Hobb-A-Long Read-A-Long discussion

Still liking this so far. I say this because I thought it was going to be like the liveship books, which weren't my favorite. But it's not! I'm enjoying the new characters and I'm excited about the journey ahead. Alise is beginning to stick up for herself to get what she wants. I like Thymara as well, she seems to have had it rough but she is leaving that negative part of her life behind. Or maybe bringing the negativity with her? Epic journey time?!

I am starting to get a little confused with all the different dragon names and descriptions, as well as all the other new characters to keep up with. Maybe I just have "teacher brain" so close to the holidays!

It's pretty easy to gauge the relationship between Thymara and her mother by seeing how enthusiastic her mother is about the job offer that had been posted. She clearly has little affection for her daughter, and wishes she were out of her life; but strangely, even she sees fairly objectively no future for Thymara if she remains in Trehaug, so any remote chance for Thymara seems better than nothing at all; maybe then she somewhat meets her ethical obligations to her daughter, if not possessing the more perfect maternal inclinations a mother should have.

The stigma of being born with claws or other deformities is so severe in the Bingtown/Rain Wild area that one might have to reconsider what we learned in Ch. 3 of Ship of Magic, when it is revealed that Ephron Vestrit, with his wife Ronica's tacit approval, had to kill one of Keffria's newborns because it was a "monster". Maybe it was actually an otherwise healthy and viable infant like Thymara, and it was destroyed simply because of social conventions or preconceptions about what constitutes being human.

Even Thymara is seemingly brainwashed by these cultural predilections for normalcy, and feels herself compelled to justify her own existence to her mother and her society by fervently straining to be seen as a productive person; and also not enter into any romantic attachments( which are taboo in Trehaug) so as not to perpetuate the tendency toward greater birth defects and prenatal mortality that those with the greatest dragon-like abnormalities are prone to pass on to their offspring; though by repressing herself from ordinary human desires that everyone else enjoys, she often thinks of herself as "not fit to live" to the extent of trying in at least one incident in the past to kill herself.

So when she and her future fellow keepers come together to join the expedition, their situation is like something you would see in the movie "The Dirty Dozen", where a bunch of doomed misfits who are the scorn of the community are given an opportunity to change their fates with what Thymara's concerned father recognizes is effectively a suicide mission.

The Trader's Counsel at Cassarick sees this as a no-lose proposition either way it turns out: If the dragons and their keepers actually find the Elderling city of Kelsingra and it's attendant treasures, traders in Cassarick stand to become very wealthy; if the expedition fails, the community will be rid of the obnoxious dragons( who have become something of a public nuisance as they harass the excavation crews and other residents in Cassarick) and the generally heavily marked Rain Wild teenagers that serve as their keepers, whom most Rain Wilders would just as soon not see remain in their city, and potentially interbreed.

Sarah wrote: "Still liking this so far. I say this because I thought it was going to be like the liveship books, which weren't my favorite. But it's not! I'm enjoying the new characters and I'm excited about the..."

The interesting thing about Thymara and Alise at this point is how much psychologically stronger the far younger Thymara is. Her entire life has been a struggle for respect and self-reliance, from the moment she became aware that she was different from everyone else; and that her own mother wished that her father had never gone after that midwife and prevented her from ending his daughters life. Thymara must wake up everyday knowing nearly everybody she encounters will think of her as a mistake or a travesty committed by her parents for which they should be ashamed; so she never lets up trying to prove herself to her fellow Rain Wilders, even realizing what a hopeless task it is.

Alise is somewhat handicapped by her lack of beauty and she does not come from wealth; yet she possesses great intelligence and has developed an expertise in the study of Elderling civilization and their relationship to dragons that perhaps she uniquely possesses. Yet she has been largely sheltered throughout her life, going from her father's loving home to being a domestic, subservient underling, valued only for her potential fecundity by her domineering and faithless husband. She has never known the opportunity or burden that has been the wellspring of Thymara's toughness and core self-confidence; so it is a completely unprecedented experience for her to embark on this independent endeavor to the Rain Wild; and at least initially, she seems too unsure of herself and her own judgement to stay the course, nearly being talked out of continuing by Paragon and Althea, and (ironically, as it will turn out) only being reinforced in her original conviction by Sedric; who will shortly regret not taking the opportunity to whisk her back to Bingtown. She hasn't yet been tested the way Thymara has in life, and it remains to be seen if she will discover the inner resources it takes to attain a strong sense of self.