Tag Archives: Gigneri

Ghost Ship – Chapter 9

Runcible System
Daglyte Seam

In which the Department of the Interior prepares to attack Korval and her allies.

I like the structure of this chapter. Three scenes that have no obvious connection, but implicitly the latter two scenes concern people who are going to be affected by the events of the first.

It occurs to me to wonder what would have happened if Commander of Agents had chosen to leave Korval alone for the time being. Her concern is obviously that Korval will continue to be a threat, but Korval has accepted Liad’s decision that guarding Liad is no longer its business, which means that the Department is no longer its business – but the Department will quickly become its business again if the Department attacks it directly. I suppose if the Department did leave Korval alone and concentrate on subverting Liad, Korval would eventually become involved because it does still have allies on Liad who would sooner or later be affected by the Department’s actions – but think how much the Department could get done in the mean time!

Saltation – Chapter 32

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Number Twelve Leafydale Place
Greensward-by-Efraim
Delgado

In which Theo’s parents receive her news.

There’s some looking-back going on in this chapter; not just to Theo’s recent activities, but further back to the events of Fledgling with the news that Kamele’s friend Ella has become the Chair of EdHist and is well advanced in repairing the damage there. (Ella professed to believe, back in Fledgling, that Kamele would be the next Chair, but I think this outcome was more likely and is more useful to all concerned, given their respective attitudes to office politics.)

And then, even further back, to Staederport, which we learned in Mouse and Dragon was where Aelliana first met Jen Sar Kiladi, coincidentally on the same day that she and her co-pilot introduced Hevelin the norbear to Bruce Peltzer of the Pilots Guild.

Like Mouse and Dragon, Saltation has a lapse of some years between chapters (specifically, this chapter and the next). And, as with Mouse and Dragon, I will be putting Saltation on hold while I read the stories set in the gap — beginning, tomorrow, with a return to Eylot for “Landed Alien”. After that, it’s back to see how Clan Korval (remember Clan Korval?) is getting on.

Fledgling – Chapter 42

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Number Twelve Leafydale Place
Greensward-by-Efraim
Delgado

In which Theo turns fifteen.

This is one of those cases where I don’t feel inspired to talk about any of the things I might have talked about if I were reading the novel for the first time, and there weren’t many new things I noticed. Although I did notice this time Jen Sar’s fishing trip in the mountains, which I suspect was at least partly intended to lay a foundation for a tale to tell anyone who asks where the idea of the old-style Gigneri came from.

I will note that this is another novel I like more after this re-read than I thought I did after I read it the first time.

It’s not easy to establish precisely when Fledgling takes place, due to a lack of outside referents. From Theo’s age we know that it’s more than fifteen years since Jen Sar came to Delgado at the end of Mouse and Dragon — but, as Theo points out in this chapter, that’s Delgadan years, and we have no indication of whether those are longer or shorter than Standard Years, let alone by how much. All we can say with confidence is that it’s after Jen Sar’s last scene in Mouse and Dragon and before his first appearance in Plan B. (The suggested reading order by internal chronology on the authors’ web site places Fledgling after Plan B, but that’s a clear case of bending chronology for the good of the story flow and reading experience, making it in effect an entire novel-length flashback; there is no possible way Jen Sar’s scenes in Plan B happen before Fledgling.) The positions I’ve given Fledgling and Saltation in this re-read are approximations achieved by starting at the end of Saltation and counting backwards based on my memory of what occurs in them; I’m taking notes as I re-read and hopefully I’ll end up with a less approximate idea of how much time they cover. (But when I publish my own suggested reading order by internal chronology at the end of the re-read, it’s likely I’ll be adopting the strategy of bending chronology for the good of the story flow and reading experience, the good sense of which becomes more apparent to me the further the re-read progresses.)

Tomorrow: Saltation

Fledgling – Chapter 41

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Delgado

In which Kamele and Theo go home.

Immediately, Theo is thrown into a situation that shows how much she’s changed in the six months she’s been away. (Incidentally, considering they spent maybe a week on Melchiza, that means they spent the better part of three months on Vashtara in each direction. Kind of drives home what a serious undertaking the trip was.) The terminal is the kind of chaotic jostling situation that would have been a disaster during her “clumsy” phase, but not only does she not create any disasters, she deftly avoids several that might have been caused by the inattention of the people around her. And the fact that Kamele essentially chose to throw her into this situation by sending her off to get the luggage unattended shows that Kamele trusted she would be able to get through it unscathed.

(On the other hand, the luggage scene also shows Theo with a new habit that’s going to cause her some trouble in Saltation. Continuity!)

Boy, that terminal helper is really inadvertant. Somehow, I doubt that the comment Kamele left on his feedback form was a complimentary one.

I’m pretty sure the reunion in this chapter is the first time in the book we’ve seen the entire family interacting; we’ve had Theo with Jen Sar, Theo with Kamele, and Kamele with Jen Sar, but not all three, for the entire time the family has been living separately. The occasional moments when all three have been in the same place together (such as when Theo showed Kamele and Jen Sar the snake AI) happened off the page — until now, when the family is properly back together.

Fledgling – Chapter 36

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Melchiza
Transit School

In which Theo and Kamele make progress.

On Melchiza, pilots are recognised as rare and special people, and apparently this means that Melchizan pilot culture is affected by the Melchizan attitude that leaders should stand aloof and not hold themselves back trying to help others less special. Inspector Vidige’s lesson about a pilot bearing sole responsibility for the decisions he must make is not entirely new (I’m particularly reminded of Aelliana in Scout’s Progress, and the lesson that she must learn to back her own judgement if she wishes to be a pilot), but the emphasis is different. At least it’s somewhat softened by Pilot-Instructor Arman’s comment which suggests that Melchizan pilots do form bonds of loyalty with their crew (like the brother’s friends in the folk tale?); self-sufficiency is one thing, but if they’d been taking it to the extent of not even trusting a co-pilot that would have been asking for serious trouble sooner or later.

Fledgling – Chapter 29

Fledgling – Chapter 28

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Vashtara
Dining Hall Lobby

In which offers are made at mealtimes.

I’m amused by Jen Sar’s private observations of the care Roni has taken with her appearance. But I wonder about his discourse on the subject of the first-pair: it doesn’t seem in character for him, but on the other hand it doesn’t seem in character that he would simply be saying whatever he thinks Lystra wants to hear; like many Liadens, he’s disinclined to use an outright lie when a misleadingly-stated truth will serve. (As witness his statement about Lystra standing guardian over that which interests him nearly.) One aspect that comes to mind is that, while he says that he believes in the advantages of a first-pair partner being superior in age and experience, he doesn’t say how much, and leaves Roni’s mother to assume that he considers the gap between Roni and himself appropriate, where perhaps his true belief is only that things are likely to go smoother with a partner who’s a little bit older and not a complete novice.

Aelliana’s assertion that she knew no questionable people before she met him is… maybe true, from a certain point of view; it depends on what questions one is inclined to ask. She certainly had friends among the scouts, who many cultured Liadens including members of her own family would be inclined to consider questionable people. And, for that matter, there were members of her own family who were somewhat questionable themselves, though she might not have thought to say so before she met him.

There are several observations a person might make about the conversation with Hafley and her onagrata, but I’ll content myself with noting that the mention of Clyburn’s pull with Administration provides an additional suggestion, if one were needed, that Hafley’s advice to Kamele about cultivating a young man for the benefit of one’s career was drawn from personal experience.

Fledgling – Chapter 16

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Retrospection on an Introduction
Number Twelve Leafydale Place
Greensward-by-Efraim
Delgado

In which Kamele and Jen Sar took a step forward in their relationship.

The second of the full-chapter flashbacks, and it perhaps says something that I let the first one go by without remarking on how it fits into the idea of re-reading the series in chronological order. Which is, clearly, that a flashback chapter belongs where it’s been put by the author, because even if it’s describing chronologically-distant events, the remembering of those events is happening at this point in the story, and it matters to this story that it’s happening here. To have moved these chapters to before the beginning of the novel because that’s when the events-being-remembered happened would have been to do an injury to the story.

(If you were around for the planning stages of this re-read, you may recall that I lost sight of that at one point, when I was deep in the analytical “timeline-all-the-things” headspace that made a full-series chronological re-read possible. I want to take this opportunity to apologise for the mess that conversation was, and to express my gratitude for being talked down from doing anything then that I would have regretted when I found my way back to that other, wiser headspace which knows why a full-series re-read is worth doing.)

About Tra’sia, cha’leken!, the “expression of joy” that Jen Sar declined to translate: We have seen “tra’sia” before only as part of the phrase “tra’sia volecta”, a Liaden greeting for which we have not, to my recollection, ever been given a word-for-word translation. What we do know is that it’s Low Liaden, used for family and close friends; in High Liaden, one might instead say “Entranzia volecta”. We have not seen “cha’leken” before at all, though we have seen “cha’leket”, which is used to refer to a person for whom one feels a sibling’s affection; it might mean a person for whom one feels affection equally strong but of a different nature.

So, the full phrase might perhaps mean something approximately like, “Greetings, beloved!”, or perhaps, “This is a good thing, beloved” (if “tra’sia volecta” is something like “good morning” and “tra’sia” is more like “good” than “morning”). Another possibility is that it’s the Liaden equivalent of the “I see you, sister” that Priscilla gives Lina in Conflict of Honors.

And whatever it means, I have a strong suspicion that the reason Jen Sar was chagrined about it is that it was Aelliana who said it and not him.

Reading Liad

from Dragon Tide to Dragon Ship, and beyond