Monthly Archives: September 2013

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 30

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Solcintra
Near Orbit

In which a new venture calls for new names.

The Service Families have declared themselves the new High Houses of Solcintra. That didn’t take long.

Partly in response, Cantra and Tor An decide to strengthen their association, from perhaps-temporary co-pilots to permanent clanmates. (As I recall, Shan’s recounting of the Clan’s history in one of the later novels implies that they didn’t take that step until after landfall, but it does make sense for them to take the step now, for all the reasons Tor An mentions – and it has always been said that the contract was with Clan Korval, so that’s all right. In situations like this, Lois McMaster Bujold is wont to say that “the Management reserves the right to have a better idea later.”)

And on reflection, while it makes first-glance sense for the idea of forming a Clan to have presented itself later, at the point where the voyage was over and Cantra and Tor An needed to decide how they were going to carry on into the future, I’m not sure the Cantra we’ve come to know in this duology would have made this choice then. Forming Clan with her co-pilot means hitching her destiny to someone else’s in a way she’s never done, and I get the feeling that on some level she’s only letting herself do it now because it’s not going to matter if they all die soon anyway. If they’d waited to decide until they knew for sure they had the rest of their lives ahead of them, I don’t know that she might not have got cold feet.

Schedule revision

The Liaden Universe novelette “Moon’s Honor” is now available as an e-book from Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords.

It reports itself to be around 35 pages long, about the same as the Prologue of Crystal Soldier, so I figure to spend one day on it and avoid throwing the schedule out more than necessary.

Consequently, the schedule following the conclusion of Crystal Dragon is now as follows:

  • 27/9 – “Eleutherios”
  • 28/9 – “Moon’s Honor”
  • 29/9 – “Where the Goddess Sends”
  • 30/9 – “A Spell for the Lost”
  • 1/10 – “The Wine of Memory”
  • 2/10 – Balance of Trade

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 29

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Solcintra

In which some details are hammered out.

Of all the familiar names that unexpectedly turn up in the duology, dea’Gauss is probably my sentimental favourite. (Although I feel moved to note that he’s not as accomplished a contract-wrangler as his descendant, if that’s not too obvious a thing to be worth saying; I can’t imagine the modern Mr dea’Gauss letting a clause get past him that was so ambiguous as to support several centuries of dispute about its interpretation.)

Another amusing thing in this chapter is the list of things the Solcintrans avoid using: genetic engineering, AI, mobile phones — in short, all the technologies whose absence might have caused a reader in 2006 to regard the twenty-year-old future established in Agent of Change as a bit dated.

(That said, it makes sense for a culture who use body language so heavily as the Liadens do to not make much use of mobile phones. You can’t bow properly over a mobile phone.)

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 28

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Solcintra

In which certain negotiations take place.

The two Solcintran negotiators both have names that recur in the Liaden Universe – which is perhaps only to be expected. Some of Nalli Olanek’s descendants will find themselves in dispute with some of Tor An’s descendants in Conflict of Honors, and Clan Hedrede is mentioned a couple of times in Scout’s Progress and Mouse and Dragon, with a Dath jo’Bern of that clan being an incidental character in the latter. (With thanks to the Liaden Wiki – my memory for obscure details is not that good.)

The Enemy have taken out High Command in its withdrawn and reinforced position, without having to pass through any of the intervening space, which just shows how much good that did.

We see the origin of Cantra’s logbook, which will become a tradition upheld by her successors; that answers something I’d been wondering aloud a while back.

Another thing I’d been wondering, though it never quite got to aloud, was about Moonhawk and Lute’s colleagues in the Great Weaving. It’s pretty obvious that Moonhawk is the same Moonhawk who is Priscilla’s guiding spirit when she’s a priestess of the Goddess, and seems clear therefore that the other guiding spirits from Priscilla’s religion are this Moonhawk’s sisters in the Great Weaving (I don’t recall that any of their names are ever given, in either context). What I’d been wondering was whether, since they’re presumably all a dramliza pairing like Moonhawk and Lute, all the guiding spirits have masculine sidekicks like Lute and it was just that somehow we’d never heard about them. The scene in this chapter where Lute learns that Moonhawk has made an independent space for him in the Weaving suggests that no, it’s just Lute.

(I think where I went wrong was at “dramliza pairing like Moonhawk and Lute”; there’s probably no other dramliza pairing that’s quite like Moonhawk and Lute. One of the other things I’ve been realising on this re-read is that my understanding of the dramliz from the first time through had been weighted too much toward taking Rool Tiazan and Lute as typical of their station, when as two of the few – or even, for all it’s said, the only two – free zaliata to have accepted the yoke, they’re each blazingly unique.)

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 27

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Solcintra

In which Cantra takes Tor An on an excursion, Rool Tiazan takes Liad dea’Syl on an excursion, and Arin takes himself on an excursion.

Two things in this chapter caused me to look up from the book and say “Oh!” in that tone of great enlightenment that means my backbrain has just done something clever, like figure out whodunnit before the detective. Neither of them are super-important; I think they struck me because I didn’t notice either of them the first time around (or if I did then, unlike most of the other revelations in this chapter, they didn’t stay with me).

Thing 1: During Master dea’Syl’s conversation with Rool Tiazan, he says the math predicts or prescribes that the new universe they’re planning to escape to will be constantly expanding – unlike the steady state of the universe they’re in now. This is, of course, one of the hints that this duology is not set in our universe, but the thing I realised this time is that it’s also the base explanation for the differences between how interstellar travel works in the duology compared to later. Long-distance navigation through space is bound to be different when space itself behaves differently.

Thing 2: According to the timing mentioned when Cantra is inspecting Salkithin, the ship she inherited from Jela, Salkithin is none other than the ship Commander Ro Gayda mentioned when she recruited Jela way back near the start of Crystal Soldier, the one he was to be made Captain of for its voyage to a then-unnamed place of storage, as the excuse for being detached and placed under Ro Gayda’s command.

And the maintenance crew of Salkithin, getting back to things I did notice the first time around, are – apart from being the crew that Jela commanded on that voyage – the founders of Jela’s Own Troop, of whom we will be hearing more much later. (And they’re not just X Strain; there’s a couple of Ms, a Y, and “Ilneri, who was, as far as Cantra could make it, a natural human”. I don’t know how much that’s going to affect the bodies of Jela’s Own Troop – as I’ve had occasion to comment before, we’ve never been told anything about how the Yxtrang go about making little Yxtrang – but it certainly explains a deal about the shape of the Troop’s minds.)

To finish the chapter off, the event we’ve been waiting for all this time heaves into view on the horizon, as what passes for the leadership of Solcintra at the moment turns to Wellik after their actual leaders do a runner. (It’s possibly my favourite of the Solcintra-as-it-really-was details that, for all the status jockeying and High House politics the Liadens get up to, there’s not a single Clan on Liad that was High House before the Great Migration, because the High Houses all had the resources and the lack of scruple to take off on their own.)

(I wonder what happened to them all.)

(Maybe they got eaten by a giant mutant star goat.)

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 26

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Solcintra

In which Rool Tiazan comes visiting.

Rool Tiazan warns Cantra that her actions on Vanehald have attracted the Enemy’s attention, and that the fact that Spiral Dance obeyed her then doesn’t mean it’s free of the Enemy’s influence, only that the Enemy has not chosen to exert that influence – yet.

Cantra expresses some doubt to herself and to Rool Tiazan that humanity is either saveable or, perhaps, worth saving, but I think it says something that when his lady asks her if she wants to keep Jela’s child, she doesn’t hesitate to say yes.

(I also appreciate that the pregnancy needs a bit of dramliz-healer help to be confident of a good outcome. It underlines how much work the tree had to do to get it going at all.)

Tor An’s Aunt Jinsu, whose advice about being well-rested he starts to offer, has been mentioned before: she’s the aunt who used to travel with Scholar tay’Palin in her younger days.

Liad dea’Syl is an observant man, and I wonder how much he has observed about Rool Tiazan. (Apart from the fact that Lucky likes him, which would have been pretty hard to miss.)

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 25

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Solcintra

In which Tor An reads Cantra such a scold as she hasn’t heard since nursery.

I think I’ve said already that one of the things that amuses me about the duology is getting to see Solcintra as it was, not as the Liadens fondly remember it being. Though there are bits that sound familiar – there’s already that obsession with High Family status and, as I also think I’ve said already, that us-and-them mentality. (Speaking of which, the fact that they count smartstrands as a them thing neatly explains why the Liadens don’t have them.)

Cantra’s observation that the ship Jela’s given her could carry “the keepings of a small planet” is a nice bit of ironic foreshadowing.

Tor An bailing Cantra out is another of the incidents that had previously appeared as a chapter-heading quote in Scout’s Progress. In the logbook quote, Cantra describes him as acting “all according to co-pilot’s duty”; what that brief excerpt from the logbook didn’t reveal is that this is the first time she’d accepted him as her co-pilot. (I don’t remember which chapter it was the heading of; I’m going to be interested, when we get up to Scout’s Progress, to see if there’s a reason why that particular chapter was matched with that quote/this incident.)

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 24

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Solcintra

In which Cantra receives a message from Jela.

I’d wondered how much vel’Anbrek had figured out of what was going on, so it’s good to have that established.

Cantra hadn’t grasped how much Jela regarded her, and perhaps had been resisting letting it count for anything; there’s a bit in one of the earlier chapters where she reflects that he doesn’t really know her, only her Rimmer pilot facade. In that I think she underestimated him: we know he’d seen through the grumpy part of the facade to the motivation underneath; what else might he have seen?

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 23

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Solcintra

In which some more reunions take place.

Cantra is still planning to go off on her lonesome at the first opportunity, but there are several people not wanting to give her that opportunity.

I’m intrigued by Wellik’s tattoo. What we’ve been told about X Strain tattoos is that they’re large and gaudy, to off-balance the people who have to look at them, and that a tattoo signifying the soldier’s born-to troop goes on the right cheek. Wellik’s tattoo is not large and gaudy, nor is it on the right cheek, so although he’s following the general trend of face tattooing he seems to be avoiding all the specific rules. Presumably he’s making some kind of statement; I wonder what it is.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 22

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Long Savannahs of the Blue

In which Cantra comes to a decision, and Rool Tiazan’s lady comes to an arrangement.

I get the feeling that the tree is worried about Cantra, and trying to help her, but most of what it knows about getting around Cantra comes from watching Jela doing it, and even aside from the fact that what works for Jela won’t necessarily work for anyone else, imitating Jela is not the most helpful thing to be doing right now.

The tree can, it seems, speak words on occasion, within limits. The words it gives to Cantra in this chapter are all memories of words, its answer to her question a reshuffling of the question itself. I wonder whose memories; the ones I recognise are from occasions when both Cantra and the tree have been present. The images it usually used to communicate with Jela were obviously drawn from its own store of memories, though, and I don’t offhand recall it ever talking to him with his. Perhaps it hasn’t spoken in words before because it doesn’t have very many words to draw on, and wasn’t used to using the ones it had; Jela was the first verbal person it had ever met, and he didn’t talk much, at that.

Meanwhile, Rool Tiazan and his lady (whose current state of existence does remind one of Aelliana’s, later) are making a house call. We see that not all the free dramliz are as altruistic, or as balanced in themselves, as Rool Tiazan and his lady, or Lute and Moonhawk. Which is saddening, but not really surprising, given the way the dramliz are brought up.

It’s indicated that Simbu’s dominant is only one of a group of dramliz plotting to supplant the Iloheen, which – on the one hand, obviously that’s not something it would be remotely reasonable to contemplate attempting on one’s own, but on the other hand, given the kind of person you’d have to be to want to supplant the Iloheen, I suspect that if they actually did succeed they’d be backstabbing each other in less time than it takes to say “Lords of Unmaking”.

Rool Tiazan is the kind of being you find in fairy stories about people who come to grief by not being precise about wording, and I think it’s significant that what he and his lady have agreed to is to lend one third of his strength as measured by the borrower – particularly since he has a track record of making his strength appear less than it is. (See also: not “it cost him an effort”, but “he knew she would see that it cost him an effort”.) Not that I blame him, since honest-and-upfront is clearly the wrong approach to take with an ally like this.