Tag Archives: Jon dea’Cort

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 22

5 Replies

In which Daav sees Aelliana home.

Another progression of similar situations across chapters: Two chapters ago, Daav and Aelliana started holding hands “that they should not lose each other” in the crowd. One chapter ago, Yolan took Sed Ric’s hand in the darkness, “to lead him, she told herself fiercely”, with the implication that that wasn’t the only reason. In this chapter, Daav and Aelliana hold hands again, “though the station was barely crowded”.

A thing that amused me when I noticed it: The glossary at the end of the book includes the Liaden word va’netra, which is translated as “stray puppy” in this chapter when Daav uses it to describe Yolan and Sed Ric. The word itself appears nowhere in the novel except only in English translation, but it’s in the glossary all the same.

The subplot of the stray puppies seems at first glance to have no connection to the main plot, but it has thematic links forward and back. Their situation as Aelliana describes it here, “without kin on Liad, with no hope of going elsewhere”, is the situation Aelliana herself might have been in now if the luck had not been with her. And the idea of a person being cast out from their clan is going to reappear later.

Daav tells Aelliana that the custom to shun the clanless and withhold all aid is only custom, “the Code, not the Council”. Even the Code may be less strict on the matter than it’s usually interpreted to be, at least based on the section of it quoted at the head of an earlier chapter. That excerpt is very clear that a person cast out from their clan must be shunned and denied aid by the members of the clan that cast them out, but is less restrictive as regards the members of other clans. Another clan may not offer the outcast the benefits of a full clan membership, but there’s nothing there about not being allowed to, for instance, lend them a few dex and help them find a job.

I’m beginning to worry about Voni. Does she never think for herself?

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 21

1 Reply

In which desperate pirates are no match for Aelliana and her co-pilot.

Aelliana’s self-confidence is coming along in leaps and bounds; here she’s making significant decisions on a moment’s notice, without hesitation or apology. And she’s spent the whole evening tracking around in public without her “armor”, apparently without missing it except that it would have kept her warm.

It’s interesting that we’ve had two chapters in a row featuring people making desperately unwise decisions out of owing amounts of money they can’t scrape together honestly. Sed Ric and Yolan are in rather more desperate straits than Ran Eld (at least for now), a fact underscored by the tiny amount of money their future depends on. The dex, according to the handy table in Balance of Trade, is the smallest unit of Liaden currency, and the cantra is the largest. The four cantra Ran Eld borrowed, probably to pay for things he could well have lived without, is worth more than a one and half thousand times the four dex Yolan and Sed Ric need. The twenty cantra he now owes is equivalent to nearly thirty-five thousand dex.

(It’s a handy reminder, too, when the cantra is the unit most often mentioned, and the children of Korval are rich enough to carry cantra coins like loose change, that one cantra is actually a quite substantial amount of money.)

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 19

3 Replies

In which Ride the Luck and her crew test their capabilities.

Aelliana continues to develop. Daav is pushing her in ways he wouldn’t have when they first met because she wouldn’t have been able to handle them, and she is handling them.

One consequence of this which gives superficial pleasure to the reader, on top of the deeper pleasure at her progress, is that she’s now able to participate in the banter instead of just watching in dismay as it whizzes past.

For my favourite moment in this chapter, I’m torn between “Clonak — Clonak calls you Captain,” she told him, as if this might have someway escaped his notice. and “Thank you, but I — don’t believe I am hungry.” “Yes,” he said placidly, “I know.”

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 18

Leave a Reply

In which Aelliana and her co-pilot begin their day.

Aelliana continues to show outward signs of her growing inner confidence. By the end of this chapter, she’s not only wearing her hair back, she feels safe enough with Daav to leave off the habitual overgarment that is described with the very word “armor”.

The Scouts’ tendency to want to feed Aelliana may have something to do with the fact that when they do, those are the only times in the book we’ve seen her eat anything at all. When she is shown taking meals with her family, she’s always too stressed to eat.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 17

Leave a Reply

In which Ran Eld enquires into Aelliana’s progress.

Ugh. Ran Eld is a really nasty piece of work.

Aelliana is still hiding behind her hair around him, but what she’s hiding has changed.

Clonak is frequently described as “pudgy”, or other words of similar import, but we’re also told he follows a full exercise routine and his comrades have no doubt of his physical fitness. That’s a combination that, although it exists in life, is rarely found in fiction; honor to the authors for giving it some representation.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 16

2 Replies

In which Daav offers Aelliana more than one kind of life support.

Although Delm Bindan says she’ll remember the lesson about sending word ahead, I’m not sure she’s learned the right lesson. I get the feeling that she thinks Daav deliberately kept her waiting to (the phrase is inevitable) teach her a lesson, and hasn’t realised that he genuinely wasn’t in a fit state to receive visitors. One wonders how restricted her life is, if she never relaxes at home at any time when visitors might come by.

This being a prequel, and a genre novel, we know that Daav would have made his immediate future much easier if he’d succumbed to the temptation to break off the contract with Bindan, but he hasn’t realised yet where his future lies. Nor should he have, at this point; his relationship with Aelliana is still at an early stage where it would be presumptuous for him to be making plans in that direction.

Though, speaking of the development of their relationship, the gift he gives her in this chapter is freighted with all kinds of significance, for all that it’s just a hair-tie. (And apart from the fact that he offers her, along with it, the determination to keep fighting past the first fall.) A few days ago, she probably wouldn’t have accepted it from him, a near-stranger — and not so long before that, she, the woman whose habit had been to hide from the world behind her hair, would have had no use for it.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 15

Leave a Reply

In which one might expect tea to be drunk.

In the Binjali crew, Aelliana has found not only comrades but family. What Jon offers is, as Aelliana identifies, a paraphrase of what a clan is expected to offer its members according to the Code (as was quoted at the head of Chapter 4). Her description of what is asked of her in return is likewise, if memory serves, a paraphrase from the Code, and appears somewhere else in the series (though I don’t at the moment recall precisely where) explicitly identified as the duty one owes to one’s clan.

It almost goes without saying that Aelliana’s actual family is not a good model of either end of that set of duties.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 14

1 Reply

In which Hedrede calls upon Korval.

I am suspicious of Delm Hedrede’s attempt to discredit Anne’s scholarship. Certainly, prejudice may be found in all walks of life, but the description of Hedrede as a clan that usually keeps to itself and doesn’t start anything in Council makes me wonder if somebody put her up to it. (If it was the same people who were behind Fil Tor Kinrae and the earlier, more direct attack on Anne and Scholar yo’Kera, one would expect them to know that Daav could invoke Scholar yo’Kera to defeat the implication of Terran duplicity. Perhaps they did, but felt it was worth a try anyhow, as long as they had Hedrede to absorb the consequences if it didn’t work out.)

While Daav is busy defusing ticking social bombs of various kinds, Aelliana is having a much better day. Being around people who give her honest respect for her achievements — and are able to bring her to accept the respect she’s earned, which the Scouts are able to do in a way her students have never had the status for, however much they respected her — has been doing her some lasting good.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 13

2 Replies

In which Clonak ter’Meulen is in love.

Though why he picks that precise moment, of all the moments in the conversation, to decide this, I am not sure.

The Binjali crew seems to have adopted Aelliana as a comrade. Jon says it clearest, when she tries to thank him and he says that it’s the same as they’d do for any of their own, no gratitude demanded.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 12

7 Replies

In which Aelliana lifts as planned.

Another of Cantra’s log entries that doesn’t entirely accord with her history as revealed in the prequels. In particular, her claim to be “a sport, child of a long line of random elements”, considered from an in-universe perspective, can not be anything other than a deliberate lie.

Yardkeeper Gat’s declaration — “I don’t care what her name is or how good she can add” — is interesting. Even as he declares that Aelliana’s reputation cuts no ice in the present context (which is very likely true) he’s taking the time to show that he recognises the name and the reputation. Daav didn’t tell him she was a mathematician.