Monthly Archives: February 2015

I Dare – Chapter 36

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Day 376
Standard Year 1392

Blair Road
Surebleak

In which Boss Conrad throws a party.

And that brings us up to the end of Pat Rin’s 1392. If you don’t keep track of these things, that means he’s just about caught up with the end of Carpe Diem.

Which is interesting, because it’s been nearly three months since Pat Rin got the Plan B scatter order that kicked all this off, an event which is shown occurring – anyone? – that’s right, very near the end of Carpe Diem.

Now, that’s not a problem in itself, because I’d already figured out that the not-on-Vandar scenes in Carpe Diem aren’t necessarily in sync with the Vandar scenes – witness the entire journey of the Dutiful Passage from Arsdred to Krisko, sandwiched between two Vandar scenes that occur on a single day – but I do tend to wonder about some of the corollaries. If it was really three whole months from the Plan B scatter to when Korval started coming together again, what were people doing for all that time? Where did Nova go for three months before showing up on Liz’s doorstep? What were the crew of the Passage up to? (Apart from refitting the Passage as a battleship, which, to be fair, I have no idea how long that would be likely to take.)

And, what really bothers me, what were Val Con and Miri up to for those three months? Everything after the scene where Priscilla gets the info from Miri that leads to Nova activating Plan B is set during the week of Winterfair, right at the end of the year, so if Plan B was activated three months before the end of the year, that means Miri and Val Con had a very active first month on Vandar and a very active last few days, and in between was two or three months of nothing much happening. Which doesn’t feel right, somehow – not that it’s necessarily unlikely for a group of people in a remote town on a remote planet to have a quiet couple of months, but when I read Carpe Diem the gap doesn’t seem that long, and the active period preceding it feels like more than one month.

I Dare – Chapter 35

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Day 376
Standard Year 1392

Spaceport
Surebleak

In which the Surebleak Portmaster has unexpected visitors.

The portmaster double act is a favourite entry in the roster of memorable minor characters.

The fact that Pat Rin’s gift is one of Ajay’s rugs, which he’d spoken earlier of trying to get on sale at the Port, suggests the tenor of the rest of the gifts: they’re not just nice gestures, they’re product samples, examples of what the bosses’ territories have to offer.

I Dare – Chapter 34

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Lytaxin
Erob’s Clanhouse

In which the woes of Yxtrang have nothing to do with those who serve as soldiers in Jela’s line.

I like that Diglon Rifle does the best at poker, on a table that includes two Explorers and a Scout: it’s a reminder that just because he’s used to doing what he’s told doesn’t mean he can’t think for himself.

There’s a nice point of view play in this scene: we get a Nelirikk’s-eye view of the terrifying Clutch Turtle, and only later is it mentioned that it’s Sheather, whom Val Con so recently described with some accuracy as “one step from timid”. (Mind you, even though it is timid Sheather, I fully believe that in a situation where his friends were actually threatened by Yxtrang he’d be capable of everything Nelirikk fears of him.)

And now Nelirikk and the new recruits are going to be, I expect, the first Yxtrang ever to set foot on Liad – except of course that the whole point of this chapter is that they’re not Yxtrang.

I Dare – Chapter 33

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Liad
Jelaza Kazone

In which Anthora has an announcement to make.

Things are moving quickly now, in more ways than one. Nova appears to have been correct to a fear a vogue for precipitate lifematings, at least as far as her kin are concerned. This one sets a record for precipitate that’s going to be hard to beat.

The fact that Ren Zel was cleared to open locked doors and wander through secured areas floated past in the dreamlike nature of that scene, but in daylight one does have to wonder how the house computer ended up with instructions to admit him. Anthora doesn’t seem to have done it, and Jeeves’ phrasing suggests he didn’t do it. Anthora seems to suspect Merlin, but – and I know I said Merlin and the Tree seemed to have been stage-managing the meeting – I find it hard to believe either a cat or a tree could have been able to access the house computer. Surely?

On the other hand, I do wonder how much Jeeves knows. The enquiry as to how well Anthora slept might be more than just a routine pleasantry, and I find myself wondering about the remark about the new napkin being “appropriate to her station”: does that mean he is aware of her station having changed? The idea of Merlin having recruited Jeeves as an accomplice is only slightly less bemusing than the idea of Merlin having updated the house computer personally, but Jeeves has indicated in the past that he understands what the cats tell him…

I Dare – Chapter 32

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Dutiful Passage
Lytaxin Orbit

In which Korval begins to gather allies.

Shan mentions again the bond between himself and Priscilla, which he knows to be special but the precise nature of which he is not sure of. I have to wonder how much Priscilla now knows or suspects on that score; the revelation of Lute’s involvement, if she wasn’t already aware of it, must be a pretty significant clue, although not an easy one to interpret.

I Dare – Chapter 31

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Day 51
Standard Year 1393

Lytaxin
Erob’s Clanhouse

In which the Ring passes.

That makes two people in a short space of time who have spoken to Val Con of Korval’s responsibilities under the Contract, which is a subject that doesn’t often come up in conversation outside of Korval. It might be that, as close allies, they know something most don’t, but I think it’s less that the Contract is some kind of secret as that most people who don’t know Korval well don’t take the idea seriously. (And at that, I’m not entirely sure Emrith Tiazan wasn’t being sarcastic. We might infer that she believes in Korval’s belief in the Contract but doesn’t entirely believe in the Contract herself.)

The exchange when Korval-pernard’i removes the ring from her finger and Delm Korval places the ring on his own finger reminds me of something that I didn’t remark on when it happened: Pat Rin put the false ring the Department gave him on the second finger of his left hand, Korval-in-Trust’s finger, not the third finger, the delm’s finger. The Department was expecting that Pat Rin would happily be delm if there were nobody left to tell him he couldn’t, but what they weren’t considering is that as long as Pat Rin lives, there will always be one person of Korval judging his suitability: Pat Rin himself. Even in the eventuality that he must take up the delm’s ring because there is nobody else left, Pat Rin doesn’t count himself worthy to take up the delm’s melant’i with it, only to hold the ring in trust until Korval is able to produce someone qualified to be delm.

We also get, speaking of that incident, a detailed description of the true ring and thus the signs by which Pat Rin knew the false ring to be false. I wonder what it says about the Department that they didn’t know about the signs of wear. It might just be that they couldn’t find any way of examining the ring closely without arousing suspicion. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if it never even occurred to them to look; they might have assumed that a wealthy Liaden family would always get any damage quickly repaired.

I Dare – Chapter 30

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Day 355
Standard Year 1392

Hamilton Street
Surebleak

In which Pat Rin and Natesa come to an understanding.

The bit about the “familiar flames of loss” is telling: events have taught Pat Rin to expect that everything he loves will be taken from him, one way or another.

So the fact that he expects incorrectly this time will be good for him in more ways than one.

I Dare – Chapter 29

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Day 349
Standard Year 1392

Hamilton Street
Surebleak

In which Pat Rin has not attempted to be sensible recently.

It’s pretty apparent that Cheever and Pat Rin are friends now, however sudden and uncomfortable the beginning of their association may have been. Which, as Cheever points out, is liable to cause a problem if Pat Rin can’t get past thinking “That’s my friend in danger” when it would be more helpful to take a step back and look at the longer view. (Or, in Natesa’s case, “That’s my beloved in danger” — which is an admission I think Pat Rin’s making explicit for the first time.)

The “doctor, so-called” is another nice addition to the series’ collection of memorable one-off characters.

I Dare – Chapter 28

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Day 51
Standard Year 1393

Lytaxin
Erob’s Grounds

In which Val Con and Ren Zel are lofted away to places they didn’t intend to go.

Halfway through the book, and we’ve only just got through the first day of this plot strand. An eventful day all round, really.

Here I was, just thinking that if Pat Rin and Natesa did end up together it was fair enough, since at least they’d been living and working together three times as long as Val Con and Miri had when they declared lifemates, and here are Anthora and Ren Zel apparently determined to make Val Con and Miri look the very picture of sober forethought.

(I think the Tree and Merlin are, somehow, conspiring against them, though Anthora seems to have some idea of it and not to mind much.)

I’m intrigued by the statement that “Damning the Commander to twelve dozen hells would be futile from this distance” — does that imply that there’s a distance from which it would be more effective?

If this were Earth, which of course it isn’t, the co-ordinates Val Con gives Priscilla would describe a point in the vicinity of Baltimore. Difficult to say if that means anything; perhaps a hint as to the sort of climate and geography the authors had in mind for the surrounding area.

I Dare – Chapter 27

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Day 346
Standard Year 1392

Industry Street
Surebleak

In which Boss Ivernet’s hospitality leaves something to be desired.

The first time I read I Dare, what I mostly noticed about the two plot strands was the obvious disjoint that came from them being not only on different planets but happening in non-overlapping time periods. This time through, I’m a lot more aware of the ways that the events of one plot strand are echoed in the other.

Here, for instance, we have a cliffhanger where Pat Rin throws himself into danger after Natesa, with an uncertain outcome — immediately after the other plot strand gave us a cliffhanger where Miri throws herself into danger after Val Con, with an uncertain outcome. (And that analogy implies a possibility about where Pat Rin and Natesa’s relationship might be headed, come to think of it.)