Robin Hobb Quote
There is a peculiar strength that comes to one who is facing the final battle. That battle is not limited to war, nor the strength to warriors. I've seen this strength in old women with the coughing sickness and heard of it in families that are starving together. It drives one to go on, past hope or despair, past blood loss and gut wounds, past death itself in a final surge to save something that is cherished. It is courage without hope. During the Red-Ship Wars, I saw a man with blood gouting in spurts from where his left arm had once been yet swinging a sword with his right as he stood protecting a fallen comrade. During one encounter with Forged Ones, I saw a mother stumbling over her own entrails as she shrieked and clutched at a Forged man, trying to hold him away from her daughter.The OutIslanders have a word for that courage. Finblead, they call it, the last blood, and they believe that a special fortitude resides in the final blood that remains in a man or a woman before they fall. According to their tales, only then can one find and use that sort of courage.It is a terrible bravery and at its strongest and worst, it goes on for months when one battles a final illness. Or, I believe, when one moves toward a duty that will result in death but is completely unavoidable. That finblead lights everything in one's life with a terrible radiance. All relationships are illuminated for what they are and for what they truly were in the past. All illusions melt away. The false is revealed as starkly as the true.
There is a peculiar strength that comes to one who is facing the final battle. That battle is not limited to war, nor the strength to warriors. I've seen this strength in old women with the coughing sickness and heard of it in families that are starving together. It drives one to go on, past hope or despair, past blood loss and gut wounds, past death itself in a final surge to save something that is cherished. It is courage without hope. During the Red-Ship Wars, I saw a man with blood gouting in spurts from where his left arm had once been yet swinging a sword with his right as he stood protecting a fallen comrade. During one encounter with Forged Ones, I saw a mother stumbling over her own entrails as she shrieked and clutched at a Forged man, trying to hold him away from her daughter.The OutIslanders have a word for that courage. Finblead, they call it, the last blood, and they believe that a special fortitude resides in the final blood that remains in a man or a woman before they fall. According to their tales, only then can one find and use that sort of courage.It is a terrible bravery and at its strongest and worst, it goes on for months when one battles a final illness. Or, I believe, when one moves toward a duty that will result in death but is completely unavoidable. That finblead lights everything in one's life with a terrible radiance. All relationships are illuminated for what they are and for what they truly were in the past. All illusions melt away. The false is revealed as starkly as the true.
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About Robin Hobb
Born in California, Lindholm grew up in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and married a mariner at age eighteen. The Alaskan wilderness and the ocean were prominent aspects of her life, influencing her writing. After an early career in short fiction, at age thirty Lindholm published her first novel while working as a waitress and raising children. The first work to bring her recognition was the 1986 novel Wizard of the Pigeons, a liminal fantasy set in Seattle. A forerunner of the urban fantasy genre, it received praise for Lindholm's depiction of understated magic and poverty. Her science fiction novella "A Touch of Lavender" was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. While critically well received, Lindholm's work did not sell well and she began writing under the pen name Robin Hobb in 1995.
Hobb achieved commercial success with her debut work under this pseudonym, the Farseer trilogy. An epic fantasy told as a first-person retrospective, it has been described as a character-driven and introspective work. Hobb went on to write four further series set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which received praise from critics for her characterization, and in 2005 The Times described her as "one of the great modern fantasy writers". Through her writing, Hobb explores otherness, ecocentrism, queerness, and gender as themes. She concluded the Elderlings series in 2017 and won the World Fantasy Award—Life Achievement in 2021.