Hobb-A-Long Read-A-Long discussion

Besides being ill and morose, Greft has to go through the further indignity of having the boat he has coveted and taken care of during the trip claimed by Tats and another keeper, because the keepers need it for their hunting, and Greft no longer has need for it (and the boat is after all property of the whole group, and not his personal belonging). Greft starts to challenge Tats directly on this, but can't muster the strength, and justs sits there humiliated and defeated. Later, in a final desperate attempt to save himself, he steals the dragon blood from Sedric's room ( A. Did he find out about this from Jess? B. Why hasn't Sedric just thrown the blood out by now, given his change of heart?), and takes the boat and some food, apparently intending to try to heal himself, and leave permanently. By the time Carson and Sedric catch up with him, he has been fatally wounded by a gallator, and he dies in front of them.

It's a pathetic ending for character who may have been the most brilliant and able, and most committed of the group, but he may have had the cards stacked up against him even more than could have been guessed when he was first introduced. We knew he had had a very difficult upbringing, which affected how he dealt with people; and his markings were so profound that he would have seemed a likely candidate for dying young; but a lot of his atrocious behavior dealing with his fellow keepers makes sense now that one realizes that he must have known his health was declining; and he then became overzealous and desperate about trying to take control of the mission and leave nothing to factors beyond his purview; eventually it became obvious to all that for all his confidence and his assuring manner, he couldn't cope with the leadership role he tried to take upon himself; and probably just didn't have enough time to readjust and learn to work constructively and responsibly with the other keepers; he didn't have a real chance.

Even though everybody had a right to hate him, his death shakes up everybody, as they realize that they themselves might have ended up like him if they had the kind of mental and physical baggage he was burdened with carrying( It is strange that the author has killed off the last remaining villains ( Jess and Greft) in the series ( excluding Sedric, who seems to have reformed; and Hest, who is at present nowhere near the point of action.) so other than the dragons themselves, who are going to be antagonists from this point on midway through the series)?

Bellin, the deckhand (married to Swarge) tries to put the fear of God into the female contingent of the expedition, by using the occasion of Jerd's miscarriage to harangue the girls about the dangers of coupling with the males during the trip. I get how it could be "cruel to be kind" to fail to make an object lesson of Jerd's predicament, but Bellin in my opinion is so harsh and abusive to the girls (who are already finding the situation with the delivery of the dead deformed infant and it's disposal overboard traumatizing) that it makes a grim experience almost unbearable; and it's likely going to set the girl's minds toward bitterness and resentment of Bellin instead of learning the lesson she was ostensibly trying to impart to them.

Besides, I don't think this is just about Bellin trying to save the girls from a terrible fate: Bellin herself has had several miscarriages with her husband ( with no viable children surviving), and going through this with Jerd's pregnancy must make her relive those nightmares all over again. It might even be more unsettling to Bellin if the girls were to actually give birth to a viable infant, that Bellin would have take care of while the mother were still on the expedition hunting or seeing after a dragon; then Bellin would be cruelly attached to an infant not her own, in contemplation of her own childlessness.

But unfortunately, this is part and parcel of what it means to be a crew member of the Tarman, at least for the run of this particular expedition. The Cassarick council gave Leftrin the charge of taking a bunch of largely unsupervised teenagers and the dragons upriver to settle them in Kelsingra, and it is his and the crew members' responsibility to aid those keepers and hunters as best they can with what would amount to being health care, as far as pregnancies and their aftermath go.

Thymara is livid about having wings sprouted on her by Sintara without her permission, and begins to confront her. Sintara says that Thymara "isn't finished yet" and that "she will be pretty". But Thymara asks if the wings are functional, and learns that the wings are only ornamental, and she won't be able to fly. "Beautiful and useless" is how Thymara, (really upset by now) terms them. She and Sintara start to have a mismatched fight, with Thymara belittling Sintara for also having wings, and not being flightworthy; and Sintara barely containing her physical wrath from destroying Thymara; when Rapskal and Heeby come flying out of nowhere (after they had been given up for lost) and announce that they have found Kelsingra!

One of the reasons I think this is the best book of the series is that they get to Kelsingra a lot sooner than I had been anticipating ( I thought that it was maybe coming at the end of the third book, or the start of the 4th; or even as the climax at the end of the series, but it was a pleasant turn when it came); and the end of the book is stirring as Sintara takes to flight for the first time on the last line ( or not! As we will see in the next book!).