Monthly Archives: April 2014

Intelligent Design

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In which Trealla Fantrol gets a new butler.

This is another story where I wonder how it comes over to a reader who hadn’t read any of the later-set novels featuring yos’Galan’s robot butler, and who therefore didn’t know where it was going from the moment Roderick Spode appeared. (I’m not sure what we’re supposed to make of Roderick Spode. The story gives us no cause to suppose that that wasn’t actually his name, but it seems like a bit of a tidy coincidence if it was.)

Incidentally, I notice Jeeves is not the only inhabitant of Trealla Fantrol mentioned here with a name from a Terran story: the cat Merlin, mentioned as an earlier beneficiary of Val Con’s hunches, is another. Presumably that means he’s a more recent arrival than Anne.

It’s interesting that Val Con’s sense for a person in danger responds just as much to a machine person as to a living creature, but it cuts in both directions. There’s the obvious implication that the retired unit is a real person despite being composed of wires and code. But there’s a complication introduced in the fact that he was sending out a distress signal at the time Val Con got his hunch: assuming for the sake of discussion that it’s not just a coincidence, the idea that the distress signal might have actually been what triggered the hunch suggests that on some level technological signals and psychic communication might be the same thing. And after some of the sufficiently-advanced-technology shenanigans that went on the prequel duology, I definitely suspect the authors of doing this deliberately.

This is one of the stories that doesn’t have a definite position in the chronological order. Shan is not yet 20 Standard Years old, which is about the most solid indicator in the story. It’s set approximately around the same time as “Heirloom”, and I take it to be somewhat after, since there’s mention of Nova serving an apprenticeship with Luken and she didn’t seem in “Heirloom” to have had much previous involvement with Luken’s trade.

Tomorrow: “A Matter of Dreams”

Heirloom

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In which Pat Rin receives some advice, a history lesson, and a treasure.

With this story, we return to Liad, and Korval, about a decade after we last saw them. Nova yos’Galan is now twelve, and Pat Rin yos’Phelium, whom we last saw as a child on the day of her birth, is now a young man, and considering how he might make his way in society.

Reading these in chronological order does mean that the last time we saw Pat Rin was the day of Nova’s birth, which was also the day he demonstrated to his aunt an uncanny facility with dice — which makes it seem odd that in this story we’re told he’s been tested by the Healers and found to have no psychic talents of note. Perhaps in the intervening years the facility has faded away, or been redirected in another direction, or gone into hiding. While we’re on the subject, though, I did say I’d be watching whether he had much to do with dice when he took up his career as a gamester, which he does in this story, so I’ll note that his game of choice appears to be the card game piket, and no mention of dice at all.

Another trivial note, one of those connections the discovery of which are among my motivations for this project: Pat Rin’s new landlord is a textile merchant named bin’Flora, presumably a descendant of that bin’Flora to whom Jethri made his first sale way back in Balance of Trade.

I’m not sure what to make of Pat Rin’s dream at the beginning. It’s possible that it is, despite everything said against it, a prophetic dream foretelling Nova’s danger later in the story, but I don’t find that a compelling interpretation. I’m more inclined to think, given Pat Rin’s history, that if the endangered child in the dream had a face it would be Pat Rin’s own.

Tomorrow: “Intelligent Design”

Sticky

Now in Progress: Phase 3 – Introducing A New Generation (“Veil of the Dancer” through “Landed Alien”, via Conflict of Honors, Fledgling and Saltation)

Phase 4 – Agents of Change (Agent of Change through Carpe Diem)
will commence on Tuesday, 2 September 2014

Schedule | Find the stories | FAQ

Veil of the Dancer

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In which a scholar’s daughter learns much about the power of knowledge.

The telling of this story is interestingly done: it starts out like a fairy tale, but gradually shifts until the final scene is pretty much in the series’ usual mode. And there’s a related shift in the narrative voice’s selection of details: the story is set in a modern world, with computers and a thriving spaceport, but those details don’t really start getting mentioned until the latter part of the story, when the fairy tale gloss has already begun to slip away.

Much as I like this story, I’m uncomfortable about the way the authors have given Skardu’s fictional oppressive religion recognisable elements of the real religion of Islam. I suspect it’s at least partly done as part of the fairy-tale atmosphere, to add a bit of Arabian Nights flavour, but that doesn’t actually help; it makes it seem like the authors are saying that, because these cultural details have appeared in fairy stories, they’ve become a kind of exotic story spice that can be mixed into a new story without thinking about the real cultures and real people they came from. (This is not, regrettably, the only story in the Liaden series with this problem.)

On this re-read, I find myself comparing this story to Tamora Pierce’s story “Elder Brother”, which I read last year. It’s also set in an imagined culture with a religion that oppresses women (with, again, elements resembling elements of Islam), and the main female character’s arc is in many ways like Inas Bhar’s. One thing I get out of the comparison is that it highlights how much this is an outsider’s viewpoint of Skardu; the fairy-tale overlay makes it a story about somewhere far, far away, where people are strange and different, and although our protagonist was born there, she never really belongs. Skardu exists mainly as a place for the protagonist to leave. Pierce’s protagonist is also an outsider in her own culture (like Inas, she had one parent from somewhere with less restrictive ideas) who ends up leaving, but the depiction of her homeland is less distanced — and what really helps is that Pierce didn’t leave it at that; she returned to the setting later to explore the stories of the women inside the culture, who never had the chance to leave or who saw something in it worth staying for. Seeing Skardu fleshed out like that would make me feel better about this story; there’s a glimpse of what it might be like in Inas’s conversations with her sisters on the night of Humaria’s betrothal, but it’s not much set against the rest of the story, and more wouldn’t hurt.

Tomorrow: “Heirloom”

Mouse and Dragon – Epilogue

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Chancellor’s Welcome Reception for the Gallowglass Chair
Lenzen Ballroom, Administration Tower Three
University of Delgado

In which Jen Sar Kiladi comes to Delgado.

Sharon Lee once mentioned on her blog that there are apparently readers who are under the misapprehension that when Daav left Liad to be Kiladi, he was taking the easy way out. I can see where they might have got that impression from Scout’s Progress, where Daav spends a lot of time chafing at Liad and thinking about taking off for elsewhere, but I think Mouse and Dragon does a good job of counteracting it. Over the course of the novel, Daav makes accommodations and settles into his place on Liad, and the last few chapters show very clearly that in leaving Liad he’s leaving his son and his brother and many other people and things he values; the discovery of Aelliana’s presence was a help, but it’s clearly still traumatic for him.

One thing I notice about this chapter is that it never names the point-of-view character. I mean, it’s obvious who it is, but is he Daav yos’Phelium or Jen Sar Kiladi? (Kiladi on the outside, but Daav on the inside where he can hear Aelliana? Though I notice that at those moments, Aelliana also goes unnamed; apparently Kiladi is aware of possessing an invisible companion – I suppose that would have been a necessary adaptation, since neither Daav nor Aelliana would have been happy if she’d had to pretend not to be there most of the time – but not of her identity. Likewise, her comment about his sister isn’t attached to a name, and it’s possible the sister he remembers is not the same as the one she does.) That was a long parenthetical comment; where was I? Ah, yes, the question of his identity. There are moments where he doesn’t seem too clear on that question himself.

This is where we leave Aelliana and her beloved friend (whoever he is) for now; it will be a couple of months for us (and a larger number of years for them) before we will get to see what becomes of the new situation on Delgado, and of the potential friendship with Scholar Waitley.

For now, there is a week or two of short stories, beginning with “Veil of the Dancer”, and then the novel Conflict of Honors.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 40

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In which Daav yos’Phelium dies and Jen Sar Kiladi returns to teaching.

Thus, Daav’s Balance: Having identified ignorance as the enemy, he will take the fight to the enemy by sending out Professor Kiladi to battle ignorance. In so doing, he will also remove himself from the clan and hide in a place where nobody will look for him, so that news of his death might be believed, and the Terran Party be given what they want before anyone else is harmed.

(And while a teacher with Kiladi’s accomplishments might surely have many grateful former students, given the name of the university involved I like to think that the influential alumnus who arranged for Kiladi to be given a place was Chames Dobson.)

Thus, also, the truth about Daav’s blackouts: through the lifemate bond, Aelliana lives on in him, in the manner of Rool Tiazan’s lady in the old story. Incidentally, it’s interesting to note that the last time Rool Tiazan’s lady was mentioned, it was Daav himself recounting that very story in Local Custom. Of course, knowing the story doesn’t mean he believes it, and even if he does one can understand why he might not think of it being repeated in his own case. Rool Tiazan and his lady were of the dramliz, and planned for the eventuality, neither of which are true of Daav and Aelliana.

I see a whole bunch of things going into this being possible. Daav is doubtless correct that the Tree had a hand in it (or whatever the corresponding metaphor is for Trees), but I don’t think that’s all. I think that, however it’s possible for Aelliana’s mind to be hosted in Daav’s head, it can’t have hurt that he already had from his Grandmother the ability to hold other personalities in his head, nor that he’d been keeping that ability in practice with Professor Kiladi. (It’s interesting to think that perhaps, in a sense, Professor Kiladi is responsible for saving Aelliana.) Another thing, which I noticed for the first time on this re-read, is that Master Kestra makes a point of mentioning that Daav no longer overflows with mental whatever-it-is that previously caused Healers to have to keep their distance: whatever it was he had too much of for one person, apparently it’s now been chanelled into sustaining two.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 39

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In which Daav plans his Balance against the enemy which took Aelliana.

I’m interested by the implication that the thoughtfulness of Daav’s Balance here owes something to his previous experience of loss and Balance, which taught him the limitations of the method of direct reprisal.

Using that Diary entry as the chapter heading also provides another more subtle bookend: the last time it was used was on the chapter in which Daav and Aelliana first met.

It’s a bit difficult to know how much to talk about what else happens in this chapter when it hasn’t been explicitly called out yet, even though as a re-reader I know — and, since this is a prequel, even on the first read I knew — what’s going on. I think I’ll save that for next time.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 38

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In which Daav grieves.

Daav’s grief is very effectively conveyed in this chapter, to the point where I feel obliged to remain respectfully quiet and not intrude with my chatter.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 37

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In which Daav and Aelliana go to the theatre, and Aelliana chooses to be late.

We’ve reached the moment which, this being a prequel, most of the readers knew was lurking in Aelliana and Daav’s future.

The authors might have avoided it by ending the book a couple of chapters ago, but I think they knew that if they were ever going to tell the story of this day there would never be a better place to tell it than here. It might have been told as a short story, an isolated event between novels like the one we had yesterday and the others we’ll have next week, but I don’t think that would have served it well: this is not an isolated event, and telling it here, at the end of the novel, allows one to look back and see all the things that have been leading up to it.

It’s also, in a sense, the capstone of this duology. I said a few chapters ago that we’d reached the destination of the duology when Daav stood beside his lifemate holding his son – but that was Daav’s destination, not Aelliana’s. For Aelliana, the journey is about taking control of her life, and I’ve pointed out several times that each of the major turns in Aelliana’s life during the duology came of Aelliana’s choice. Here again is a major turn in Aelliana’s life, and shape it takes is determined by the choice Aelliana makes to protect Daav.

Guaranteed Delivery

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In which Dollance-Marie Chimra finds something with a price above rubies.

I didn’t like this story much the first time I read it. I found the plot utterly predictable, and none of the new characters particularly engaging. In the intersection of those two things, I didn’t care at all for Dollance-Marie Chimra, whose troubles are at the centre of the plot, since her troubles were by and large of her own making and I had less sympathy for her than for the various people whom she was putting to unnecessary trouble.

I enjoyed it more on this re-read. The plot wasn’t such a liability, because knowing what will happen next is what one expects on re-reading a story. And I find that I have more sympathy for Dollance-Marie on second acquaintance; this time through I got a better grasp of how her upbringing has produced the blind spots that result in the poor decisions she makes, and also I noticed more the indications that she does care about the people she’s caused trouble for — even if she doesn’t always understand the nature or extent of the trouble, when it comes to people outside the societal structure she’s grown up in.

That societal structure, where the intrusive-media side of celebrity has become a formal part of the life of the upper classes, was something I found some entertainment in even the first time I read the story. There’s aspects of modern social media, with trend-setters’ worth being judged by the number of their Followers, and echoes of the more old-fashioned paparazzi. And I noticed on this re-read that some of the names have a particularly English cast to them, which makes me think of the way the British Royal Family is arguably more important nowadays for giving the media something to pay attention to than for anything involving actually ruling the nation.

(The other thing some of the names remind me of is the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, but I haven’t visited that charming place in so long that I’m not sure if I’m just imagining things.)

Tomorrow, Mouse and Dragon chapter 37. Which brings to mind the thought that another thing this story has to offer, in the confrontation outside the Port, is a certain amount of foreshadowing.