Where things ratchet up…
***Spoilers for The Rain Wilds Chronicles through chapter 11 of Dragon Haven. Mentions of the events of The Farseer Trilogy, The Liveship Traders Trilogy, and The Tawny Man Trilogy are fair game, too.***
I knew these post-flood chapters would deliver, and boy did they. With so much action taking place, it feels only right to start with a character who has not physically appeared on the page since very early in the previous book: Hest. And while Hest may not be physically present in our story, his shadow certainly looms large- never more so than in this stretch of chapters.
Both Sedric and Alise cannot escape his insidious specter. Even as they’re finally free from his direct control – and experiencing real personal growth and self-awareness as a result – his influence still lingers in absentia.
But good news! They’re both making some serious progress.
For Alise, it’s a case of one step back, two strokes steps forward.
Caught in a liminal space – unaware of Sedric’s fate (and not loving the odds) – she discovers a locket bearing Hest’s image tucked inside Sedric’s pillow. I almost shrieked with joy that she was finally being let in on the “secret.”
That joy, however, was short-lived when it became clear we were not getting a moment of realization at all. She had instead reached peak delulu. I’ll let Alise’s thought process speak for itself:
“What did it mean? What could it mean?…
There could be but one explanation. Hest had had the locket made and entrusted it to Sedric to give to her. Why had he done such a thing?”
But one explanation indeed. 😑
If that’s our one step backward, a mere few chapters later Alise takes a giant leap forward by bedding Captain Leftrin in the very bunk of her presumed-dead friend – the same place the locket was discovered.
wizardwordship 