The Companion is an anti-bildungsroman, a novel about the disability or refusal to grow. Disability to grow has a history of course: Pale, brittle and vulnerable children ? children are as light as feathers, children weigh
next to nothing when adults try to pick them up to hold them, children get smaller and smaller through the novel. This is the history of how such children alternately rebel against and are crushed by the adult world.
There are dwarves accompanying them, these dwarves ...