The following abstract was submitted to the South Central Modern Language Association conference in 2010. It was presented on the Re-Creations of the American West in Popular Culture Special Session.
In her Soldier Son trilogy, Robin Hobb establishes a fantasy milieu powerfully evocative of the American West during the late nineteenth century. Although the correspondence between her series’ nation of Gernia and the expanding United States is incomplete, it is explicit enough that it allows for the formation of a Tolkienan “inner consistency of reality,” one especially suited to an American audience and one which allows for postcolonial examination and critique of such dominant cultural attitudes as manifest destiny. This is particularly true of the first volume in the trilogy, Shaman’s Crossing, in which the primary features of the milieu are established, including its geography, history, and principal conflicts in which it is involved.