Surebleak
In which it’s a new day.
It looks like we’re done with dramatic confrontations for now, and are into the part of the book where things are wound down and tied off. There were a couple more dramatic confrontations I was expecting, but maybe they’re being saved for next time.
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In which Tolly gets to work.
I can just picture how that scene with Tolly and Haz at the door would play out if this were a movie.
And, once again, just as we’re getting somewhere, the chapter ends.
Tinsori Light
In which Tocohl makes a status report.
I found the jump from where Tolly and Haz were at the end of the previous chapter to where they are when they show up in this one so jarring that I actually flicked back a few pages to make sure I hadn’t accidentally skipped a chapter. Maybe it would have been a short chapter, and amounted to “Everything went according to plan for once”, but it still feels to me like its absence leaves a perceptible gap. Even a sentence or two from Tolly or Haz about what they’d been doing since the end of last chapter would have helped. (Maybe we’ll still get that in an upcoming section, and I just haven’t got to it yet because I stopped to write this entry.)
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In which matters proceed with unexpected swiftness.
We were discussing pacing in the comments a few posts ago, and I said that I have trouble judging it because I only read one chapter a day. This isn’t entirely true; although I usually do read one chapter and write one blog post a day, I sometimes get ahead of the schedule if the story is exciting enough to pull me forward. (The record is the end of Scout’s Progress and beginning of Mouse and Dragon, where I burned through at least a dozen chapters as quickly as I could write the blog posts between.) The reason I mention this is that there have been a couple of places in Neogenesis, including this chapter, where I’ve started to feel that pull forward, only for it to be cut off as the story switches to a different set of characters. Switching to a new storyline every time the current one gets exciting is a way to keep suspense, but it also means that each storyline has trouble building momentum.
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In which the light keeper shares the gift of his knowledge.
Last time, I mentioned two things an experienced Liaden Universe reader might know about the light keepers that someone coming to this novel cold wouldn’t, and already both have been brought out in the open. Which is fair enough, because they’re both important things to know.
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Ahab-Esais
In which Tocohl and Inki meet the light keepers.
They’re not dead yet. That’s a good start.
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Admiral Bunter
In which the cavalry arrives.
Well, I say cavalry. It’s more like a couple of guys on horses, and they might end up needing to be rescued as much as they manage to do any rescuing.
I like the little echo of Tolly noting that the only way he could get Admiral Bunter more prepared is by feeding military programs directly into his core, continuing the reflecting of concepts back and forth between the story of Admiral Bunter and Tolly and the story of Tocohl and Inki.
In which Inki and Tocohl are made an offer they can’t refuse.
The last line of this chapter is one of those interesting cases where it’s just one more piece of new information to the reader who hasn’t read any earlier Liaden books, but it will have considerable significance for a more experience Liaden Universe reader. (Though what significance, exactly, will depend on which earlier books they’ve read, and remembered.)
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In which Inki and Tocohl take a first look at their destination.
The circumstance of Inki having information locked away inside her head, so that she doesn’t even know she knows it until the time is right, keeps things unpredictable. Where there’s one such packet, there might be another to come forth at any moment and change the state of play for better or worse.
(It reminds me a bit of the Tree’s seed pods, waiting until the time is ripe, although I don’t know if that’s a fair comparison.)
In which Inki sleeps.
Inki’s attitude reminds me of another SF series I’ve been reading lately, which features a planet where slavery has been practiced for many generations, and the slaves have their own secret culture and language, unknown to their masters. In the language of the slaves, the word for “death” and the word for “freedom” are the same.
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