Assassin's Fate, Robin Hobb

[Gertrude]

Yeah, I've been reading this thread as it's developed and hoping I'd feel the urge to jump in, but I never got there. I agree there are lots of things to discuss, but for me personally, I don't feel it's worth the effort. I enjoy watching others jump in, though.

[SeanF]

On ‎5‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 11:32 PM, TheRevanchist said:

Was thinking about this too. I think that Hobb overpowered dragons, and also she isn't that good with numbers. I mean, in the first book, it is just a legend that an old Farseer King went to Elderlings to ask for help (and when Fitz and co. go there, they see that even then, they made stone dragons so if was after the destruction of the dragons) so surely it would have been a few hundred years before. And some years before that for the Farseers to become kings. Which makes the dragon extinction happening many hundreds if not more than a thousand years ago. But then you have the likes of Prilok who look just a few hundred years ago, or some dragon mentioning that the new generation of dragons were something like 3 (or was it 6) human generations as serpents, when in truth, it should have been 20-50 generations.

Anyway, the dragons seem not malignant, and as long as you don't do bad things to them, they seem okayish. The most they would do is eat your cows. The problem though (which is actually the entire premise of the books) is why Fitz and Fool returning the dragons was actually a good thing. Bar them being beautiful, they seem not that awesome creatures. Arrogant, treat others with total disrespect when they don't ignore them, and extremely powerful so they can destroy everything. Why the Path was to return them.

I still think that the entire premise of the books makes absolutely no sense and Hobb started things without having any idea where they will go. I wouldn't surprised if she decided for the 'real' dragons only during the Liveships. Still, I enjoyed the books for their individual stories, but the mission of Fitz and Fool was quite bad IMO. At best, they created some arrogant Gods and relegating humans as second order citizens of the world, at worst, total destruction for humanity.

I want the next trilogy to be about Stone Dragons vs Real Dragons. That stone dragon at the end of the second trilogy almost defeated Tintaglia and Icefire combined.

IMHO, the Cataclysm was a good deal more recent than that.  Maybe no more than a couple of hundred years before the first book.  I would have thought the Sea Serpents must have been born either just before or just after the Cataclysm, but there must be a limit to their lifespan.  And, Kelsingra, while desolate and damaged, is still largely intact when it's reoccupied.

In a pre-industrial society, with limited literacy, it would be very easy to think that things took place hundreds of years ago, when actually they took place more recently.  An example is Britain after the Romans left. Within a couple of hundred years, people were thinking that Hadrian's Wall was the work of giants.

 

[Minaku]

Okay, the ending of this had me so affected that I had to come back to the board to post about it!  What was the lie Bee told at the end?  That Fitz loved the Fool more than anyone else?  I didn't think it was a lie.

[Gertrude]

I think that was the lie. Fitz opened up to Bee within the skill and she was able to feel Fitz's utter love for her. It's been a few months since I've read it, but I remember that being the impression I walked away with. I think Fitz didn't love the Fool more than Bee or Molly or Nighteyes - it was just a completely different type of love, each with their joys and sorrows and complexities.

[Minaku]

Jumping back in quickly - I had a hard time with the ramp-up of graphic violence in these last two books.  It feels like Robin really went for things in a visceral way, and though we're aware that Fitz and the Fool have suffered greatly it hasn't been so... detailed and raw as it's been in these last two books.  Particularly with the rape scene and all of the abuse heaped on Bee.  At times I almost put the book down because it was getting to be gratuitous, repetitive, and trauma porn-y, and that's not what I read Robin Hobb for.  Dwalia wasn't just bad, she was irredeemably bad, no matter what had happened to her in the past.  She was so bad she ceased to be a character and was just a caricature to live with until Bee murdered her.

@Gertrude I have always thought of the Fool as Fitz's soulmate and one true love despite his more immediate passion for Molly and his devotion to Bee, so I didn't think she was lying about that (did she say that in her POV when she was in the Skill stream with him, that she was the one he loved the most?)

[Gertrude]

I honestly don't remember exactly where that happened, but I do remember seeing questions about that same thing in other forums and I thought it was clear what the lie was that she was talking about. It was probably the skill stream, but I do remember her understanding how utterly he loved her. It didn't say he loved her best. I thought part of the lie was that she was jealous of the Fool because of Fitz's love for him, but after seeing the depth of Fitz's love for her, she couldn't really be jealous. Ah man, you're gonna make me look this up and defend my position, aren't you

 

(jk, it's just the impression I got. I may look it up to see why I thought that)

[Darth Richard II]

Rape scene?

 

Edit: Also I found this to be just as about violent and graphic as the other books.

[ljkeane]

There's the bit with Alaria when they're trapped in the collapsed palace in Chalced although I suppose it wasn't technically rape. It's not something which hasn't come up before in Hobb's books though, notably the Liveship books.

I thought Bee lied to the Fool when she said Fitz resented him and then corrected that at the end? I must have missed it if she said she lied again.

[Minaku]

@Darth Richard II The rape happened in book 2, it was Alaria iirc?  I remember being horrified at it because while we'd gotten all sorts of other graphic things, that was a line Robin hadn't crossed until then.

It's possible that the dream written in the journal was a lie - I just read back, and though the Fool has left Fitz before, he hadn't abandoned him gleefully.  Then again the love for a child does exceed other kinds of love by quite a bit.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh book 2, gotcha. And yeah liveships had some rape, so does Rainwilds if I remember correctly.

[Minaku]

@Darth Richard II I haven't read liveships but I did read RWC and I don't recall things being precisely that horrifying and detailed.

At any rate, the previous complaint still stands: there was, to me, an overabundance of violence in this book, particularly directed at Bee and the multiple times she thought she'd escaped.  The journey to Clerres really did drag a lot.

I ugly cried at the end though, and that's what we came for yes?

[The Sleeper]

I think Bee told the truth as she saw it about Fitz's love for the Fool but she lied about the Rat dream, of having written it on purpose to hurt the Fool. The whole point was to undo what she had done by making up the letter. The Wolf, of course, denies this. 

I thought the ending was quite fitting and despite the horrible circumstances, uplifting. Bee's intervention both to set the outcome of track and to restore it worked quite naturally to induce a modicum of suspence was consistent with her character development.

[The Sleeper]

Overall a very satisfying offering and on par as a trilogy with the liveship traders, which I consider Hobb's best work. Yet I find that the things that weren't in this book have stayed on my mind as much as the things that were.

For one thing various bits of hints and foreshadowing in the previous books make me think that Bee's journey to Clerres was meant to be much more roundabout and eventful. The one that comes to mind is a dream of Bee's about a boy in a boat that was beong tugged by sea serpents. In the same vain that many of her dreams appeared symbolic and nonsensical out of context, but turned out quite literal in the end, I was expecting to see her at Other's island. I think that and many other plotlines were abandoned in order to keep an already large book more manageable, in favor of focusing on Bee's interactions with Dwalia and Vindeliar. As the expectation of a culmination in Clerres was unavoidable, further misadventure was cause false tension and their eventual arrival, given their sorry state, would have been rendered implausible. Bee's influence on Dwalia and Vindeliar and how she drove both of them to their breaking point was a great character study on each and worked really well with how it exacerbated the internal conflicts in Clerres.

The other bit of prophecy that was not addressed and that actually was included in the last book was about a wolf unmasking a puppeteer. In the first book there was a dream of Bee's that refferenced the day that Fitz stabbed the Fool in which the Fool is presented as a puppeteer. Which is a question I have which remained unanswered. To what extent did the Fool anticipate or instigate the events of the trilogy? Because other than Dwalia's spectacular excersize in self fulfilling prophecy, the starting point of the whole series of events was the Fool's return to Clerres.

This is also part of the feeling I have that the book was meant to cover more and perhaps different ground. Bee and the Fool had the beginnings of a very interesting relationship and one frought with conflict. I don't think that Bee's animosity can be dismissed entirely as that of child who had experienced loss and abuse. Some of it I think was justified and along with Bee's rejection of her legacy as a White Prophet and her intolerance with his secrecy was the basis of putting them genuinely at odds. This was of course cut short with the Fool's mergeance with Fitz. But the issue remains of what Bee will do with her foresight, because it is unlikely that it will go away and I don't think she can pretend it doesn't exist.

I don't think that Bee is quite finished with Prilkop. Their interactions were among the highlights of the book and yet it felt as well that it was cut short with no conclusion on either part. And he remains the only one with any comprehensive knowledge of the legacy of the Whites. And don't they seem a little fatalistic considering that they see an infinity of possibilities, but believe there is and should be one path? And there lies the seeds of the philosophical differences between Bee's rejection and Prilkop's belief. He did come off as a dick asking the ten year old to accept a torturous death so that the corrupt regime may be spared. At least he had the integrity of his convictions in that he didn't interfere.

For the concluding part of a trilogy there were many issues started but not finished. For instance what will happen to the Pirate islands and Bingtown. Some bits were glossed over. For instance Bee didn't have a single interaction in Kelsingra. I also find it hard to believe that the Farseers didn't have the time to organize a single truly private family dinner. It kind of grates me that Dutiful and Bee did not exchange a single word on page. It is telling however what interactions were not ommited. Nettle and Bee seem off to a kind of rocky relationship and I loved Bee's playtime with Thick. I am also curious to see how they are going to deal with the fact that Bee won't reach physical maturity for several decades.

Fitz and decades may be over, but I think Bee is just beginning.

[Valmorfëa]

I haven’t logged in here in a very long time, but I needed somewhere to discuss this book! 
Really enjoyed reading everyone’s opinions. @Shaun Snow - I agree with your feelings on Nettle… I’ve really disliked her throughout the books; she always seems so stiff and just as you said, lacking in understanding of experiences not her own. I get that she was mad that Fitz “abandoned” her, but she had a great father figure in Burrich… I don’t think she had a particularly difficult childhood. I’m also not sure she really deserves Riddle, but he seems ok with being bossed around. Fine.
Bee spent months (a year?) in captivity fighting for her life and you treat her like a dumb child, force her friends to abandon her and make her behave like some royal lady? What the hell is wrong with you? Jesus be some common sense. 
Also, considering how amazing Bee is with the Skill (and Wit), Nettle can sit right down. I’m surprised Bee didn’t just suggest all the annoying stuff at Buckkeep away…. I would have. 

Why didn’t Kettricken send for Bee sooner? She only saw her once… I would think that this would be important to her, to meet the child Fitz died for.

Also as @Maia said - no reward for Per and Spark, etc, for saving Bee? They were just decoration I guess?

The Fool annoyed me incredibly as well. I grew to truly dislike him, and I enjoyed Bee’s rebukes. He has betrayed Fitz and his friends so many times to his own end (did he actually help find Bee? Not really, he got caught again), and I hated how selfish he was. When Fitz came to tell him that he had caught Bee in the Skill, all the Fool had was a rebuke about Fitz not believing his dreams. When he said that if only they had left Buckkeep sooner, had Fitz trusted him (even though he could barely walk and was blind) I wanted to slap him. How can he expect so much trust when he betrays it? 
I hated that he called Bee his child without ever knowing her, and trying to insert himself into Fitz’s bond with her. I was also angry that he kept invading her privacy and reading her journals. “She doesn’t show herself to anyone” is not an excuse, dummy! She just had a traumatic experience, OF COURSE she isn’t going to jump into the arms of a stranger.
I felt very “meh” about him going into the Dragon Wolf, annoyed, resigned, and unimpressed by the love-bond. 
And oh my god, does he have to constantly grab Fitz and Bee’s hands? Please stop. 

The Elderlings and the Skill River: this is also something that bugged me, similarly to @HelenaExMachina … “They annoyed us” is hardly a good reason to destroy Dragons and Elderlings. Like once you run out of Dragon parts and Elderling items to trade in, where are you going to get them from if they’re gone? It seems incredibly stupid and shortsighted.
I also wanted to know more about them… the Skill, the Silver, the River, the Elderlings… everything seems… not unfinished, but untold. I would have wanted Fitz to research the Skill and the Wit further and maybe become respected by the dragons enough for them to share some knowledge. I don’t know.  And what about Verity-as-Dragon “claiming” Fitz? Gah, I wish he had more time to explore and find out more.
Also… how did the Servants manage to eliminate ALL the Elderlings and Dragons? Ok Kelsingra was destroyed by a volcano, and many Elderlings fled to Furnich… but is it truly possible that literally all of them went there at the same time? For this plan to work you’d have to kill all the Elderlings and Dragons simultaneously otherwise they’d warn each other, no? It doesn’t make sense.

Prillkop is incredibly naive. Wow. For someone so old and who has seen so much… yikes. 

Chade: wow, what an incredibly sad death. He deserved more. I feel like no one but Fitz truly understood him. 

LST characters: I agree that Kennitsson, the Pirate Isles, and Alise/Leftrin were pretty much useless in this story and I would have passed on their stories. It felt like “Oh this is what happened to x and y, 20 years later! Say hi to your old friends!” No interest. Same with all the focus on Althea vs Kennit vs Kennitsson. 

I’m annoyed that nobody TRIED to heal Fitz, not even his own damn self.  The Skill allows one to feel the “wrong” in a body….how did he not sense the worms? They are a wrong. He had so much Silver! He was so close to the River and Kelsingra… he could have healed himself or been healed by a coterie + Bee.
Can’t believe he died like that.

Also re: Fitz - he saw Vindeliar through the Skill and heard him say that Bee killed Symphe and Dwalia - why does he completely forget about that experience afterwards? He knows that a powerful Skill-ox is in Clerres. And he keeps wondering how Symphe died. Weird.

I’ll end with saying that yes, I’ve been annoyed with Fitz often throughout the years, but I do think that his “best work” is how he’s influenced and shaped the people around him… much more than the results of his own actions. So the “payoff” is that everyone ran to the Quarry to see him off… Fitz never gave himself a lot of credit, but when you look at how people around him respect and admire him, you get a better idea of what kind of man he was.

Re: The Skill being only in the 6/7D - if the Farseer ancestor was an Elderling, how is it that the current Elderlings have 0 Skill aside from being touched by Silver? There has to be more to it. And I think the Wit and Skill are related and you need both to have complete magic… but it really isn’t clear. It seems like you need the Wit to Skill someone to die. (As evidenced by Bee and Fitz)
 

[Maia]

On 4.7.2017 at 11:46 PM, Minaku said:

Jumping back in quickly - I had a hard time with the ramp-up of graphic violence in these last two books.  It feels like Robin really went for things in a visceral way, and though we're aware that Fitz and the Fool have suffered greatly it hasn't been so... detailed and raw as it's been in these last two books.

 

There are some pretty horrifying scenes in RA and AQ when Fitz is involuntarily Skilling various people dying and suffering during the Red Ships raids. Rapes included, IIRC. Ditto during the Forged attack on Fitz and his fellow travellers in AQ. Generally, there is a lot of graphic suffering in the first trilogy.

 

On 6.7.2017 at 4:28 PM, The Sleeper said:

 In the same vain that many of her dreams appeared symbolic and nonsensical out of context, but turned out quite literal in the end, I was expecting to see her at Other's island.

 

This could be a hint at possible future developments, though - things like nature of the Skill and possible evolution of people's relationship with dragons and place of stone dragons in in that context have been teased, but not really examined. The claim that Others are dragon-human hybrids in the same vein that Elderlings are human-dragon hybrids seems more than dubious to me - Elderlings acquire some dragon characteristics, but the Others have nothing human about them. In fact, they seem to be bloodless invertebrates, which neither dragons, nor humans are! And what's the deal with White Prophets shedding skin - like serpents? And having lower body temperature than humans - like serpents and dragons? And being able to foresee the future - like some serpents and the Others, if those are provided with excretions of a prophetic serpent? A have a crackpot idea that White Prophets, and not the Others were dragon-human hybrids, somehow.

 

On 6.7.2017 at 4:28 PM, The Sleeper said:

 Bee's influence on Dwalia and Vindeliar and how she drove both of them to their breaking point was a great character study on each and worked really well with how it exacerbated the internal conflicts in Clerres.

And how they and they alone enabled her to become the Destroyer and wreak the massive change that she did. Dwalia was a catalyst indeed - otherwise her ability to find and re-capture Bee after her many escapes would have been contrived nonsense. But that revelation made it all fit and work very well.

 

On 6.7.2017 at 4:28 PM, The Sleeper said:

 And don't they seem a little fatalistic considering that they see an infinity of possibilities, but believe there is and should be one path?

Indeed. What's the point of the White Prophets in the first place, if everything is pre-ordained?  And it does very much look like their meddling _does_ change things. A lot. However, I have always felt that "one true White Prophet at a time" is and was nonsense. With Bee not even having the looks of one completely - how many with similar abilities have been going unrecognized? Wintrow certainly had some moments and characteristics similar to Bee's, including limited prophetic abilities.

On 6.7.2017 at 4:28 PM, The Sleeper said:

 

 

On 30.7.2017 at 0:38 PM, Valmorfëa said:

Also… how did the Servants manage to eliminate ALL the Elderlings and Dragons? Ok Kelsingra was destroyed by a volcano, and many Elderlings fled to Furnich… but is it truly possible that literally all of them went there at the same time? For this plan to work you’d have to kill all the Elderlings and Dragons simultaneously otherwise they’d warn each other, no? It doesn’t make sense.

 

Not to mention, that there are signs of great cataclysm all over the world. After all, whatever Elderling settlements there used to be in Buck were almost completely destroyed and a lot of territory sunk under the sea. Ditto slow death of the cities at Aslevjyal and under what became Trehaug over decades, if not centuries.

[Buckwheat]

Just finished it about an hour ago yesterday, and then the board died on me when I tried to post. I will share more thoughts tomorrow and read through the thread, but the first few random not-so-central thoughts:

Spoiler

If a pregnant Skill-user travels through a Skill-pillar, she loses her baby, but if a Skill-user infested by parasites travels through the pillar, they bring the parasites with them unharmed? So unfair, and I thought a bit illogical, the situation is similar enough - or maybe just I tried to find some way to imagine Fitz being cured and surviving. Why would he be saved from that tunnel, I thought, if he would die then anyway? Bee dreamed a "very likely" dream of how they would sit in a chamber together and she would write down all his life stories!

Keffria seems to quite annoyingly have vanished from the Vestrit family tree. Wintrow is correctly referred to as Althea's nephew, but then Ronica says "she only has two grandchildren", obviously referring to Phron and Boy-O - which is not correct, as Malta, Wintrow, Selden, and Boy-O are all her grandchildren; Phron is her great-grandchild. I would have liked a passing mention that would let us know what happened to Keffria - she was apparently not at Ronica's home (maybe we can imagine she married anew and moved away).

I was confused for a moment somewhere in the middle when Lant and Spark first started showing emotions for each other, as I wrongly remembered the information from the last two books, thinking Spark (her name is also about light!) was Chade's child too. And mostly, I thought she was much younger, closer in age to Per than to Lant. I think Per is 14 at most during this book, and I thought Spark was 16 at most (likely less), while Lant would be in his early twenties? But then I started imagining Spark to be older.

Per is the best friend Bee could have wished for. I think he might be my favourite side character. He is so caring, down-to-earth, demands nothing, asks for nothing, just gives Bee the basic things she needs - the physical presence and touch (they often hold hands, while Bee was not even able to touch her father when he was dying), food and drink and warmth - and is simply there for her and she knows she can fully rely on him, which is more than any other character gives her.

I despise the Fool. I love Bee. I have mixed feelings about Fitz.

Beautiful book all over (despite some parts that almost literally made me sick - the description of Bee's biting and gnawing Dwalia's face *shudder*).

[Buckwheat]

More about Fitz and the Fool now ...

Spoiler

I discovered I really dislike the Fool. He used Fitz throughout all his life, and I wonder how Fitz can keep having so strong an attachment emotionally to the Fool, when the Fool always just manipulates him into dangerous situations and, in this trilogy, drives him away from his family. Fitz constantly keeps putting the Fool in front of his daughter, even to the end. I do not think Fool deserves to live on in the stone wolf alongside Fitz.

Fool also has no respect of others' boundaries and privacy at all, while keeping secrets about himself, never revealing much. Even in Tawny Man, when he comes to Fitz' hut, he starts reading Fitz's private scripts and journals and whatever else he had, without asking, and he does the same now with Bee's journals both during the journey to Clerres (crying and making Fitz feel guilty when Fitz was unwilling to read aloud to him and thought it was an intrusion of Bee's and his own privacy was emotional manipulation) and late in the book with the new Bee's writing on the way back. Maaaaaybe he could be said to have some right to her dream journal, seeing how her dreams could help them predict the future and Bee's dreams were important for the future of more than just herself, but I certainly don't think he should have read her private writings. Espeically because, as Bee herself once points out, Fitz does not share anything of himself with her. He only demands other people to share everything with him, but refuses to reciprocate, starting with the moment little Fitz visited his room and Buckkeep and the Fool being hurt for it. I am sorry, but trust and friendship are a two-way street. Bee totally has no duty to share anything about her life with the Fool. He obviously makes her uncomfortable, confused (because of his many identitites, which he again does not explain to her), and she blames him that her father loved him more than herself.

I think that Fitz insisting the Fool to act as Bee's father was another example of his blindness for obvious things. Bee obviously does not trust the Fool and never will. Fitz seems to fail to realise that Bee only wishes to have a closer relationship with him, that is her father, and that the Fool, however close they were, cannot take over that role. Bee sees the necessity that the Fool becomes her teacher in everything relating to being a White Prophet, but that is all. I even think that Prilkop would be better for that role, simply because Bee did not start her relationship with him disliking him because of the feeling that her father likes him more than herself.

About Fitz' death ... that was sad and ... I expected it to happen up to the point where he awoke in the tunnel. After that, I thought, it was like in the end of Tawny Man - the book went over the edge of the possible predicted futures and started a completely new history by bringing a character back from death. That meant the Fitz would survive, and Bee's dream would come true. I also keep thinking how unnecessary it was. The first time, he died because he lost time going back for a torch. Why the hell did he need a torch? He knew what was under there and that the ceiling would come down at any moment. There was a straight dark tunnel slowly filling with water, and in the end, stairs. There was literally nothing in there that could be improved by having a torch.

The second time - on Furnich, he was supposed to travel through the stone to Kelsingra. Very good. But instead, because of a small mistake, he just happens to land in the place he has connected with dying, and where there was Skill stone readily available and where the wolf in him started to convince him to give himself into a stone dragon - instead of landing in a city with readily available Skill healers, other sorts of healers, communication to Buckkeep, and everything comfortable. Out of all the places he could have landed. So frustrating.

And then, landing there, instead of going to the next Skill pillar to travel directly to Buck, he decides to make camp for however many days and argue with his wolf about whether or not to carve a stone dragon. Yes, it is known that too frequent travels through the pillars are dangerous, but so was staying there; going through the other pillar to Buck was his only chance. His death seemed to be so unnecessary/easily avoided because of all these points.

Poor Bee. Everything she had gone through. At least in the end, she has Per to always take care of her. That is about the only good thing in her life in the end, I guess. Of course I want more of her story now.

EDIT: I wished the Fitz would at least have Skill-healed Bee's ear or any other the scars away in the end, because she wished it so on the ship. Instead, he only cared about what to put into his stone. That was what maybe made me saddest.

 

[Buckwheat]

On 27. 5. 2017 at 6:51 PM, kimim said:

I totally missed this. Are the people doing the carving humans or elderlings or both? If elderlings were doing the carving, when did humans start doing the same thing?

I think the Skill-coteries from the Farseer court carved the dragons that saved the Six Duchies from the Red Ships. They apparently took this habit from the old Elderlings, but I do not remember any stone dragon that was said to be made by the old Elderlings.

On 28. 5. 2017 at 0:51 PM, Arkash said:

I agree, the lack of Wit anywhere but in the 6D (or 7 now) has puzzled me sometimes, no one else seem to know anything about it in the rest of the world.

On 16. 6. 2017 at 4:15 AM, kimim said:

Is Six Duchies also the only place where the Wit has been identified and refined? It's the only place with Witted communities.

Maybe there are, it just wasn't relevant to this story/these characters have not run into any other Witted around the world? Even in Six Duchies, Witted people are not that many, and what is even more important, they keep to themselves. Only during the last few years, they started to become more accepted into the society. Maybe the taboo surrounding them is unversal and they are also hiding their Wit wherever else they might be.

I also think the Wit was used very little in this last book, sadly. Fitz mentions it a bit, and probably Bee's sensing Wolf Father comes from a mixture of the Wit and the Skill (cannot imagine it was only the Wit, as the Wit does not allow one to talk to dead animals, I believe the only reason way a part of Nighteyes has survived in Fitz was the Skill).

Re: the lack of the Skill anywhere but the 6D (forgot to quote wherever that was discussed) - I thought a measure of Skill ability was needed to communicate with the dragons in any way (they just don't call it the Skill in other places). As most of the characters are capable of that and most of them are also susceptible to Vindeliar's glamour, which is a twisted version of the Skill, I would say that this ability is actually more common than thought, it is just that most people are unable to control it and they are never educated/trained in it. The 6D are the only place they call it Skill and where they research it and train it.

But people with absolutely zero sense of the magic, like Per, seem to be exceptions. The only other person I seem to recall being like that was Kyle in Liveships ... right? Now I am not even sure if I am not making that up.

***

One thing I have not seen mentioned is ... did Vindeliar actually drink raw serpent spit or was it somehow altered by cooking, diluting, whatever? Because serpent spit is, as has been established, acidic and dangerous to wood, flesh, clothing, and stone. How could Vindeliar drink it (and Bee have it absorbed into her body through injuries) without it killing them? Does the serpent spit change when the serpent is in captivity? Or did the Servants do enough chemical experiments with it to discover how to make it not physically dangerous, but still maintain its magic?

Also, how the hell did Coultrie get to be one of the Four without being or even just looking like a White himself? I know they are supposed to be a joke of a leadership, but that was just too far.

[SeanF]

I can't say I found the violence particularly OTT in this trilogy.  Nasty things happen to people, but they aren't described in nauseating detail.

WRT rape and torture, Hobb tends to focus more on the psychological impact on the victims, rather than giving a graphic account of what is being done.

[Maia]

 

On 6.8.2017 at 1:09 PM, Buckwheat said:

I think the Skill-coteries from the Farseer court carved the dragons that saved the Six Duchies from the Red Ships. They apparently took this habit from the old Elderlings, but I do not remember any stone dragon that was said to be made by the old Elderlings.

Actually, Realder's dragon was initially supposed to be an Elderling dragon - the marketplace vision showed that it's first flight was supposed to be when the Elderlings were still around and populated the vanished town there. However, in the Tawny Man trilogy Hobb conflated him with "Girl on a Dragon", which was , in Assassin's trilogy, a Six Duchies dragon, made by Salt's coterie. So, there is some confusion there, but yes, the older and more dragon-like statues are of Elderling make. Most of the Six Duchies ones are more fanciful.

 

On 6.8.2017 at 1:09 PM, Buckwheat said:

. Only during the last few years, they started to become more accepted into the society. Maybe the taboo surrounding them is unversal and they are also hiding their Wit wherever else they might be.

 

But it isn't - Hobb wrote "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" novella (it is rather mediocre), which reveals that it started with a succession dispute, where the ultimately losing claimant was Witted and surrounded himself with Witted courtiers.

Spoiler

Persecution of the Witted was started to obfuscate and justify his murder.

There was no taboo before that, in fact Witted were respected. We never heard about anything similar anywhere else.

I agree that Wit was too little used in Fitz and Fool trilogy. I was really itching for Fitz to smack one  the dragons to their knees with it, like Burrich did to the Pale Woman's stone dragon.

 

On 6.8.2017 at 1:09 PM, Buckwheat said:

Re: the lack of the Skill anywhere but the 6D (forgot to quote wherever that was discussed) - I thought a measure of Skill ability was needed to communicate with the dragons in any way (they just don't call it the Skill in other places).

They don't call it Skill and they also can't use it as Skill. In fact, meditations of the monks of Sa, or at least of Wintrow, seemed pretty close to descriptions of learning to touch the Skill, however he/they never got there. And Wintrow was the most gifted at it. The dragons communicate with a mixture of Wit and Skill - and as far as I could see those who could understand them had something similar - but not to the degree that 6D folks have and not sivided in 2 distinct abilities.

 

On 6.8.2017 at 1:09 PM, Buckwheat said:

But people with absolutely zero sense of the magic, like Per, seem to be exceptions. The only other person I seem to recall being like that was Kyle in Liveships ... right?

 Cedric didn't understand the dragons at all, originally, and thought that people who spoke of them talking were deluded.

 

On 6.8.2017 at 1:09 PM, Buckwheat said:

One thing I have not seen mentioned is ... did Vindeliar actually drink raw serpent spit or was it somehow altered by cooking, diluting, whatever? <>Or did the Servants do enough chemical experiments with it to discover how to make it not physically dangerous, but still maintain its magic?

 He drank tainted water from the shallow pool where She Who Remembers had been held. It had her excretions, toxins, etc. in it. I don't know if the Servants chemically changed it, but the Whites aren't wholly human, so....

On 6.8.2017 at 1:09 PM, Buckwheat said:

Also, how the hell did Coultrie get to be one of the Four without being or even just looking like a White himself? I know they are supposed to be a joke of a leadership, but that was just too far.

His longevity was due to ingesting dragon parts, dunno about his other qualifications...