Spiral Dance
In which some are parted and others are reunited.
One thing I’m finding about reading a chapter a day, instead of speeding through both books in a single weekend the way I did the first time, is that I’m feeling the emotion more at the places where people are lost to one another, because they’ve known each other longer. I mean, in the story it’s the same amount of time, but the relationship has more weight to me when it’s been sitting in my head for weeks instead of hours.
I have difficulty seeing chapter breaks, so I have had to learn to be more aware. Sometimes I’m ahead of the reading schedule because I noticed a chapter break one chapter later than I intended. Like you, I don’t normally read slowly. I wonder if I will remember more details because I have taken the time to savour the story?
This chapter is certainly freighted with sorrow. Rool Tiazan is comforted at the end, in a way that inevitably makes me think of Daav and Aelianna. Here is the beginnings of lifemates in Clan Korval?
I think so, Helen — the beginning of the mystical life-mates we see in latter books.
Just to note: Rool’s thoughts during this chapter are about the “galaxy” as opposed the the “universe.”
Here we’re told in no uncertain terms that: Jela considered the Rimmer pilot a real, true person—like he was, and not some fabrication born of survival and a crazy woman’s need. Confirming that “Cantra, the Rimmer pilot” was not a real, true person.
Tears here, at their parting. I remember feeling angry about it my first time through. I could see that there was almost a third of the book left, and I didn’t understand why we’d lose Jela so soon.