Blair Road
Boss Conrad’s House
In which Mrs kaz’Ineo has an idea.
The mention of the Gilmour Agency’s human resources manual as a recent acquisition places this chapter not long after the opening scene of “Block Party”, in which Luzeal had just made the discovery, although perhaps not after the entire story, which covers a period of several weeks.
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In which Val Con and Miri have a busy morning.
I like “a salute so smart it could have driven itself into town”. And Val Con’s interactions with the cat.
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Surebleak
In which we are reunited with various people already resident on Surebleak.
As the first chapter of the latest book of a series, this is mainly concerned with reminding the reader (or introducing them if they’re entering the series here) who everyone is and what they’ve been up to. It’s quite a long chapter, which might simply be that it’s a long series and there are a lot of characters to catch up on — but then, we don’t catch up on everybody, which suggests that these might be just the characters we need to know about to follow what’s going to happen in this novel. Which suggests there’s going to be a lot happening.
(Just how long a chapter the first chapter is depends whether the first part of the novel set on Surebleak, divided into three sections headed I, II & III, is one chapter or three. I wrote the paragraph above thinking of the whole thing as one chapter, but on reflection, I think I’m going to blog it as three chapters, if only so that the blog entries are a reasonable length.)
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Corner of Dudley Avenue and Farley Lane
In which Kamele reflects on her week, and Val Con recounts his day.
Dudley Avenue, the location of Kareen’s new establishment, was mentioned in Necessity’s Child; it intersects Blair Road, which by now should need no introduction.
I’ve been waiting for Sherman’s to put in an appearance; I had a feeling that the shooting competition would turn out to be the point where “Chimera” overlapped this novel. (I’m still shaking my head at the idea it would be a good move to start trouble at an event where the Bosses were demonstrating their shooting skills.) With that in mind, I feel safe in having another shot at predicting trouble at a forthcoming Bosses’ meeting.
Given the people involved, I also feel safe in predicting that Kamele’s determination not to shoot at the competition isn’t going to make the distance. And given those two predictions, I’m willing to hazard another, that competition targets are not going to be the only thing Kamele will find herself having to shoot at.
I hadn’t quite got what was going on with Miri’s startle last chapter, because I couldn’t quite figure out if it was in reaction to what her visitor was saying, but I decided not to say anything because I had a feeling there was something I was missing and hoped it would come clear if I waited. Which, of course, it has. (The trouble with so much happening at once is that it’s easy to lose little insignificant details like Miri and Val Con being inside each others’ heads.)