Gird Your Loins, The Endgame Approaches
***Spoilers for Liveship Traders through chapter 25 of Ship of Destiny. References to The Farseer Trilogy***
It feels like we are getting a bit of a reset in these chapters – or perhaps more accurately, a stage-setting for the final showdowns. My Kindle tells me I have about seven hours of read time left in my Liveship Traders adventure (say it ain’t so!), and I can see the pieces starting to shift into place for the grand finale.
In my recent post catching everyone up on my Liveship Traders journey up to the point where I started blogging regularly, I called Wintrow the “chaos agent we deserved.” I was *this close* to saying he was giving big catalyst energy, but decided to let him walk his own chaos-causing path. But then we get Amber telling Paragon, “I have been called a fool as often as I have been called a prophet.” Ding! Ding! Ding!
She also lets Paragon know she is seeking “a slave boy with nine fingers,” so that narrows the field of suspects just a bit. (Quick acknowledgment that I’m almost certain we already knew this info, but there is a lot to keep track of!) We also got a nice “tawny” descriptor applied to her hair for good measure.
(Confession: I don’t have a great recollection of what we learned about the prophets from the Fool back in Farseer. If any kind reader wants to provide a quick lore-dump in the comments about the prophets and the catalysts, I would love not having to go dig it up myself. Also, I am dying for someone to leave me a comment, so – two birds, one stone!)
I am loving how the story is slowly starting to overlap with Farseer, and how the shared threads are giving shape to the eventual convergence. Bold prediction alert: I think Clef is going to have a big role to play moving forward. We know he’s from the Six Duchies, and I’ve had a feeling about him ever since we first met him and he refused to ride the horse with smelly Althea and then imprinted on smelly Brashen. Also, I know better than to take my eye off a young boy with a sad backstory in a Robin Hobb novel.
Ok, let’s get our sea legs with what else is happening at the moment:
Keffria: She often gets a bit outshined, so I am going to let her have her moment with top billing in my additional notes. I was happy to see her get her very own chapter where the proxy vote for all of the Rain Wilds is bestowed upon her. This is a pretty big promotion, and a lot of responsibility to take on in exchange for a new sofa, but I’m happy for her. Early on, I assumed Keffria would be a one-note character: the subservient foil to Althea’s wild independence. But she has pleasantly surprised me. Even before Kyle was off starring in noir Castaway, she could see when he had crossed into irredeemable territory. While not always the loudest, her quiet strength makes her as much a Vestrit woman as her flashier counterparts.
Amber’s extra hatch!! This was one of my favorite payoffs so far. Never listen to the haters- who says you can’t cut a hole in the captain’s quarters? Brashen and Althea were scandalized at the time. Well, who’s on their high “ship captain” horse now? Honestly, all I could think of was Emmit’s double-decker couch from The Lego Movie. (Which, ironically, also could have come in handy for Althea, Jek, and the rest of Team Rowboat. Side, side note: No one seems too sad about Haff and Lop.)
Runner-up for funniest moment: Althea waking up on Vivacia and immediately assuming they had won and, surely, Brashen was up on deck captaining the ship back to Bingtown. Girl, just how long were you underwater?
Extremely tough stretch for the Kennit girlies. The Paragon sequence was rough enough and now, we have entered full-on Creeper Kennit territory. Sir, you better check yourself. There’s a Catalyst in your midst, and don’t for one second think he won’t burn this whole ship to the ground (metaphorically or literally, truly anything is in play with Wintrow).
How exactly does Tintaglia speak? It’s not just in the minds of the dragon-connected, right? Others could hear her at the council meeting? Am I to believe words are coming out of her dragon maw?
Add “ship therapist” to the list of cursed shore careers we need, right under “dragon lawyer”.
I spent a lot of time getting through investing in Shreever, Maulkin, and Sessurea, only for Carrion (that’s what he told us to call him!) to swoop in and steal the serpent spotlight. Also, kind of a fair-weather friend type, if I’m honest.
Good on Paragon for calling Amber out for her hypocrisy re: keeping secrets. She was awfully harsh on Paragon not divulging his deeply traumatic past, only to one second later proclaim that her own secrets are “too personal.” Someone make sure the ship therapist graduate program extensively covers systems theory.
Looks like a good chunk of the A-squad (sorry, Ronica) is set to clash in Divvytown, and I am ready for what’s sure to be a giant clusterfuck. Brashen is gonna zag, though, and let Paragon take him to Kennit’s special island (🚨 inching closer to Kyle 🫣).
Please excuse this brief moment of sincerity: Brashen, upon finding out Althea lives:
“How could he explain to a boy the rush of feelings that accompanied the restoration of his world?”
*swoon*
BRB – gotta make a quick trip to the lumber yard. It’s face-carving time!
wizardwordship 