The Robin Hobb Collection discussion

ch16 - confirmation!
the wound both reyn and malta have are coming from the dragon as she marked them. i wonder whether that means that the serpents will recognize malta as a friend and not eat her when they strand? :)

wow! i loved the scene with the dragon soaring above bingtown chasing the chalcedeans. if one dragon can do that, imagine what all those serpents could do.
loved grag & selden. that boy definitely got the dragonitis badly.

ch17 - and selden's dragonitis is leading so some scales on his own! keffria's remark is interesting when she notes that jani looks very much like the dragon as well.

so all those marks, scars, and warts on the rain wild traders hands and faces, what are they? scales apparently. from where? the water, the air?

how did the elderlings look? i would assume they were scaled as well then?
plus the dragon mentioned she marked reyn, malta and presumably now selden. but these rain wild traders have had their warts for ages? so how i that different?

so many questions, so little answers!
i'm looking forward to another paragon chapter and finding out whether kennit is a ludwick (or whatever they are called) livetraders son or not!


o, and forgive me the cheap word play, but i can't resist: reyn is certainly putting on the acid! :)
this book (Spilling the Beans on the Cat's Pajamas) just told me it's australian slang, i thought it was quite fitting

Hanne wrote: "so all those marks, scars, and warts on the rain wild traders hands and faces, what are they? scales apparently. from where? the water, the air?
"

I always thought of them as sort of like radiation damage from their proximity to the river. Maybe they explain it better in the books, and I just don't remember.

radiation? that's an interesting notion. so far we haven't had much explanation but they spent quite a bit of time making us notice that they're not just warts, but really scale-like

ch18 - seems like Kennit is quite shocked to hear the name Paragon, let alone Paragon in Divvytown! but then a few remarks follow that make me worry about kennit and the kind of person he really is

"Was it beyond the control of killing a few men and sinking a ship again?"
"He had dealt with Paragon once, he'd just have to do it again."

What the heck? So Kennit is the one who ruined Paragon? And presumably tried to sink him? Right here i would doubt that Kennit is a trader's son, given the bond they seem to have with their ship, i'd be surprised that he would do that?!?
So what options are there? Igrot took the ship, Kennit was on there, and the boy was someone else entirely?
(i'll have to re-read those paragraphs in ch14 now!)

Especially with this following:
"Wasn't it enough to strike a boy dumb? no need to cut out his tongue when he hardly spoke a word for 3 years."

seems like how i interpreted ch14 is completely off.


Interesting as well is Bolt/Vivacia's reaction to hearing the names Brashen and Althea.

Hanne wrote: "radiation? that's an interesting notion. so far we haven't had much explanation but they spent quite a bit of time making us notice that they're not just warts, but really scale-like"

That is just how I viewed it. There is something the environment that is effecting them physically. Like being exposed to radiation.

Oof panic over.
Re-read parts of ch14 and it does literally say "Kennit's family liveship"
Good lord, robin hobb is doing a number on me here, come with the answers already!


To Kennit he left only his icy-cold resolve that he would escape, that he would leave it all behind and that someday his own exploits would forever blot from the memory of the world all trace of Igrot. Someday, Kennit resolved, he would restore all that Igrot had broken and destroyed. He would make it as if the evil old pirate had never been. No one would even recall his name. Everything Igrot had ever dirtied would be hidden away or silenced.

Even Kennit's family liveship.

That was how it was supposed to have been."

(still ch18) a small light has gone up in my head!
the idea of this 'silenced boy' still got me confused, thinking there was another boy on the ship (which for a while there i thought would be the trader's son, which meant kennit was someone else)

what if the boy is both?
what if Kennit is talking about himself there? what if the striking was metaphorical? and all the rest invented by kennit to protect his new invented self?
he might have cut out the tongue of his mother and drop her off on the island to prevent her for talking about who he is(assuming it really is his mother of course) just like he tried to get rid of Paragon

this means he completely invented that story about living on the island and igrot capturing him there on the island. instead igrot just captured the liveship, got rid of most of the crew except for kennit, who was the bleeding sulking lad in the hold of Paragon.
right now - kennit is so ashamed of who that lad was, he tried to erase the entire history and made up a new childhood for himself

but paragon being around is of course getting in the way of that plan

ch19 - and while Serilla is seeking her self-esteem again, she's raising into my opinions again.

kendry sails in, fully aware of his dragon heritage.
at least he didn't turn completely nasty like Bolt/Vivacia.

i wonder how ophelia will sail back in?

ch20 - and off to a pirate ship.

but to be honest, the only thing i want is read more about kennit and paragon...

Hanne wrote: "wow! i loved the scene with the dragon soaring above bingtown chasing the chalcedeans."

Yes - and melting them with dragon snot was cool too.

Rob wrote: "I always thought of them as sort of like radiation damage from their proximity to the river. Maybe they explain it better in the books, and I just don't remember. "

This is how I initially thought of it as well but now it appears there is more too it. Maybe it's the proximity to the dragons that does it - or maybe the River contains some dragon essence in it.

Hanne wrote: "(he might have cut out the tongue of his mother and drop her off on the island to prevent her for talking about who he is"

Ooh - I hadn't thought of that - He must have hated who he was so much that he reinvented himself.

Hanne wrote: ""Was it beyond the control of killing a few men and sinking a ship again?"
"He had dealt with Paragon once, he'd just have to do it again.""

Ah yes - So this is the first time we see that Kennit/Kerr Ludlock was directly responsible for sinking Paragon

exciting times! it's so weird because kennit has been around since book 1 so you feel you kind of know him, but then all these revelations just add a very core layer to him that isn't very pretty is it?

Really the story lines are converging.