Surebleak Port
Office of the Road Boss
In which chaos occurs on a strict schedule.
The obvious assumption is that the Department of the Interior is behind this somehow. But is it intended to achieve something in itself, or is it a distraction from something else?
Jelaza Kazone
In which Yulie Shaper is visited by a young lady.
Yulie knows what’s important in a person. What they look like doesn’t matter nearly as much as will they do right by the cats.
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Surebleak Port
Office of the Road Boss
In which people want to talk about Clutch Turtles.
On one level, saying they’ll need a week or two to get an answer out of the emissary is stalling for time, but I’m not sure that on another level Miri doesn’t actually mean it. It is true that the emissary does talk faster than some Turtles, but she’s been here a day and still they’ve only got a very small part of the answer, not nearly enough to be answering questions like “How long is the emissary staying?” and “Can we expect any more of them?”
Jelaza Kazone
In which the Elders are taking an interest.
Seeing that working Turtles have names like “Edger” and “Sheather”, I wonder what the emissary is going to make of a human named “Shaper”.
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In case you happened to be interested, Accepting the Lance is 96 chapters long, including the prologue and epilogue. That’s a lot of chapters. (It’s a third again more than the next-longest Liaden Universe novel, and about twice the series average.)
It’s enough to keep this blog going all the way through January and February and into March. By then, I may have figured out what’s going to happen next.
Surebleak Port
Office of the Road Boss
In which Delm Korval has visitors.
Well, there’s an answer to my question about how things would have gone if Emissary Twelve had done this on Liad, anyway.
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Surebleak Orbital Influence Zone
In which Bechimo’s crew prepare to report.
The Theo/Bechimo part of the series isn’t as close to my heart as the Miri/Val Con part, and part of why is scenes like this, where the characters are talking over technical problems that mean something to them but don’t mean much to me. Miri and Val Con spend a fair amount of talking about problems that need solving, too, but their problems are usually about people, which I find inherently more interesting.
Jelaza Kazone
In which Delm Korval meets Emissary Twelve.
Way back when Edger was first introduced, there was a brief mention of the Ambassadorial Clans of the Clutch, whose members are shorter and svelter and speedier than the working clans such as Edger belongs to. It would appear that Emissary Twelve is an example.
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Surebleak Orbital Influence Zone
In which Bechimo discovers a new taste sensation.
Because of the name, and the fact that they’re first introduced as a breakfast food, I’d been picturing maize buttons as a kind of breakfast cereal, small and eaten in clusters. It appears from the description here that they’re more in the line of a pastry, large enough to be enjoyed individually (but small enough to be snatched up in a handful).
Surebleak Port
Portmaster’s Office
In which the Clutch are a law unto themselves.
Now I’m trying to picture how things would have gone down if Korval had still been living on Liad when Emissary Twelve came to visit. Liad has a busier airspace than Surebleak — and an active planetary defence system — so Liaden traffic control might have been moved to express its displeasure more forcefully. I don’t know if it would have made much difference to the emissary, though; Turtles build their ships pretty tough.