Get Nerdy With Me No. 8
Legendborn's "leap of faith" motif & how to annotate it
Cliffs. Ridgelines. Rooftops. Dangerous precipices reappear (like a cycle) in many Legendborn scenes—most often in moments when Bree and Sel are alone together.
My favorite precipice moment is when Sel utters, “You are my king now, cariad.”1
In this moment, Bree and Sel lean on the sturdy railing of a balcony at the Legendborn lodge. It feels like the first time they’re both on an edge (and safe together) and on equal footing. Btw: they’re safe from physically falling off that balcony, but not safe from falling in love.
The steep drops in the scenery around Bree and Sel are symbolic, a perfect device for two characters who push boundaries and exist so close to the edges. Bree and Sel, for example, both have precarious footholds within the Order. Their belonging to the organization seems to hang questionably in balance. Their emotional footholds are on unstable ground too. Their anger is powerful and, when unharnessed, destabilizing.
I used to think Legendborn’s precipice imagery was only important at the beginning and end of the book.2 It wasn’t until my current reread that I realized how prominent the cliff motif is in the middle. I just hadn’t noticed it before. As I annotated more and more cliffs and steep drops mid plot, I began calling this Tracy Deonn’s “leap of faith motif.”
ANNOTATE THE LEAP OF FAITH MOTIF
(1) The Eno Quarry Jumps
The story is bookended by the Eno Quarry. It’s where we meet Bree and Sel in Chapter 1 and where we say goodbye to them at the very end of Chapter 58.
In both scenes, Bree thinks about cliff jumping into the quarry lake, and Sel observes her. The first time, Sel belittles Bree for her desire to jump. The second time, he understands her needs and supports her desire to fly and fall into the water.
(2) Bree thinks about the Eno Quarry in a pivotal scene
Aether-drunk from administering a scion-squire oath and feeling bullied, Sel blows off steam by felling trees and tossing them off a cliff. Bree goes out to talk to him. By the end of the conversation, she ends up near the edge of the ridge scared.
“There’s only a foot between me, the edge of the ridge, and a steep drop down to the valley and the arena floor below. It’s much too much like our first meeting. And this time I know exactly who Sel is and what he’s capable of.”
Legendborn, Chapter 35, page 340
(3) Sel’s Dramatic Entrances and Exits
Sel has a flair for drama and grand entrances an exits. Take the Page Oath Ceremony for example. He waits, perched in high tree branches, for everyone to arrive. Then he leaps down into the ceremonial area, alarming all the newbie pages except Bree, when the formalities are about to begin.
“That jump would have broken a normal person’s legs, and none of us detected his presence. I would startle, too, if this was the first time I’d encountered Selwyn Kane.”
Legendborn, Chapter 12, p 108
In Chapter 36, when Sel is felling and tossing huge trees to release his anger, he ends a real heart-to-heart conversation with Bree (their first) by leaping. Like one of the felled trees he’s been tossing, he drops off the side of ridge.
Before I can say another word, he steps over the cliff and drops out of sight, landing without a sound far below.
Legendborn, Chapter 36, p 342
(3) Bree’s reluctance to fall, but preponderance to jump! (or being tossed)
Bree is “not particularly fond of heights," but she finds herself on precipices often as she vies to become squire (Ch 28, p 262).
In the first page trial, she kills a hell boar construct by climbing an oak tree to jump onto its back, leaping dagger first.3 (Sel makes fun of her for this in the second page trial.)4
During the second page trial, a scavenger hunt, she looks for an aether-infused object on the library roof, eight stories up. Sel walks the “four-inch wide raised brick perimeter of the roof” as she looks around up there. She wonders:
“I keep waiting for him to jump, grab, or try to kill me again..”
Legendborn, Chapter 28, page 262
When the second page trial goes awry and Sel and Bree go underground to hide, Bree hesitates to enter a creepy tunnel system via a hole in the ground. But Sel, after “revealing a dark bottomless pit below” ends up “tossing [Bree] down into the gloom” without warning to save their lives.5
I like this little punny joke Tracy Deonn’s squeezes into a scene that ends with Sel and Bree leaping out of window:
“Lots of leaps here, but I’d buy that.”
[…]
“Please tell me you’re not jumping out of this window right now!”
“I’m not jumping out of this window right now,” he says. Then he promptly climbs up—and jumps.”
Legendborn, Chapter 37, page 348
(4) The emotional cliffs…
When Sel tells Bree some awful truths about his life and future prospects, she likens some of her reactions to falling off a cliff. Like….
When Sel tells Bree about the torturous effects of the oaths (if he’s forcibly removed from his post as Kingsmage), she feels this:
“Air leaves my lungs in a rush, like I’ve been tossed over the cliff myself.”
Legendborn, Chapter 36, page 342
When Sel reads the truth about his mom on the affidavit, he makes a sound:
“I recognize that sound. It’s the sound of holding on to a cliff by the edge of your nails. The sound of barely containing a pain so immense that to look at it, to raise your own flesh and examine what’s beneath, is to risk falling into a darkness you know you’ll never escape.”
Legendborn, Chapter 39, page 364
Bree often feels “on edge,” as do many other characters, but Bree protects herself from falling over her emotional edges. Her imaginary emotional wall, which is spoken about a dozen or so times in the book, is a force. Bree creates this visual device to keep what she names After-Bree’s fury at bay. Her emotional safety barrier keeps her from falling off an emotional cliff, until she’s ready to tear it down and make the leap.
(5) Fitz…
When Fitz is killed by the demon imp in Chapter 51 (page 450), the demon drops his body into a ravine. 💔 Sel isn’t there. Only Bree.
(6) Just outside the motif: bits of adjacent imagery
I can’t not mention little details that aren’t exactly cliffs or leaps of faith, but involve edges and leaps.
Sword play involves leaps and lunges and being on the edge of your heels. I often felt a little visual interplay between all the book’s sword edges and cliff edges.
Tracy Deonn often notes literal fringe details like how, “Candlelight turns the silver thread at the edges of [Sel’s] robe into a living thing: a thin line of white frames his face, a whip of electricity around his wrists.”6
Bree and Sel find themselves at great heights in Bloodmarked too.
But that’s another post for another day!
Thanks for reading the 8th installment in my series Get Nerdy With Me, where every day until Oathbound releases on March 4 (15 more days!), I’m deep diving a topic from the first two books in The Legendborn Cycle.
Legendborn, Chapter 57, p 487
Legendborn, Chapter 23, page 201.
“You can barely kill a hellboar construct without the assistance of the planet’s gravity.” He huffs a low laugh, like he’s been laughing at me about that trial ever since it happened.” (Legendborn, Chapter 30, page 277)
Legendborn, Chapter 29, page 271
Legendborn, Chapter 12, page 108
@shay I had to come back and edit this just now to add the cariad moment, which occurs on a precipice too (a balcony) - just wanted you to know!