In which it’s a night for bad dreams.
The prologue introduces us to a number of new people, on a new planet. (I think they’re all on the same planet; they all have a similar style of name, and two of the scenes refer to the Grid, whatever that is.)
No returning characters yet, but I’ve glanced over the blurb and the table of contents, so I know that’s only a matter of time.
The blurb talks about a trader struggling to establish a new route, and means Shan, but the prologue introduces another character, Nersing carnYllum, who is also struggling to establish a new trade route.
Knowing that this is the book that follows from Alliance of Equals — and having glanced over the table of contents — I have a suspicion about who might be behind some of the disturbances in this chapter; Geritsi and Dosent’s encounter, at least, if none of the others. That’s assuming, of course, that the sources of the disturbances aren’t local and as new to us as the people being disturbed. Nersing carnYllum’s reaction to his incident suggests that such disturbances are not unknown.
I’ll be interested to see the development of the world-building implied by “Wilderness and Civilization”. (And the Grid and the Off-Grid, which may or may not be synonyms.)
I was captivated but rather lost while reading this prologue. I made assumptions about “things” that carried throughout the rest of the book and were only corrected when I participated in the spoiler discussion set up over at Welcome to Liad.
Sharon Lee explains what’s going on in the prologue on her blog. She says readers should be able to figure it out, but this reader did not, even after finishing the book.
Sharon says (alert — minor spoiler):
What all three have experienced [in the prologue] are the later-called ____________, just arrived and poking about to see how best they should carry out their orders. Now, no, we didn’t say all that in so many words, but it’s possible for readers to put it together.
To read the full text, go to her comment of Dec 27 at 6:27pm, link below
https://sharonleewriter.com/2020/12/traders-leap-spoiler-discussion-author-edition/
Sharon Lee begins that TRADER’S LEAP post here: https://sharonleewriter.com/2020/12/whats-doing-at-the-cat-farm-and-confusion-factory/
I got to the end of the book yesterday, and I was looking back on it and going “hey, did anything come out of that prologue?”. And in the end I figured it was… what you said… not because there was anything that made that clear but only because we’re not given anything else it could have been. I feel like it could have done with a hint or two later in the book to help tie it together.
Part of the problem, I think, is that the prologue gives us a bunch of details about a bunch of new characters, and we have no way of knowing yet which of those details are the ones that are going to be important later, or which details are important to the plot and which are just there for worldbuilding. And to me, there are some parts of the prologue that in retrospect are mostly there to help the reader get an idea of the world, but in the moment they felt to me like they were setting up plot, and that affected the way I approached the rest of the story.
Yeah? Good for you. Actually, I never did guess who the prologue was referring to. Well, no one could ever accuse Lee and Miller of telegraphing everything clearly. I’d rather this guessing game than TMI.
Thank you Skip for linking to this wonderful Christmas gift. I also never felt sure what or rather whom the prologue referred to. The world building was clear to me but I also kept waiting for that mysterious bad to appear directly and wondered whether I missed some point of the plot.
Yes, Othin. Merry Christmas!