Bechimo
Crew Lockers
In which news is received of absent friends.
There I go again: the question I asked last entry is immediately answered, and not in the way I expected.
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The Gathering Edge – Chapter 26
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Tag Archives: debt book
Dragon in Exile – Chapter 31
Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
In which a team comes together.
I was wrong about why Val Con found Tocohl’s voice familiar, but at least I was inside the ball park.
It occurs to me that Val Con thinking about his plans for his daughter’s future actually fits in well in the midst of Rys and the free agents planning, because the potential for Talizea to have a future is one of the things they’re fighting for.
Whatever plan they decide on, there’s no chance now they’ll get it done before the end of the book, but that’s no surprise; The Decisive Attack on the Department was always the kind of thing that was going take a whole book to tell.
It’s interesting that the free agents apparently don’t know about Val Con. The Department knows, of course, but it makes sense that a particular agent wouldn’t have been told unless there was some reason they needed to know. After the attack on Solcintra Headquarters, it would have become general knowledge that Korval was acting in opposition to the Department, but perhaps not the details of how that came about.
I wonder if Claidyne, the former director, knows.
Dragon Ship – Chapter 32
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.)
Necessity’s Child – Chapter 34
In which lightning strikes.
I don’t think Ms ker’Eklis’s argument about time pressure really stands up. It’s true that a pilot may need to field an answer to a problem in less than thirty seconds, with lives hanging in the balance – but that’s one of the reasons why children Syl Vor’s age aren’t allowed to be fully-qualified pilots. At Syl Vor’s age, that kind of performance is a goal to work toward, not an ability to be expected.
(I wrote that sentence and then had to stop and think about why it sounded familiar. It’s because it echoes what Silain told Nova about one of the problems Kezzi has as the youngest sister with no near age-mates: people sometimes get impatient with her because they forget she’s not yet capable of whatever they want from her.)
I would also say that her example doesn’t actually fit the case she’s arguing, because when a pilot has to come up with a solution in a hurry, it’s the solution that matters, and Syl Vor got that; it’s not often necessary for a pilot to show his working in an emergency. In fact, it’s been made clear previously that a pilot in charge will generally get, and insist on if it’s not offered, authority to act first and explain later in emergencies, precisely because if you’ve got thirty seconds to implement a solution the last thing you need is to stop and give a detailed explanation.
Regarding the lesson that a person of melant’i responds to provokation by noting the circumstances so they may be Balanced in due time, a Terran might say that Liadens believe in revenge being a dish best served cold, but I think it’s more that for Liadens revenge is a dish best served with precision. If one gets angry and leaps to retaliate immediately, one may make a mess of things, and one may miss out on a better opportunity that would have come if one had waited.
The card Kezzi’s working on resembles the Tower card from the Tarot deck, both in the picture and the story it represents. The story of the card is another thing in this chapter that echoes: it’s the card Rys might have drawn if he’d drawn a card and if the cards really could see the future.
I Dare – Chapter 18
Day 307
Standard Year 1392
Blair Road
Surebleak
In which the new boss is not the same as the old boss.
One hazard of reading a series like this in chronological order like this is that one occasionally encounters two stories that are set within a few days of each other but written years apart, and then it can be difficult to avoid noticing discrepancies.
The difference between the implication here about the carpet’s creator and the explicit description in “Persistence” is, I think, clearly a deliberate creative decision by the authors, and can be easily explained in-universe as a deliberate creative decision by Pat Rin, who would not misinform a potential buyer as to the value of a carpet but also knows the value of tuning the details to fit the audience. I can’t see any such clear-cut explanation for the fairly large difference between the price Pat Rin paid for the carpet in “Persistence” and the price he remembers paying here.
On the other hand, there are good juxtapositions, too. Snyder taking Cheever at face value is extra amusing coming so soon after Beba seeing right through him.
Certain Symmetry
In which Pat Rin executes the will of Fal Den ter’Antod.
The other reason I placed “Shadow Partner” before “A Day in the Races” was that I knew this was up next, and it follows on from the end of “A Day at the Races” in a way that I felt would go better without another story intervening.
This is one of my favourite Liaden short stories. It has several shining personalities in it, not least of them Pat Rin himself. I also admit a certain fondness for the sense of humour evinced by the man in the back room, though I’m not keen on the nature of his work.
(A couple of side notes about Pat Rin: First, his field as a gamer is again cards and not dice. Second, there’s a nice though not surprising bit of continuity in the names that appear in Pat Rin’s social circle; in particular, the names of yo’Lanna and bel’Urik, which also appeared in yos’Phelium’s social calendar in the days when Daav was delm.)
This story also has a special place in my regard for another reason: it is the story which brought me to a conscious understanding that Liadens have a number of cultural hang-ups regarding the face, which brought together and shone new light on all the moments in other stories where Liadens were careful not to look another person too long full in the face, or felt distress at meeting someone whose face was distinctly marked (whether by dirt, injury, or deliberate decoration), or sought privacy before wiping a sweaty brow or rubbing a sore nose.
And I recall the sense of epiphany when I realised that this is not just an arbitrary bit of alien culture, but is complemented by the other famous marker of Liaden culture, the use of modes and bows to express thoughts and emotions — or, to put it another way, the fact that in Liaden speech all the messages that a Terran might convey through facial expression are transferred to other parts of the body. Terrans in conversation have to pay close attention to each other’s faces or they’ll miss part of what’s going on; in Liaden culture it’s impolite to pay close attention to another person’s face — and communication has been arranged so that it’s possible to carry out a conversation without doing so.
Tomorrow: “This House”
Trade Secret – Prologue
Stateroom Number Two
Liaden Tradeship Wynhael, Outbound from Banth, a Backworld
In which Jethri’s story is by no means over.
A new novel!
The prologue gives us Bar Jan chel’Gaibin nursing his grievances, some hints about what’s up on Banth, and Jethri continuing his career but discovering that Old Tech is still going to be a part of his life. The chel’Gaibin seems to have decided to take particular offence against Khat, so no doubt we’ll be hearing more of the crew of the Market along the way. That’s all the major dangling threads from Balance of Trade picked up already – all I ask now is a throwaway line about how Jethri’s moustache management is getting on, and I’ll be happy.
We get quite a detailed portrait of Bar Jan chel’Gaibin in the first part of the prologue. Not a nice fellow, the chel’Gaibin. The description of his debt book is revealing, and so is the bit about the rigged dueling pistols – that latter also saying something about the family he comes from, given that they’re the house’s pistols and not his personally. (I wonder if we’ll be seeing those pistols in action, later.)
We also learn some things about Jethri. The bit about him feeling as if fractins are aware of him is new, though it fits in with what we already had about his knack for salvage items.
Jethri is currently working on a world where they go in for elaborate ceremony, which gives us some interesting new flourishes on the bows. I particularly like the revelation that the language of bows includes a construction for “I realise my sleeves aren’t long enough to do this bow justice”.