Monthly Archives: August 2014

Saltation – Chapter 13

2 Replies

Ozar Rokan Memorial Flight Center
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo loses her temper.

The thing that strikes me about this conversation on Wilsmyth’s side is that he clearly hasn’t bothered to learn much about Theo before trying to reel her in. I suspect he has some kind of mental picture of What Junior Students Are Like and has planned his strategy based on how his hypothetical Junior Student would react, instead of taking the time to work out how this particular junior student interacts with the world — with unfortunate results when it turns out that Theo differs from his ideal student in… pretty much every significant respect.

It doesn’t entirely surprise me, since he’s basically trying to pick up Theo as a tool to his own advancement, that he’s not thinking of her as a person with her own viewpoint, but it does kind of surprise me that he doesn’t at least realise what’s likely to happen when he threatens her: he was right there when her reputation for reacting aggressively started. (On the other hand, he was right there and didn’t back down until somebody else pointed out the danger he might be in, so maybe he’s just not very good at spotting what’s going on outside his own head.)

The thing that strikes me about this conversation on Theo’s side is that the subtext of the conversation goes straight over her head without her even feeling a breeze. You can tell she hasn’t been raised Liaden: I don’t know if a Liaden her age would have been able to negotiate a graceful exit from the conversation with Wilsmyth so determined to get what he wants, but she would at least have noticed that he was trying politics on her.

Saltation – Chapter 12

Leave a Reply

Number Twelve Leafydale Place
Greensward-by-Efraim
Delgado

In which Theo’s parents find out what she’s been up to.

Cho sig’Radia’s cover letter doesn’t give any warning about what happened on Theo’s famous flight. The pilot who raised Theo might perhaps be trusted to realise that a flight which has drawn special attention and been deemed a valuable teaching aid probably involves a more-than-usual amount of adversity, but Kamele, who was raised on a Safe World and has little experience of pilots, could have used a warning.

Speaking of the pilot who raised Theo, I notice the narrator is again doing that thing of not referring to him by any particular name.

Saltation – Chapter 11

Leave a Reply

Counseling Center
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo is given some paperwork to review.

Theo goes to see the counselor Chelly recommended, meets Kara again, and receives a letter from Captain Cho informing her, among other things, that news of her dramatic landing has been directed to her mother, on the Safe World of Delgado. Kind of a transitional chapter, this, full of consequences unfolding but not yet unfolded far enough to be clear on how they’ll turn out.

Saltation – Chapter 10

4 Replies

Erkes Dormitory, Suite 302
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo studies the ven’Tura Tables.

The comment I made yesterday about how much Theo is learning about Korval lately would have gone better with this chapter, it turns out. Too late now.

This chapter has the most detailed explanation of anywhere in the series about what it is the ven’Tura Tables actually do. And it is, I think, another example of the authors having a better idea later, at least when it comes to the bit about the Caylon Revisions involving a reconsideration of the very mathematics underlying the Tables; Scout’s Progress gave the impression that the mathematics was sound and the revision was more in the way of checking for calculation and typesetting errors.

Chelly is back, although by the sound of it only until he can arrange to go somewhere far away. Which doesn’t entirely surprise me, after what he’s been through.

If the chain of command in the dorm room goes Senior, First Bunk, Second Bunk, I wonder what it is that distinguishes First Bunk from Second. Is there an actual judgement of aptitude involved, or is it arbitrarily based on something like “person who happened to pick the top bunk” or “first non-senior to move their luggage in”? If it’s one of the latter options, Asu has no call get in a snit about Theo being First Bunk, since she turned down the first choice of bunks herself. (And if there’s a judgement of aptitude involved, I think Theo’s the right choice; as Chelly says, Asu isn’t malicious but she doesn’t think.)

In fairness to Asu, I feel I should note that although Chelly is described as leaving his bags “where Asu could complain that she’d almost fallen over them when she came back”, Asu doesn’t in fact do any such thing.

Saltation – Chapter 9

1 Reply

History of Piloting
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo meets Kara ven’Arith.

Theo is learning a lot of family history without knowing it, lately. Although I suppose that was to some extent inevitable once she started learning piloting, considering how much the history of piloting is bound up with the history of Korval.

I think Inspector Johansen is being unfair, here: it would have been one thing to be down on Theo for not doing all the assigned reading, if that was what she had done, and I would even allow that it would have been reasonable to be somewhat disappointed by the class’s lack of initiative — but to mock them for not doing something they hadn’t been called on to do seems to me to be pushing it, especially since I get the impression that Johansen was counting on them to have not done it so she could be grumpy about it. Or maybe I’m being unfair now, and she was just in a bad mood about something.

Kara, with her own version of having grown up between Liaden and Terran cultures and a willingness to share her understanding, could be a useful friend for Theo to have. (Not that I’m saying, of course, that usefulness ought to be an only or a primary criterion for a friendship.)

Saltation – Chapter 8

1 Reply

Erkes Dormitory, Suite 302
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo and her roommates open their mail.

I wonder what a banthawing might be, and what kind of bad habits it teaches. Piloting habits, presumably, from what Chelly says — but I have to say that absent his comments, I would find a strip of hot pink gauze suggestive of a different class of bad habit entirely.

Clearly the whole Hap Harney business is not going away any time soon. Which… it’s not that I mind, exactly, but does this mean I’m going to be repeating “still haven’t been told what Hap Harney actually did” every chapter for the rest of the book?

Saltation – Chapter 7

13 Replies

Mail Room
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo passes the time in a queue by discussing literature.

I made a series of extremely undignified noises when Theo said who the author of Sam Tim’s Ugly Day was. I’ve mentioned that one of the joys of this re-read is discovering connections that went past me before, but I have no idea how I missed that one the first time through.

The story of Sam Tim and the family joke is interesting as an example of what Lois McMaster Bujold calls the author’s right to have a better idea later. The first time Theo appeared in a Liaden novel (which, in chronological order, is still some distance in her future), she said her father had taught her that if she were ever in really serious trouble she might take the matter to Korval, with the wording strongly suggesting that he’d said so outright. When the authors came to expand on Theo’s story, it seems, they came up against the problem that if Jen Sar Kiladi had said such a thing directly he would have consequently faced the awkward question of who he was that the troubles of him and his family might be of interest to Korval, and so instead there is this series of events which conveys the lesson to Theo indirectly. (The question is not entirely unanswerable, since Jen Sar is a pilot and we know from earlier books that Korval doesn’t mind taking a hand when a pilot is in serious trouble, but we saw at the end of Fledgling that even the fact of being a pilot is more about his past than Jen Sar would like to give out.)

Saltation – Chapter 6

Leave a Reply

Lunch Break
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which everyone is talking about Theo Waitley.

Theo is the celebrity of the moment; there were news crews watching the air chase, and they caught her tricky landing too. She’s uncomfortable with all the attention, which, as Asu says, is better than if she were to start expecting it as her due.

We learn a thing or two more about Hap Harney, including that it was something of an understatement to say that Chelly knew him, and also that he’s been described as “public menace number one”. We still haven’t heard, though, what it was he actually did.

It’s maybe worth noting that this chapter has both a mention of Chelly having an ex-boyfriend and the fact that of the questions being fired at Theo by her temporary crowd of admirers, the sexually suggestive one comes from another girl. We’ve had enough such things happen in past books to get the idea that they’re not uncommon in the Liaden universe, but this is the first time we’ve seen them happen around Theo, so her reaction tells us something about her and perhaps by extension about Delgado. In the event, she doesn’t seem to find anything unusual about either thing, which I wouldn’t necessarily have expected given the way all the talk around First Pair in Fledgling seemed to take a heterosexual context for granted.

Saltation – Chapter 5

Leave a Reply

Combined Math Lab
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo goes over her math drill and her memories.

It turns out the Chelly wasn’t just worried about Theo: he knew the pilot who Theo watched being shot down.

The fleeing pilot was named Hap Harney, a former student of the Academy, and the pursuers were officials of some stripe. And Theo might have been suspected of being an accomplice to his flight if her instructor hadn’t had the foresight to have her not only get out of the air but power down and get out of the glider. (Well, she’s suspected anyway, because this seems like one of those everyone-is-a-suspect situations, but she’d have found the suspicion harder to shake.)

We still don’t know what Pilot Harney was up to that got him shot down and shot up by four pursuing jet fighters, except that it apparently had something to do with Politics.

I don’t have an opinion yet about whether the behavior of Asu’s Checksec was deliberate or just thoughtlessness. I’m inclined to believe thoughtlessness on Asu’s part, but we don’t know what priorities the Diamon security head who gave it to her might have had.

It’s not much of a surprise to learn about Theo’s relationship with Bek, considering the direction their interactions were headed the last time we saw them together. The only other person we saw her interacting with in Fledgling that might have been a likely candidate for First Pair was Kartor, and although he seemed to attach some particular value to her, judging by his tendency to leap to her defence, she didn’t appear to think of him that way (nor to be particularly impressed by having her defence leapt to). In any case, he might well have got his job on the Station and moved (as it were) out of Theo’s orbit by the time she got back from Melchiza.

Saltation – Chapter 4

1 Reply

Academy Flight GT S14
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo’s day is not great.

A mysterious aircraft pursued and shot down by four others. The urgency with which the Academy called on its own aircraft to get out of the sky suggests that they had some idea what was going on, and some reason to suppose that the four pursuing craft might not limit their attentions to the particular craft they were pursuing.

Theo manages a difficult landing in a sequence I feel probably deserves to be talked about, not just acknowledged, but I don’t have the whatever to appreciate it in detail.

Asu takes a while to notice what’s going on outside her own concerns, but at least when she does notice she seems suitably concerned and has some idea how to respond appropriately. (And the fact that she knows Theo’s tea preferences without needing to ask suggests that she does sometimes pay more attention to other people.) This is not to say that Chelly doesn’t want to help, but he seems like he might be under the kind of stress that hinders, rather than helps, efforts to think about what to do; I can relate.