The Robin Hobb Collection discussion

Ch 21 think it's laughable how thje Pale Lady has been trying to wake stone dragons by putting other peoples lives and minds into the memory stone when we know it takes a skill user to pour their life in and BECOME the dragon - and even then it has to awakened with blood and wit. Or is that what she want's Fitz for?

Ch21 - Well, we see how she likes to treat her catalyst - chained and eating people's body parts.

I liked the extract of Fool history at the beginning of the Chapter - how he convinced the Satrap to send him North.

The Pale Lady is a bitch. I thought Fitz was going to strangle her for a minute there - most of the chapter I was going - she's right there! Wring her neck! But he couldn't do it.

So now we know. The Pale Lady has the Narcheska's Mother and Sister and has had them forged - and she has promised to kill them if Ice Fire is beheaded.

At least it seems some of Fitz' skill is coming back

sounds like you're getting close to the end. How many chapters is this book?

It feels like it's coming to an end but there's 37 chapters in the book so it's just over the half way mark so far. Which is good. I don't want it to end yet.

Oh. Haha. I guess my memory is once again failing me. lol.

Ch22 - Burrich and Fitz' reunion was pretty good. You were right Hanne.

Up to Ch24 - So waking the dragon - I guess nobody thought to bring any food for it - oh wait...they are food.

And Rawbread wakes the stone dragon. I wonder how insane that thing must be.

Ch25 - Big boss dragon battle! Yay! Followed up with the celebratory dragon cavorting after party. All the Forged coming back to themselves after the Rawbread dragon died was very nice. But it still looks like Fitz gets to lose a couple of loved ones.

i'm a little late - but i have notes!

ch21 - so this is why Robin Hobb needed Fitz without his skill. at first i thought it was to have the coterie link to the queen not working properly, but it's so he cannot communicate with the others while he is stuck with the pale lady.
seems like the pale lady knows a little too much about the skill.

and all i kept thinking was, please don't beat fitz, please don't beat him.


David Sven wrote: "Ch21 - Well, we see how she likes to treat her catalyst - chained and eating people's body parts.
I liked the extract of Fool history at the beginning of the Chapter - how he convinced the Satrap ..."

Aye, the pale lady ain't no sweetheart. if you have to slightly forge your minions, you know how brilliant a leader she is.

ch22 - Burrich is here! Burrich is here!

David Sven wrote: "Ch22 - Burrich and Fitz' reunion was pretty good. You were right Hanne.

*takes a bow*
i hope i didn't spoil anything for you with my weird assumptions though?!


yes, the first thing i thought was, o-oh, we have a starving dragon here, and another starving one on the way, with very little prey except for some humans....

David Sven wrote: "Ch25 - Big boss dragon battle! Yay! Followed up with the celebratory dragon cavorting after party. All the Forged coming back to themselves after the Rawbread dragon died was very nice. But it stil..."

That was a magnificent end of this battle.
I had been wondering since ch21 what this deal was. Oettre and Kossi are forged, and all this was set up by Peottre just to get their forged bodies back, have to kill them (or chain them)?

But it looks like forging is reversible after all. If only they knew that in the first trilogy!

Hanne wrote: "But it looks like forging is reversible after all. If only they knew that in the first trilogy!"

Indeed. Though to reverse it they would have somehow have had to bring the dragon to life and then kill it with a wizard wood arrow tip (I think it was wizard wood?) - I'm not sure a normal arrow tip would have done it.

ch 21 - unfortunately, some of the worst writing I've read by Hobb. The Pale Woman is just so moustache-twirlingly (ok, no moustache, but I guess breast-baring is almost an equivalent trope for villainesses) cliche-spewingly villainessy that it's hard to take seriously.

More generally, for a while now (I thought it a problem in Liveships too) Hobb has had a problem with evil. She likes to invite the idea of moral complexity, but then to make sure everyone sympathises with the right side, she uses a sledgehammer of Utter Evil to show who is who. So in Liveships, any time anyone was Evil, she just had to connect them to Horrible Horrible Slavery, and then it was clear they were on the wrong side. This time, the 'wrong side' is so appealling (the Pale Woman basically just wants peace, prosperity, technological progress, and people to not be randomly eaten or melted with dragon-acid), that in order to make absolutely clear who is the evil one here, Hobb has to have her be into sadistic torture and cannibalism. Enough already. The 'dragons deserve to live, even if it's not perfect for humans' was an intriguing moral idea I could go along with. Now it's just 'anything that might damage Mother Earth is morally equivalent to cannibalism', which is a bit too preachy for me, thank you - I prefered Hobb before her politics dominated everything (and apparently Soldier Son gets even worse...).

I did wonder, on a different note, whether Hari Seldon was going to appear in the flames there, as she talked about the Whites foreseeing their own demise. [And just imagine how much this book would get accused of racism and sexism if Robin Hobb were actually a man... all of history ought to be guided by the pure-white race, with everyone else doing what they're told... and if there's two Whites at once, you can spot the evil one because she's the one with breasts. I don't think Hobb was setting out that message, and I didn't seriously take it from her, but it shows how easy it is to put in 'symbolism' that people might find unacceptable (there's still a fight going on somewhere around here about how sexist A Song of Ice and Fire is for letting a white woman be the one to emancipate slaves of varying colours - I hate to think what those people would make of the White Prophets).

Wastrel wrote: "(there's still a fight going on somewhere around here about how sexist A Song of Ice and Fire is for letting a white woman be the one to emancipate slaves of varying colours - I hate to think what those people would make of the White Prophets). "

Ha Ha! I have a vague memory of that discussion. I think Robin Hobb may end up keeping everyone happy as far as the White Prophets go as we get towards the ending - which now you mention it indicates that she may have been a little sensitive to this criticism.