In which Val Con and Miri make some calls.
Miri and Val Con are clearly starting to relax into each other’s company: they’ve begun bantering.
Val Con speaks more truth than he realises when he promises Liz he will take the best care of Miri he can, for as long as he can.
Here’s an interesting exercise for a writer: the character has a small box containing everything most valuable to her in the world — what, specifically, is in it? To answer the question for a character who’s only been in the story for four chapters would require either a considerable knowledge of parts of her backstory that haven’t made it into the story yet, or a certain talent for improvisation together with a willingness to assume explanations will present themselves as needed. Or both, mixed in some proportion. (Explanations for some of Miri’s keepsakes will subsequently become apparent, but not all. Which is as it should be; a character whose past can be entirely told is likely a character lacking in depth.)
Signs that this novel was written in the 1980s: the primary medium for data storage and retrieval is tape.
I love Sharon and Steve’s bantering. All their main characters are good at it, because the writers are good at it.
It’s somewhat amusing to me on another level because I never enjoyed Georgette Heyer books, even though my mom loved them and kept recommending them. If Heyer had only written her Regency romances in a science fiction setting (looking at you Scout’s Progress) who knows, maybe I would have devoured them!
RE: strafle melon
In this chapter, the fruit is not named as a “melon,” just with the word strafle. The two pieces of business we have with this fruit are Val Con slicing a ripe strafle into two equal portions, and then one page later he proceeds with taking a sharp bite out of his strafle. I have to say, based on these two little bits, that it certainly doesn’t sound like how we would treat any of the fruit that we call “melon.” In addition, the business could very well fit in with the fruit we call “apple.” So combined with BillyJo’s use of that term in Conflict of Honors, I am inclined to picture “apple” when I read “strafle melon.”
Meanwhile, I was amused to note during Miri’s performance as a “prostitute” that she used a “Yark” accent, which for Othin’s benefit I will point out is expected to suggest “New York,” as pronounced by a New Yorker.
Thanks 🙂