draconic in some fashion. Mind you, those are just theories.

Good theories though...and I say that with no bias whatsoever!

I've got bits on that floating all around the place but you may like to take a look in the Mythical Creatures/Folk thread, though the link does contain spoilers for all books, including those in LST....so, please take care and don't click if you don't want to be spoiled. You may like to read the whole thread but, if not, I know that at least posts #55, #57 and #59 hold parts of the discussion (though they, too, have a lot of LST spoilers).

I have more comments but can't add those/direct you to them yet as school is about to start for the day (we begin at 7:30am).

So the answer is yes, there's theories. No, none of them have been verified 100%.

Here I go agreeing with the 'thul beings again.

As for LST, you really should make it a priority LegionOfBrad. If I were Lady Patience I would tell you to,"Begin reading immediately young man, and don't stop for so much as a breath until you've finished Ship of Destiny!" Though you may possibly think it not worth your while, particularly after having immersed yourself in Fitz, Fool and Nighteyes etc for so long, something tells me you'll be hooked by the end of the first chapter...if not before, in the instant that you realise that...

I'm really excited for you that you have them yet to get through!

[LegionOfBrad]

Ok then I'm convinced! Will start on LST! For whatever reason amazon uk have 2 and 3 for kindle but not 1! So I'm waiting delivery of a paperback of Ship of Magic! I'm hoping RH will eventually give us an explanation of who the being was that seems to have given Fitz a hand :-)

Will be putting off reading Name of the wind thanks to this forum :-)

[Valarya]

Will be putting off reading Name of the wind thanks to this forum :-)

Oh no!!! Hahah. Now I'm torn.

Well.. of course you have to read Liveship Traders, because it'll help you make sense of other things (and then go back and read that chapter in Tawny Man when Jek comes to visit Lord Golden and calls him 'Amber')....

But you HAVE to read the Name of the Wind after! Hahaha

[fool-ish]

Will be putting off reading Name of the wind thanks to this forum :-)

Oh no!!! Hahah. Now I'm torn.

Well.. of course you have to read Liveship Traders, because it'll help you make sense of other things (and then go back and read that chapter in Tawny Man when Jek comes to visit Lord Golden and calls him 'Amber')....

But you HAVE to read the Name of the Wind after! Hahaha

All of the above! Oh and forgive my laxness, hello and welcome LegionOfBrad!

[LegionOfBrad]

I forgot to say thanks for the warm welcome guys!

I had completely forgotten that Dutiful had seen the presence and thought of it as more paternal. It has definitely put a different spin on things for me, and also to me makes Tintaglia less likely.

['thul]

No problem. Warm welcomes are frequent here. It would not do at all to give cold ones.

As for the dutiful point... Was this after the events in the glacier? If so, then it could easily have been Icefyre, not Tintaglia Dutiful "met".

[Narya]

No, it was in FE. And Icefyre didn't strike me as all warm and fuzzy, either.

[Farseer]

For whatever reason amazon uk have 2 and 3 for kindle but not 1! So I'm waiting delivery of a paperback of Ship of Magic!

Oh, no! I should have thought to mention this here somewhere. There were quite a few critical errors in the SoM UK Kindle version (the UK LST e-books were all only made available on Kindle in September last year). These errors were all discussed over in Robin's Newsgroup and correspondence following this discussion prompted the publishers to pull it out for corrections.

So, it's a pain in the short-term, in that you will have to purchase the pb when you would otherwise not have, but at least the e-book will be less horrible and thus far better reading material for all current and future Hobb fans.

As for the matter at hand, from their experience within the Skill Pillar en route to Others' Island, Dutiful felt that the presence was paternal whilst Fitz felt that it was maternal. I believe both (or at least Fitz) later just accepted that the presence filled their lack or need eg in that Dutiful mourned the loss of his father so he was attracted to a male presence while Fitz mourned the loss of his mother and so was attracted to a female presence. In this, I don't believe it was either Tintaglia or Icefyre. It's interesting to note that *MAJOR Liveship Traders Spoiler*

Spoiler

While defending himself to Fitz, Fool himself used this as a reasoning for his taking on the role of a female whilst in Bingtown. He took on the role of a female as he felt that he would then be better placed, and accepted by Bingtowners/Rain Wilders etc, to do what he needed to do as White Prophet.

As an aside, while caught in the Skill Pillar en route to Buckkeep from Aslevjal, Fitz first noticed the huge presence as 'a star'.

On stars, you may like to wander over to the The Skill and the Wit. Argh! I have a teleconference to get to ....

More soon!!