Tag Archives: canary wine

Degrees of Separation – Chapter 1

Liad

In which Don Eyr is taken away and educated.

I knew two things going in to “Degrees of Separation”: that it’s a prequel to “Block Party”, which is not unusual for a Liaden story, and that the cover image prominently features the Eiffel Tower and a globe of the Earth more-or-less centred on France, which is. Earth (or Terra) has been mentioned occasionally, but has never yet appeared on-screen.
Continue reading

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 26

In which Aelliana attends her first gather, and sweeps all before her.

The guest list at yo’Lanna’s gather has a nice sense of history, being a mix of new people, people who were at Korval’s gather in chapter 26 of Scout’s Progress, and people who were at Etgora’s gather in “Choice of Weapons”. In the last category is Etgora Himself, the father of the young man whose enthusiasm Daav was obliged to dampen. (There’s also a reference to that event when Daav and the hostess are exchanging greetings.)

Less charmingly, there are also echoes of the other story set around that time: “The Beggar King”, in which pilots were mysteriously going missing, and Daav was not able to find those responsible, only oblige them to suspend their activities for a time. That time, it appears, has now passed, and pilots are going missing again.

The bond between Daav and Aelliana is developing, however slowly; Daav now possesses the ability to know without looking when Aelliana enters the room, the inverse of which Aelliana has had since the beginning of the novel.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 20

In which Aelliana is having a much better day than Ran Eld.

Ran Eld is not just personally unpleasant, he’s taking advantage of his status to embezzle money from the clan to fund his lifestyle. When he’s not funding his lifestyle by borrowing money at ruinously high rates of interest, with the result that he now owes to one creditor more money than Aelliana earns in a year. Not only is he a crook, he’s not a very smart crook. (I suppose he might not have needed to be, as long as his mother’s regard tended to shield him from the consequences his actions might otherwise have had.)

Meanwhile, Daav is introducing Aelliana to a Terran dish called ”pecha” (sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on why…) and telling her stories about his days in the Scouts. Here we get the story of the planet where he gained his earring, which sounds a lot like the planet Tol Ven yo’Endoth visited in “Sweet Waters”, though the Mun are not one of the tribes he encountered and their traditions are not exactly like the traditions of the Sanilithe.

Local Custom – Chapter 21

In which Daav has some conversation before dinner.

Petrella has got herself into a position that’s likely to cause trouble and is going to be difficult to get out of even if she decides she wants to: she’s stopped considering the details of the situation and started defining success entirely in terms of whether she gets her own way. She says it’s for the good of the clan, and presents to the delm that it’s in his interests for Er Thom to be obedient, but one may take leave to doubt that version of the story, particularly since the delm himself appears to have no qualms about Er Thom’s obedience.

The epigraph of this chapter suggests a thing which I don’t think is suggested so strongly anywhere else in the series: that there is, or has been within the recorded history of Terran-Liaden relations, an actual planet called Terra. I don’t recall anywhere else in the series where Terra is spoken of except as a used-to-be place.