Tag Archives: Dutiful Passage Hold 6

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 50

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Shipyear 65
Tripday 287
Third Shift
16.00 hours

In which Shan and Priscilla consider the future.

I haven’t enjoyed re-reading Conflict of Honors quite so very much as I did some of the earlier novels in the re-read, but I think a large part of that may be that I’ve re-read it so many times already; the pleasure it gives me now comes from familiarity rather than the joy of discovery, which can be a bit of a problem when I’m using discovery to power the blog entries. There’s also the way it’s divided into so many little chapters, which can get a bit wearing at one chapter per day.

Tomorrow is the novella “Changeling”, and then we return to a distant, hitherto briefly-glimpsed part of the universe for the novel Fledgling.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 19

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Shipyear 65
Tripday 143
Third Shift
16.00 hours

In which Shan has some explanations.

This is a significant turning point for Shan and Priscilla, with Shan finally explaining what’s going on and the two of them agreeing on a future course of action.

We get another mention of that elusive person, Anne’s brother Richard, and perhaps the most extensive account of him, in Shan’s description of his conflation of Liadens with elves. Shan doesn’t say why Richard picked on Val Con for the role of “king of Elfland”, but presumably it’s because he had heard some account of the Contract which once prompted Anne to accuse Val Con’s father of being King of Liad. In which case, I’m pretty sure this is the first intimation, in published order, of the existence of the Contract.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 7

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Shipyear 65
Tripday 131
First Shift
1.30 hours

In which Priscilla meets more of the crew.

Priscilla meets two of her crewmates-to-be, radio tech Rusty and librarian Lina, and begins to get from them the idea that Dutiful Passage is not much like Daxflan.

Which may go some way toward explaining the tests she’d been puzzling over. There’s a particular community spirit on Dutiful Passage, so a prospective crewmember needs to be a temperamental match as well as being good at her job.

I do wonder how quickly Shan is going through cabin boys, if he’s had four since he took over as captain — according to the timeline, that was less than a year ago.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 6

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Shipyear 65
Tripday 130
Fourth Shift
18.00 hours

In which Priscilla meets Shan yos’Galan.

Contrary to what I said last week, this must be where I first learned about Liadens and faces. It must be. Conflict of Honors was the first Liaden story I ever read, and certainly Gordy’s recital is the most detailed and explicit statement of the case to be found anywhere in the series. I don’t remember it, though. There is a difference, perhaps, between being told about a thing in the abstract and coming to comprehend it through being shown examples of it in action.

The dateline on this chapter is not consistent with a 28-hour day divided into four 7-hour shifts, in which 18.00 hours would be deep in Third Shift. It would, on the other hand, fit a 24-hour day divided into four shifts.