Tag Archives: Granic Trelu’s wife

Prodigal Son

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In which Scout Commander yos’Phelium returns to the scene of the crime.

I haven’t read this story since a while before the first time I read Ghost Ship, and there’s quite a bit more to it than I remembered. I remembered the mirrored scenes with Miri at the beginning and end, and I remembered everything that happened at the Explorers Club, but the entire middle section I’d completely forgotten about. It’s a much better story with the middle in.

(I recognised the bits with Nelirikk that were included in Ghost Ship, of course, because I’ve just finished reading that, but I remember thinking both times I read Ghost Ship that those must have been new additions to the course of events.)

Speaking of the mirrored sections at the beginning and end, I noticed on this re-read that the opening scene is also reflected in the middle, with Hakan and Kem taking the places of Val Con and Miri, and the place of the rocking chair being taken by a different rocking chair.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 20

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Springbreeze Farm and Environs

In which Borril is not pretty.

The language lesson in this chapter is one of my favourite parts of the novel.

It is apparently just over a month since Val Con gave Miri the stick-knife in Econsey, which occurred a day or two before they left Lufkit on the 242nd day of the year, so this is somewhere in the vicinity of day 270 (and Edger’s interlude on Kago, instead of happening a week after they landed on this world, as the placement of the chapter suggests, happened a week before). That leaves, between their captivity with the Juntavas and their landfall on Zhena Trelu’s world, about two weeks for trying to get the derelict yacht working, Jump, and scouting from orbit. It didn’t feel like that long when it was happening, but I suppose it’s not impossible, though it is an awfully long time to be living on pretzel-bread, water, and salmon.

Miri, arranging the breakfast things, is described moving with surprising swiftness, an attribute which in this series is usually a sign of a pilot, or at least one with pilot potential. Miri isn’t a pilot, and has never mentioned having the potential or the interest, but given the life she’s led it’s not unlikely that the possibility has never occurred to her.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 12

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Springbreeze Farm

In which Meri and Corvill stay for the night.

Sometimes it seems like every time I choose to make a general observation not specifically inspired by the particular chapter at hand, it turns out I’d have done better to wait until the next chapter, either because it invalidates the observation or because it turns out to be an even better occasion to have made it.

(In other words, no eloquence will be forthcoming regarding the emotional and character aspects of this chapter either.)

And now it’s time for another general observation that hopefully I won’t regret when I get to the next chapter:

Because this is a re-read, I know already that it will eventually be established that the so-called Department of the Interior is a rogue organization with friends in high places but no official standing. So it’s been interesting, re-reading Agent of Change and now Carpe Diem, that so far there’s been no indication that the Department is not an office of the Liaden government, carrying out that government’s policies. (The one hint in that direction, perhaps, is Shan mentioning that he’s never heard of the Department — but then, to be unheard of is only what one might expect from a covert organization.) Val Con’s recollection here, in particular, definitely gives the impression that the Department was an authority that could require obedience — or at least that it had succeeded in convincing Val Con that that was what it was.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 11

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Springbreeze Farm

In which Zhena Trelu has guests for dinner.

This seems like a good time to mention again that I do appreciate the emotional and character aspects of the Liaden stories, and in fact they’re a big part of why these are some of my favourite things to read, but I’m not very good at appreciating them verbally. So instead you get observations like these:

In the local calendar, the year is somewhat after 1475, which indicates that local civilization’s been going for a while. Whether it’s actually been going longer than the Standard Calendar, which is only up to Year 1392, depends on how long the years are.

The technique of illuminating a word’s pronunciation by describing the efforts of someone unfamiliar with it gets an extensive workout in this chapter, both for words new to our protagonists, like “Borril”, and words long familiar, like “Korval”. It’s largely thanks to this chapter that I got a strong grip on the correct pronunciation of “Korval” — but I’ve just realised on this re-reading that I’ve been mispronouncing “Borril” for years.