Tag Archives: Cris Gobelyn

Trade Secret – Chapter 30

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Gobelyn’s Market, Clawswitts

In which the Gobelyns receive news of kin.

So that’s why Jethri suddenly decided he needed to send a message to Freza.

Apart from the trade and economic factors, which I don’t feel qualified to judge, one useful effect of publishing the Envidaria that Jethri must have considered is that the Liadens will have to stop bugging his friends and family for a copy. (Whether they’ll believe, among themselves, that the published Envidaria is the real thing, is another matter – I suspect those Liadens inclined to believe in Terran trickery will consider this more of the same – but at least they’ll have to act in public as if they believe it.)

And it looks like I was wrong (again) about Ynsolt’i. I think, looking back, that I’ve been tending to get predictions wrong about this book by tending toward being too neat and tidy. Life don’t always go in for quick and tidy endings to things.

Speaking of things in life that aren’t neat and tidy, I’ve got some of my sympathy for Iza back. She’s a complicated woman, is Iza Gobelyn.

Trade Secret – Chapter 24

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Gobelyn’s Market

In which the Gobelyns keep an eye out for trouble.

One of the commenters remarked, back when we were reading Balance of Trade, that she wondered how Iza had continued to be captain. I was inclined at the time to give Iza the benefit of the doubt, since we hadn’t seen much of her and that not at her best, but the more we see of her the less room for doubt there’s getting to be. This chapter, one of the crew goes so far as to express (out loud, though not in Iza’s hearing) a hope that Iza will think to step down, but it seems they don’t think the case is bad enough to ask her outright.

Yet.

In other news, the stuff about the difficulties of navigation in a four-star system is interesting, for those who are interested in that kind of thing, and may be a warm-up for a discussion of the difficulties of navigating the Seventeen Worlds later.

I don’t like the way the Liadens are paying attention to them, and I don’t like the way the chapter ends with “and then the door opened”. That could lead to “so they stopped talking and went in”, but it could just as easily lead on to “revealing, to their shocked gaze, …” (So far, though, I am being good and not going straight on to the next chapter.)

Trade Secret – Chapter 9

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Flight Deck, Gobelyn’s Market, Raising Serconia Three

In which the First Mate and the Senior Trader talk about the future and the past.

So Iza’s always known Jethri wasn’t hers – Arin showed up with the infant Jethri one day, at the end of a long trip away, and talked Iza into accepting him as a Gobelyn. (That’s a clarification I’m right glad to have, considering where my train of thought was ending up on the back of the information we’d previously had.) So then she had to work with the apparent implication of Arin acquiring a son somewhere without her involvement, and then the less apparent but more unsettling creeping realisation that Jethri was all Arin’s, all the more unsettling set aside the growing realisation that she knew much less about Arin than she’d thought she did.

Paitor mentions that they found out Arin had had other children before he met Iza. I wonder if we’re going to meet any of them this trip – and I wonder if any of them have the same “family resemblance” as Jethri.

Speaking of family resemblances, Paitor says that there was a family resemblance between Arin and the Uncle, though he stops short of “twin”, which is what he says about Arin and Jethri, so I don’t know if he’s implying that he thinks that the Uncle is to Arin what Arin is to Jethri.

(I’ve actually been thinking that might be the case myself for a few weeks now, since the “Arin’s youngest brother” chapter of Balance of Trade, because it reminded me of the scene in Crystal Dragon where Cantra earns a sharp look from the Uncle by suggesting that Arin looks enough like him to be his brother. And it’s prompted me to finally get around to comparing the physical descriptions of Arin and his Uncle, which I hadn’t done before because they’re in separate books of the duology; I suspect now that that was deliberate, to avoid making it too obvious that Arin and his Uncle are both tall, lean, dark-haired and grey-eyed.)

(But here’s an odd thing: Grig’s Uncle Yuri is tall and lean, but contrariwise is grey-haired and dark-eyed.)

(And while we’re at it: Jethri’s father Arin, in the photocube from Balance of Trade, has hair described similarly to the earlier Arin’s but his eyes, like Jethri’s, are brown.)

In Paitor’s stories about the doing of the Tomas family, I see the seeds of several things that crop up in the novels featuring Theo. (And given the bit about the Uncle’s secret shipyard, I’m wondering if Bechimo is one of them.)

Trade Secret – Chapter 7

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Control Deck, Keravath, Outbound from Boltston

In which the junior trader and the senior pilot both have things to learn.

I find Iza’s treatment of Jethri, as revealed in this chapter, quite upsetting. Neglect is one thing – I can kind of see (which is not to say I approve) how an intention to be rid of him might translate into a desire not to invest more than necessary of ship’s resources into his development, when he’d be gone before there was any chance of a return on the investment. But to deliberately hamper his development, to not only deny him the opportunity to develop a potential (and ter’Astin’s right, the tale of his fathers says he’s got the genes for it, at the very least), but to go about actively persuading him that he doesn’t even possess the potential – I just… ugh.

The more we learn about Iza, the less I like her.

The Scout says that he knows of Jethri’s father and Jethri’s uncle, “and more now than when first you and I met”, which apparently extends to knowing something of Jethri’s father’s father as well. That being so, I wonder whether ter’Astin, when he speaks of Jethri’s uncle, means Uncle Paitor, who is the only person Jethri knows to call uncle… or if it’s Arin’s Uncle he has in mind?

Balance of Trade – Chapter 35

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Day 168
Standard Year 1118

Irikwae Port

In which there are several beginnings for Jethri and his family.

This is another chapter where I’d probably have a lot to say if I were reading it for the first time, but this time round it’s more the minor details catching my attention.

One really trivial detail is that when Jethri’s thinking about all the people at the Tarnia clanhouse he misses already, one of those listed is a “Mrs tel’Bonti” who is not mentioned anywhere else in the book. Presumably the person being referred to is the cook, Mrs tor’Beli, who does not otherwise appear in the list.

Seeli’s news settles it: there’s definitely something going on between her and Grig. I wonder for how long? “A couple of Standard Months” is since they began their stay on Kinaveral, but of course there’s nothing to say they haven’t been carrying on longer than that.

It’s an interesting touch that the Spacers would prefer their baby to be born in space. Seems to me that would mean they’re a long way from help if anything goes wrong, but then again a Spacer’s life consists almost entirely, one way or another, of being a long way from help if anything goes wrong.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 32

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Day 165
Standard Year 1118

Irikwae

In which Jethri and, for a change, Miandra and Grig each have a long and incident-packed day.

Boy, and I thought last chapter was long.

This chapter opens with the first scene in which we’ve seen one of the twins without the other, and it apparently presages that their paths are going to be more distinct from here on in.

As part of that, we get an elaboration of the subtext about Healers and dramliz from Jethri’s first day here. Meicha is a Healer, and a good one, with the rare gift of being able to heal the body as well as the mind. Miandra is a dramliza, which puts her in an uncomfortable position since the people of Irikwae are prepared to accept Healers but abominate the dramliz; Miandra’s grandmother wants her to be safe but thinks the problem can be solved by Miandra restricting herself to being a Healer, a course of action which Miandra is finding increasingly untenable.

(I don’t remember now which comment thread it was, or in what context, that someone mentioned the anecdote about Korval Herself arguing for the survival of the dramliz on Liad, but anyhow this is the chapter where that appears.)

I find myself wondering whether the Healer who gave it as her professional opinion that Miandra couldn’t have held back the storm really believes that, or if she deliberately steered away from officially marking Miandra as a dramliza. (And if so, for whose comfort she did so.)

I like the bit comparing how Jethri expresses himself in Liaden and Terran, now that he’s fluent in both.

Over in Grig’s half of the chapter, he’s having a philosophical disagreement with his family. I wonder whether it’s Grig, or anyhow people who thought like him, whom Val Con and his contemporaries have to thank for their autodocs and suchlike.

Also, there is an unusual and interesting application of the word “brother”. If the byplay about “Arin’s youngest brother”, added to Iza’s insistence on Jethri being Arin’s son alone, means what I think it means, I’m not at all surprised that Iza’s still hacked off about it eighteen years after the event. (It also raises the question of what other ‘brothers’ Arin might have.) Grig’s thought about family resemblances in the elevator seems to suggest that the non-standard definition of “brother” might extend to him and Raisy as well.

(Reading that back, I realise I’ve done that thing again where I leave something out because it seems obvious to me. So, to be clear, the word I’m hearing in this conversation even though nobody says it is “clone”. The implication, as I read it, is that Jethri Gobelyn is a clone of Arin Gobelyn, and that Arin used Iza as a surrogate without her knowledge or consent. I also get the feeling, partly from the word “youngest”, that Arin Gobelyn was himself a clone, and that when his family talk about Arin in this chapter it’s not always Arin Gobelyn they’re referring to.)

I remember wondering, the first time I read this chapter, whether Grig’s Uncle was the same person as Dulsey’s Uncle, seeing as they had certain similarities in personality and interest, and then getting to the bit where Grig’s Uncle has a name, and thinking maybe they weren’t, at least until Dragon Ship came out. (By the time I got here, I’d forgotten that one of Dulsey’s associates was named Arin, or I’d have wondered about that, too.)

Right now, I’m not sure whether Uncle Yuri is the same man as The Uncle, though it seems he’s pursuing the same line of work. Perhaps he is The Uncle’s younger brother…

(I’ve compared the physical descriptions of the two Uncles, which was unhelpful to a point that seems almost suspicious. They have very little overlap in which details they focus on: only one mentions an eye color, only one says anything useful about hair color, and so on. The only details that coincide are that both are tall and lean, and many men are both of those. Grig, for one, as we were reminded a few pages earlier – and that makes me wonder, for the first time, whose younger brother he might be.)

Balance of Trade – Chapter 31

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Day 161
Standard Year 1118

Irikwae

In which Jethri and Khat each have a long and incident-packed day.

Well now, this is a long chapter.

Khat’s day brings her to Banth, an inhospitable planet which a surprising number of Liadens seem to want to visit. And among them, the chel’Gaibin and her son, who reacts badly to encountering one of Jethri’s kin. I really like the sequence with Khat’s friend Keeson and his sister, which probably wasn’t strictly needful to the plot but adds a lot of texture to the story.

Jethri’s day, in between encounters with tailors and dancing instructors, takes him out to the vines, teaches him a few things about the local fauna, and leads to a possibly unwise bright idea involving the device Grig called a “weather maker”.

It’s been alluded to previously, but this is the first time the Code of Proper Conduct has been mentioned by its full title. Also mentioned is that it’s currently three volumes long, a state of affairs that I seem to recall does not maintain itself indefinitely.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 30

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Day 158
Standard Year 1118

Irikwae

In which the twins enquire into the sustenance of Jethri’s kin group.

This is a useful trick for an SF writer to know: when a character compares her culture’s customs to those of another culture unfamiliar to her, both cultures are illuminated for the reader.

What’s also illuminated for the reader in this case is some of the lingering questions regarding Jethri’s cousins, like why some of them don’t seem to be attached to any particular parent. (For that matter, it answers the same question regarding the twins.)

If I’m getting this right, Jethri’s two siblings are both children of his mother, but neither of them are children of his father; he’s the only Gobelyn who is Arin’s son. (Which, apart from anything else, answers another lingering question I had, regarding Seeli and Grig.)

The game of piket is interesting. I’m pretty sure it was first mentioned (in publication order) in one of the two prequels that are most often compared to Regency romances, and the name is reminscent of the game piquet which is often played in your actual Regency romance. (It can’t be precisely the same game, though, if all three of them propose to play at once; piquet is set up for only two players at a time.)

And then we get the tale about using Old Tech to remain youthful, which apart from the purpose it serves in this chapter is another instance of the trick of slipping an idea into the reader’s head a while before it becomes important.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 25

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Day 140
Standard Year 1118

Tarnia’s Clanhouse
Irikwae

In which Lady Maarilex gets to know Jethri Gobelyn.

Jethri’s account confirms that Arin changed his name to Gobelyn when he married (from Tomas, which means Grig was a relative on top of being a trusted colleague). This sets me wondering again about the monogrammed box; if it’s his monogram, it must have been done after he married, but a velvet-lined jewel box doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a crewman on a ship like Gobelyn’s Market would go in for. Maybe it was a wedding present.

We see, again, that Jethri’s upbringing has taught him not to expect others to exert themselves on his account.

I am not, myself, surprised that Lady Maarilex wanted to hear Jethri’s account of how he met Master ven’Deelin. Certainly she has had Master ven’Deelin’s account, but Jethri’s telling is sure to differ in details, in what is emphasized, included, or left out, and from the differences she can learn more not only about the event but about the teller.