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wizardwordship Programming Update! November 30, 2025

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The Keyboard Calls

Ahoy, mateys!

It is I, wizardwordship, checking in after a slightly extended post-Tawny Man trilogy break. While I’ve been enjoying some time focusing on life responsibilities without the gnawing desire to get back to reading and reacting my way through the Realm of the Elderlings, it hasn’t been a full abandonment: I’ve popped in for small maintenance tasks- cleaning up some early posts, tidying the archive, etc. But overall, it has felt a bit like sending my blog to overnight camp: I’m touching base from time to time, but taking a break from the heavy lifting of day-to-day care.

The recharge is working, though, and lately the call to return to my keyboard has been intensifying. I also completed a few reading side quests (more below) during my time away, but now I’ve found myself with nothing queued up, and the Rain Wild Chronicles are beckoning.

Yesterday, I noticed that my last Tawny Man post was published on October 29- almost exactly one month ago. I didn’t set out with a specific hiatus length in mind, trusting my body would tell me when it was time to pick the quest back up. And apparently, one month was the time I needed. So here I am – November 29 – back at my laptop and ready to quip, cry, and break down dragon mating rituals.

No Blog November is no more!

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Reactions from the Realm: Golden Fool, Chapters 11-15

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Ask and Ye Shall Receive

***Spoilers for The Tawny Man Trilogy through chapter 15 of Golden Fool. References to the events of Farseer Trilogy and Liveship Traders.***

After a book and a half of anticipation, the moment is finally here: the Bingtowners have arrived at Buckkeep. Admittedly, the envoy we received was a bit of the Liveship B-team. When I saw a veiled figure among the crew, I was positively frothing for a Reyn appearance. But hey, Selden is cool too. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about what we got. Selden was being weird, we got major dragon talk, and Serilla was also there. I was absolutely thrilled with the whole event.

This section of chapters was loaded, and there is a lot to cover. One of my favorite subtle plotlines as we get deeper into Tawny Man is Fitz developing a sense of himself as a man at the Buckkeep court. We spent two-thirds of the Farseer Trilogy watching Fitz navigate his boyhood on the fringes of court life. His transition to manhood mostly happens away from the royal seat, but now he’s back- redefining his role and relationship to the Farseer crown through the lens of adulthood. It’s been fascinating to watch him reconcile the courtly life he knew as a boy while trying to carve out his place as a man.

Unfortunately for Fitz, adult life at Buckkeep means fighting with practically everyone…

Buckkeep Fight Night

The keep currently has strong “guests who have overstayed their welcome” energy. Add to that the newly arrived Bingtown contingent, and the castle is a veritable pressure cooker.

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Reactions from the Realm: Fool’s Errand, Chapters 26-Epilogue

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Screaming. Crying. Throwing up.

***Spoilers for The Tawny Man Trilogy through the end of Fool’s Errand . References to the events of Farseer Trilogy and Liveship Traders***

I am going to need someone to explain to me how Robin Hobb spent an entire book preparing us for what was coming, only for me to be completely blindsided by Nighteyes’ death. A mere two posts ago, I was over here preaching “Constant Vigilance,” reminding myself that we were back in the Six Duchies, which means certain disaster and heartbreak. And yet, I still managed to let my guard down. After the intensity of the Piebald battle, I let myself be lulled into a moment of comfort, only to have the emotional rug viciously pulled out from under me.

Honestly, I am not ok.

Reading Nighteyes’ death felt like watching a slow-motion horror film. It began so beautifully- wolf and man reunited, curled together, slipping into the shared dreamspace. As the hunting dream progressed, there was a slow, dawning realization of what was occurring. At first, it was just an inkling that something was off. By the time we get to Fitz waking up and confirming that these final dream moments were, in fact, Nighteyes saying goodbye, I felt like I wanted to start moving backward and undo what I had just read. No, no, no… But it was too late.

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Reactions from the Realm: Fool’s Errand, Chapters 20-25

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World’s Colliding!

***Spoilers for The Tawny Man Trilogy through chapter 25 of Fool’s Errand . References to the events of Farseer Trilogy and Liveship Traders***

Whew! The plot is thickening and the action is actioning. The titular errand seems to be approaching its conclusion, and with a bit more excitement than my typical errands. (Although a trip to the grocery store with both of my children has its share of battles.)


I have to give it up- Robin Hobb’s masterful storytelling is on full display in these chapters. I found myself particularly appreciative of the minor scene with the Wit-bonded deer from earlier in the book. When Fitz is filling in the Fool (and us) on the details of his time with the Witted folk and his learning of the ways of the Old Blood, we get an interlude where he senses a wrongness in a deer. Rolf explains that the human bond-partner of the deer merged her consciousness into the animal rather than die. This is meant to illustrate for Fitz how Wit magic can be perverted, which lays important groundwork for us to quickly catch on to what’s going on with the Prince’s lady-cat seductress.

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Reactions from the Realm: Fool’s Errand, Chapters 16-20

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Badass Fitz Returns!

***Spoilers for The Tawny Man Trilogy through chapter 20 of Fool’s Errand . Heavy references to the events of Farseer Trilogy and Liveship Traders***

Fire up the Mystery Machine, things are getting pretty spooky in Galekeep! I am really loving the mystery vibes of Fool’s Errand. When it was revealed that we were in cat country, I should have expected things to get weird, and the atmosphere at Galekeep did not disappoint. Everyone is hiding something, Fitz is looking foine in his fancy clothes, and utter disaster lurks around every corner.

In my last post, I noted that it was great to have Fitz and Nighteyes reunite. What I failed to realize is that their time apart was actually a blessed mercy on us: giving us a break from the unrelenting slow march toward Nighteyes’ death. This is fucking brutal. I feel like I am in an emotional guillotine. The blade is going to drop and I am going to be destroyed. I know Nighteyes is prideful, but can we please fashion him a little saddle or something? Watching him push himself to the limit – all while recovering from a cat attack (did I say I liked cats before? Fuck cats!) – is a lot to handle. Fitz, who is very generous with his own life force, does a little more skill healing/life infusion, which Nighteyes flat-out forbids him from doing again.

I’m beginning to fear that the relative lack of emotional destruction in Liveship Traders compared to Farseer Trilogy lulled me into complacency. Time to get my head back in the game. We are in the Six Duchies now. Constant vigilance!!!!

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Reactions from the Realm: Fool’s Errand, Chapters 11-15

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Release the cats!

***Spoilers for The Tawny Man Trilogy through chapter 15 of Fool’s Errand. Heavy references to the events of The Farseer Trilogy and mentions of Liveship Traders***

After taking our time settling back in with Fitz and Friends – catching up on things we missed and reorienting ourselves to the slower pace of the Six Duchies – things seem to be taking shape in our story.

We’re back in Buckkeep, and everyone is back on their bullshit. The Fool and Chade concoct a ruse to bring Fitz back into the fold unnoticed, which naturally involves treating him like dogshit around the clock. Oh well- it’s the only way! They can’t risk him having even a single item of comfort in his hidden, windowless sleeping chamber, yet they’re somehow fine relying on an even-Clark-Kent-would-be-unimpressed level of physical disguise. Which is to say, there is no disguise. Just the trust that a servant’s outfit and a few half-hearted mannerisms (which Fitz consistently botches) will suffice. I suppose by now they assume that as long as Fitz is getting the raw end of the deal, things will work out.

The Plot Thickens

We’ve got a missing prince, and Detective Fitz is on the case! I thoroughly enjoyed watching him go full Sherlock Holmes. We get scenes straight out of Law and Order: Six Duchies:

Fitz: “Begin the night before he disappeared…”
“… and tell me all that you know.”

I didn’t quite realize the Venn diagram between assassin training and detective work was practically a circle, but I’m not going to question it.

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Reactions from the Realm: Ship of Destiny, Chapters 22-25

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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!

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Reactions from the Realm: Liveship Traders: Previously on the Cursed Shores

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We’re not in the Six Duchies anymore, Toto.

***Spoilers for all of Liveship Traders (Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, and Ship of Destiny) up to my Ship of Destiny blogging journey that begins at chapter 11. Light mentions of Farseer Trilogy, no direct major plot spoilers***

If you’ve been following along, you know I started blogging my journey through The Realm of the Elderlings at the exceedingly logical point of about 75% through the second trilogy. The good news is, that’s only the sixth book in a sixteen-part literary universe, so there is plenty of ground ahead of me to cover. Still, it felt wrong to neglect my beloved Farseer Trilogy (Fitz + me forever) and the first three-fourths of Liveship Traders.

I already shared a post to give some (wildly insufficient) broad-stroke thoughts on Farseer, so Liveship Traders, come on down!

After following Fitz as he grew from boy to assassin to sailor/warrior to wolf-man to rizz lord to hermit (a tale as old as time), diving into Liveship Traders was a real breath of fresh sea air. I’d picked up vague rumblings that Liveship Traders was a good time. Basically, “don’t worry about missing Fitz, there’s a whole cast of wacky characters waiting for you along the Cursed Shores.” So I downloaded the full trilogy to my Kindle (because it’s comforting to see you have 80 hours left in your read), downed second breakfast, and dove in!

And what an adventure it has been!

I have been absolutely eating up Liveship Traders. The characters are rich (bow down to Queen Robin), the pace is quick, and the story keeps me on my toes. You never know when someone’s going to lose a limb!

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Reactions from the Realm: Ship of Destiny, Chapters 12-14

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Oh no, characters are briefly happy again!

***Heavy spoilers for The Liveship Traders through chapter 14 of Ship of Destiny. Minor references to The Farseer Trilogy***

Thus begins our regularly scheduled programming. My tentative (and highly flexible) plan is to read a few chapters at a time and post my reactions as I make my way through the rest of Ship of Destiny. If all goes well and my heart survives the remainder of this trilogy, I will sail straight into The Tawny Man Trilogy (I think that’s next?) and keep this party going!

Well, Robin, you’ve done it again, you clever, clever lady. I came out the gate hot, titling my first post “Robin Hobb, You Raggedy Bitch.” At the time, I wondered if I should soften it, worried it might sound a tad aggressive. But if I’m going to be anything on this journey, it’s authentic- so couth be damned, I let it rip. Now, I hope it’s beyond apparent that no one has ever been called a raggedy bitch with more love and admiration in the history of the phrase. And Robin “the Weaver” Hobb has got me again. The reveal of the Kennit-Paragon connection truly blew my mind.

There is certainly more to uncover in this tangled history, but when the trail of breadcrumbs led to Paragon revealing he was Kennit’s family ship – wow! (If this was exceedingly obvious to everyone else, please just let me revel in my simpleness).

All those little hints – Kennit’s past abuse, his connection to Igrot, Paragon’s visceral reaction to pirates, his discomfort at Althea and Brashen’s consensual coupling (!!) on-board. Once Paragon began piecing it together, my mind was racing through so many little moments and hints dropped along the way. I am sure a re-read would reveal even more layers leading up to this moment. Bow down to the queen weaving this rich, devastating tapestry.

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Reactions from the Realm: The Farseer Trilogy, Reader’s Quest

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My Brave Journey Setting Forth into The Realm of the Elderlings

***Spoilers for The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb ahead***

Author’s Note: When I began my blogging journey through The Realm of the Elderlings, I happened to start at the natural spot of about 75% through the second trilogy. So, in the event that any human soul stumbles upon and happens to follow my journey, I thought it might be nice to share a few reflections on The Farseer Trilogy and The Liveship Traders up to my first post.

These early reflections only scratch the surface, but if you enjoy this glimpse into my descent into Hobb-induced madness, I hope you will check out my in-depth reaction pieces to the later series. (Where else can you go for predictions of polyamory involving boats?) Without further ado…

The Farseer Trilogy

As someone who holds every word of The Farseer Trilogy in the highest esteem, I can conceivably see how this series isn’t for everyone. (I mean, those people are of course horrifically wrong, but that’s their right.) So here’s what I’ll concede: Is it the fastest-paced story ever told? No. Does Assassin’s Quest drag a bit at times? Perhaps.

But damn it, I don’t care. This story was absolutely for me. I was right there alongside Fitz on every Eda- and El-cursed step of his quest. If anything, a bit of suffering along the way (I’m looking at you, coterie) only deepened my immersion.

A little about me to set the stage: I occasionally enjoy a bit of romance in my literary endeavors. So what a nice surprise to find out this was the greatest love story of all time- just between Fitz and me, rather than any characters on the page.

I can’t quite say what it was that drew me to this journey, but one thing’s for sure: I could never have anticipated the ride I was about to embark on. There were a few omens early on that made it clear I was going to need to buckle the fuck up.

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