Tag Archives: Carresens family

Dragon Ship – Chapter 32

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Ynsolt’i Approach

In which Ynsolt’i is back off the agenda.

My response to the Department’s claim of being “proper representatives of Liad” is a rude noise, but I wonder how much the Ynsolt’i authorities believe it.

The pilot from Metrose is another addition to the gallery of one-off characters who make an impression in a single brief appearance, the more impressively for appearing only as a voice. (That sentence was slightly trickier to put together than I expected when I began it, because I realised partway through that the pilot also belongs to the set of characters whom the authors have not burdened with gendered pronouns.)

Dragon Ship – Chapter 27

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Codrescu Station

In which more help arrives.

It’s not clear yet how many of the new arrivals are here following Bechimo‘s example. It might be that some of them were coming anyway, but didn’t have Bechimo‘s head start of already being outward bound when the call came; maybe they had business to settle before they could leave, or thought of useful things to round up and bring with them. (I’m thinking of Varthaven, for instance: do they always have doctors and a clinic on board, or was that something they had to arrange before they came?) Or it could be that every one of them is here because Asu was not only inspired but decided to share the inspiration around. Certainly the way they all arrive at once suggests some level of organization.

As of this chapter, Dragon Ship agrees with Ghost Ship (as one might expect) in declaring that it is currently summer on Surebleak.

Dragon Ship – Chapter 19

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Tradedesk

In which there are many meetings.

…well, that seems a pretty clear statement that Bechimo was built in or shortly after Jethri’s time, with Arin’s ideas as guidance. There have been other people named Arin (there’s one in Crystal Dragon), and there might even have been another who was a noted thinker on subjects of interest to traders, but it’s not likely there was another who was all that and had a son who took a different path.

But we’re still stuck with the fact that the beginning of Ghost Ship states straight up that Bechimo has been awaiting a captain for over five hundred years – which is to say, since two hundred years before Jethri was born.

(On another, less contradictory, note, we have another hint to go with the one from “Intelligent Design” of a technological underpinning for psychic abilities in the Liaden Universe.)

Dragon Ship – Chapter 18

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Tradedesk

In which Laughing Cat confers with Carresens.

There are a lot of names in this chapter familiar from the Jethri books, although a large part of that is retroactive, since the Carresens family (and the Denobli family, who were a separate group back then) only appear in Trade Secret, which was written after this.

One name that isn’t retroactively familiar – though I didn’t recognise it myself the first time I read this novel, because I’m terrible with names when I’m not taking careful notes – is that of the thinker Arin, mentioned by Pilot Denobli, who was Jethri’s father Arin Gobelyn. And as such it’s probably not entirely a coincidence that the ship Theo flew for the Uncle bears his name, since the Uncle was Arin’s … let’s say “brother”, with the understanding that the Uncle’s family tree is kind of complicated.

(And the bit about Bechimo being well-suited to enact Arin’s ideas brings us back around to the idea of Bechimo having been created in Jethri’s time, only to founder once again on the fact that the numbers simply don’t add up.)

Pilot Denobli’s hair reminds me of two things. The hair itself brings to mind the elaborate spacer hairstyles mentioned in Trade Secret, which makes sense considering that Pilot Denobli is descended from the same spacer culture. The way he’s always fiddling with it makes me wonder about Theo’s first meeting with the Uncle, when he kept fiddling with his hair.

While we’re elaborating tenuous links between the Carresens and the Uncle, I’ve noticed something about their ship named OchoBalrog. The “Balrog” half has an obvious connection to the ship of that name owned by the Denobli family in Trade Secret, but we’ve seen the name Ocho once before in an entirely different context: it was the name of one of Dulsey’s siblings, way back in Crystal Soldier.

Dragon Ship – Chapter 16

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Tradedesk

In which Clarence is thoroughly investigated.

In a way, this is the delayed appearance of a scene one might have expected to ensue from Clarence being recognised on the station by an unnamed party. Because he’s among friends, though, it goes a lot better than it might have done.

Probably everything Clarence says is true, but there are some gaps in his testimony that a less sympathetic questioner would have picked him up on: for instance, what was the name of the company he and O’dell used to work for? Likewise, I notice Grafton asks him if the accusation of being a Juntavas agent is true now, and neglects to ask if it was true when it was made.

The bit about how Clarence made the mistake of trusting O’dell because they came from the same place strikes an echo: one of the lessons Instructor yos’Senchul made sure Theo learned was that you can’t trust anybody just because they belong to a particular group. It seems Clarence didn’t have such good teachers, and had to learn it the hard way.

Trade Secret – Chapter 13

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Keravath, on Port, Balfour

In which Jethri and ter’Astin finish their business on Balfour and move on to their next destination.

Trouble indeed: somebody has been aboard the ship. Somebody who had a key, which they ought not to have had, and by the signs is a Scout. (Or an ex-Scout? I continue to cast suspicious looks in a very particular direction.)

Jethri’s meeting with the memorable Mr Dorster has turned up more of Iza’s neglect: basic documents and proofs of identity never completed or filed.

The Scout is also interested in the mysterious manifesto, “Arin’s Envidaria of the Seventeen Worlds”. As it is now too late to ask Freza more about it, Jethri merely tells him, truthfully but incompletely, that he never heard of it before today. The Seventeen Worlds are apparently a cluster of planets along the galatic arm where travel is unusually restricted by cosmic phenomena that are expected to last for the next few centuries; if Arin was taking the long view – and considering how old he probably was, it might not have seemed as long as all that – the Envidaria may involve a plan for how things will shift when the cosmic phenomena get out of the way. (And although “the next few centuries” is a pretty vague timespan, I can’t help noting that one plausible interpretation of a few centuries on from this novel puts us right about the time the next Liaden novel is due to be set…)

And now they are off to Vincza, where the Scout has hope for finding something and Jethri has been invited to a regional trade meeting (run by the Carresens Coordinating Committee, a name which rings a distinct bell: the Carresens are still trading in one of the later novels, and I seem to remember one of them mentioning Arin in a historical context, though I don’t recall what is said).

I wonder if Freza’s ship will also be attending the trade meeting. Not just because of the several reasons Jethri has for wanting to see her again, but also because the meeting’s being held in the system where they had their last, ill-fated meeting, and it would be kind of appropriate for it also to be the location of their next meeting, where hopefully they will fare better.