Tag Archives: autodoc

Neogenesis – Chapter 20 part V

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In which Val Con and Miri gather information about their visitors.

This is the first mention I can recall of there now being two separate branches of the Scouts, but it doesn’t surprise me. I presume the schism is a consequence of the events surrounding Korval’s big play and subsequent exile, and the subsequent removal of a chunk of Liaden society to Surebleak. Liaden society as a whole was divided over how to view Korval’s actions, and although many Scouts had a sympathy for Korval it is not to be supposed that they were unanimous in their approval.
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Neogenesis – Chapter 20 part II

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In which a family reunion or two occurs.

More bows and modes in this chapter than we’ve had in a while, including a couple of new ones. Well, it’s been a while since we’ve had a conversation, in other than everyday circumstances, between two parties familiar with the forms.
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Neogenesis – Chapter 17

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Vivulonj Prosperu

In which the Uncle is not in a good mood.

I’m not sure the Lyre Institute would share Dulsey’s assessment that they paid a great cost. They lost seven agents, but the way the Institute’s directors think, it’s not as if agents are real people; spending their lives to obtain a benefit for the directors is what agents are for.
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Neogenesis – Chapter 14

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Vivulonj Prosperu

In which a change of course is called for.

I don’t yet understand how the failure of the Catalinc Project could result in everything that is ascribed to it, but I note that it sounds very similar to the potential bad future Ren Zel has foreseen.
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The Gathering Edge – Chapter 18

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Bechimo
Exercise Room

In which Theo exercises her body and her mind.

I’ve had something of a track record on this blog, with the novels where I’m reading for the first time instead of re-reading, of noting something in an entry and then finding the very next chapter either pushing it further than I expected or completely contradicting it. I don’t think this is actually a problem; I think it’s a sign that the authors are pacing the story properly and layering in the foreshadowing well, so that the reader starts thinking about things just as they are about to become important.
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Alliance of Equals – Chapter 19

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Vivulonj Prosperu

In which Aelliana returns.

Okay, so I wouldn’t have been left in the dark much longer about Tolly sharing a background with Inki. (This is far from the first time it’s happened that I’ve wondered about a thing in a blog entry and it’s been answered in the next chapter. That’s a good thing, I figure; it means the stories are well-paced and handing out information at an appropriate rate.)

Given the fact of their shared background, I think that that’s why Inki doesn’t want Haz telling Tolly about the confrontation with Stew. (I suspect the specific detail she doesn’t want Haz sharing is less the bit where she had to convince him with money, but the bit just before that where she frightened a man who wasn’t frightened by an Yxtrang. Or maybe it is the money thing, but because if she’s the legal owner of the ship the Admiral is installed in, that might give her leverage if she decides to run off with him.) She apparently hasn’t told Tolly she’s a Lyre graduate, which is an understandable precaution since he probably wouldn’t trust her if he knew — and so doesn’t help us tell whether she should be trusted, since she’d want to avoid that either way. She’s told Haz that they’re graduates of the same institute, but in a vague way that Haz will probably take to mean that they learned mentoring in the same place. And Tocohl knows Inki is a student of the Lyre Institute, but doesn’t know that Tolly is.

Meanwhile, over in the Daav-and-Aelliana plot line, we have a recap of the Tanjalyre Institute, for the benefit of readers who had forgotten or never knew about it. Among other things. (“could not help but overhear”, forsooth.) For the record, I’m very much enjoying the Daav-and-Aelliana side of the story, but I have less to say about it because its direction is less of a surprise.

Alliance of Equals – Chapter 18

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Tarigan
Jemiatha’s Jumble Stop
Berth 12

In which the road to occupying a new body is not without bumps.

And now I’m wondering how much of this foreboding I’d be having if I hadn’t read “Wise Child” first, because there’s quite a bit there about Tolly’s background that hasn’t explicitly come up in this novel yet. I’m pretty sure I’d have made the connection between Inki’s powers of persuasion and her background with the Lyre Institute being similar to the aelantaza and the Tanjalyre Institute, but I’m not sure I’d have spotted that Tolly’s also a graduate, even with all the hints that the novel’s been dropping about how he’s designed to inspire trust and make friends easily. And if I hadn’t realised that Inki and Tolly share a background, I wouldn’t now be worried about Inki stabbing everyone in the back and dragging him back “home”.

(Though I would probably still be worried about her stabbing everyone in the back and abducting the Admiral as soon as he’s stable enough to move.)

Come to think of it, something similar happened with Dragon in Exile, where I was waiting all through the novel for something because it had been mentioned in the short story that was written later but published first. I didn’t with Trade Secret, but I did end up thinking the short story would have made more sense if I’d read it after the novel. So maybe I should make a rule about not reading the new short stories before the new novels? But the short story comes out a whole month before the novel, and it’s difficult to just leaving lying there, and you figure they wouldn’t let the short story be published first if reading it first was wrong…

Alliance of Equals – Chapter 15

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Tarigan
Jemiatha’s Jumble Stop
Berth 12

In which an alliance of equals begins its work.

Tolly’s got a job on his hands, here. It will be easier to set Admiral Bunter straight once he’s in a proper installation where he can think properly and has more room for new ideas, but I suspect Tolly’s going to have to manage some straightening out before he can even get the Admiral to agree to the move. If I were the Admiral, I’d be suspicious about being moved into a new body, and worried about what might happen while I was in the middle of moving and not able to concentrate. Not to mention that what ships Inkirani might find to move him into presumably aren’t armed, or Bechimo would have stuck the Admiral into one of them in the first place, and the Admiral might object to being put in a body that makes it harder for him to carry out what he knows to be his job.

I wonder if it would be possible to do a partial move to begin with — say, perhaps just the bits that are crammed into extra and unsuitable computers like the commissary computer someone mentioned, so that he went from being split between thirteen comps on seven ships to being in eight comps on eight ships. That way he’d still have access to all the capabilities of his existing ships, but be less fractured, and have room to think in the new ship, so he could properly consider what he wanted to do next.

It strikes me that there’s a commonality of theme across the two halves of this chapter, speaking of being suspicious about being moved into a new body. Daav has been moved into a new body without being consulted first, and he’s suspicious of what might have been lost — or added — in the process.

(I keep thinking of the pilot who visited Tinsori Light, and who destroyed his ship and himself with it because he couldn’t trust either not to have had any nasty surprises installed in them, and hoping Daav’s situation is not going to come to a similar end.)

Alliance of Equals – Chapter 5

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Dutiful Passage

In which there are uncomfortable awakenings.

So now we know what Padi’s secret is. Poor kid. Of course it didn’t occur to her, while she was taking great care not to let the others see how much afraid she was, that the others might be doing likewise.

Given the bit about how Padi’s found herself thinking of the milaster scheme as if it might somehow make or break her trading career, I see two ways that might go, depending on how far into the book they get to Chessel’s World. It might be a disaster, and that be a launching point for more plot. Or it might be that they get to Chessel’s World only at the end of the novel, after many adventures, and it’s a success but by then Padi has other bigger things to think about.

Another change in Dutiful Passage‘s roster becomes apparent: It appears that, after so many years, Ken Rik yo’Lanna is no longer the cargo master.

I said, back when it was first made clear, that I didn’t understand why Tolly hasn’t been told it’s Korval he’s working for; I think I’m getting the idea now. One thing I hadn’t borne in mind was just how much trouble Tocohl’s mere existence could cause her creators, given the Complex Logic Laws, if the identity of her creators became known. And I think what Shan said about it being bad-mannered to burden Lina with Korval’s secrets unnecessarily also applies to Tolly.

I’m beginning to really wonder who it was who served as the connection between Tolly and Korval for employment purposes. It seems to me like Tolly started to say a name or designation beginning with “The” before he thought better of saying it out loud. I don’t think it’s the Uncle, given the way Tolly thinks about him later in the conversation. It’s definitely not Theo, both because she doesn’t know people like Tolly and because if Korval had contact with her they’d doubtless be requiring her to aid the situation in a more direct manner.

Alliance of Equals – Chapter 4

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Tarigan
In Jump

In which there are consultations on matters of healing.

Yay! We’re getting more of Tolly and Tocohl and Haz already! I’d assumed that it would be another whole book before we found out what happened to them next. (I see that Hazenthull, like Nelirikk, has traded in her Explorer designation for a “nor’Phelium”.)

When Tocohl speaks of her mentor, I think she’s referring to Val Con. Strictly speaking it was Jeeves who oversaw her awakening (and isn’t that a thought to horrify the framers of the Complex Logic Laws, an AI being taught how to be human by another AI), but he said that to save time he basically gave her a direct download of what he’d learned from his own mentor. And while he must have had another mentor back in the long-ago time that he was first activated, much of what he knows about smooth social interaction he learned from Val Con. The specific trick of pausing as if to consider is one we see Val Con teaching him in “Intelligent Design”.

This is the first mention of ‘mite since the Jethri books. I wonder if that’s a sign other elements from the Jethri books will be reappearing.

There is definitely something up with Padi, but not yet enough clues to start guessing about what.