Clan Ixin’s Tradeship Elthoria, in Jump
In which Jethri’s education proceeds in new directions.
Well. I’m not sure what to say after that.
(Except that I suspect any young person in Jethri’s position might be just as nervous and uncertain of knowing the right thing to do as Jethri was in the moment before Gaenor joined him, even if they had been Liaden all their lives and not only for a year.)
Clan Ixin’s Tradeship Elthoria, in Jump
In which Jethri reflects on birthrights.
The prologue having hopefully hooked the reader with the promise of mayhem to come, this is a quieter chapter, largely given over to recapping the state of play for anybody who doesn’t happen to have just this week finished reading Balance of Trade.
Things have progressed somewhat since the end of the previous novel: Norn ven’Deelin has agreed to support Jethri in getting Tan Sim out of his difficulty, but there are still details to be worked out. If it were easy, anybody could do it.
We also get another new detail added to what we already knew: apparently Jethri’s space hair, before he became a Liaden fosterling and had to grow it out, wasn’t just trimmed short as a utilitarian thing, but sculpted in a distinctive pattern.
Stateroom Number Two
Liaden Tradeship Wynhael, Outbound from Banth, a Backworld
In which Jethri’s story is by no means over.
A new novel!
The prologue gives us Bar Jan chel’Gaibin nursing his grievances, some hints about what’s up on Banth, and Jethri continuing his career but discovering that Old Tech is still going to be a part of his life. The chel’Gaibin seems to have decided to take particular offence against Khat, so no doubt we’ll be hearing more of the crew of the Market along the way. That’s all the major dangling threads from Balance of Trade picked up already – all I ask now is a throwaway line about how Jethri’s moustache management is getting on, and I’ll be happy.
We get quite a detailed portrait of Bar Jan chel’Gaibin in the first part of the prologue. Not a nice fellow, the chel’Gaibin. The description of his debt book is revealing, and so is the bit about the rigged dueling pistols – that latter also saying something about the family he comes from, given that they’re the house’s pistols and not his personally. (I wonder if we’ll be seeing those pistols in action, later.)
We also learn some things about Jethri. The bit about him feeling as if fractins are aware of him is new, though it fits in with what we already had about his knack for salvage items.
Jethri is currently working on a world where they go in for elaborate ceremony, which gives us some interesting new flourishes on the bows. I particularly like the revelation that the language of bows includes a construction for “I realise my sleeves aren’t long enough to do this bow justice”.
Day 189
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae
In which Junior Trader Jethri Gobelyn looks to the future.
I’m still not sure about the wisdom of choosing Master ven’Deelin as the evaluating master. She does have a point, but then this isn’t just about avoiding partiality, it’s also about being seen to avoid partiality: letting her evaluate her own apprentice gives anyone who doesn’t want to accept Jethri an opening to suggest that she let him off easy.
Although, it just now occurs to me, to do so would be inevitably to cast aspersions on the melant’i of a widely-known and well-respected Master Trader, which they might well be forced to conclude was a course of action whose consequences they couldn’t sustain. So perhaps it’s not so unwise as I thought.
Tomorrow, “Out of True”, which is still up on the Baen front page. Then, on to the sequel.
Day 180
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae
In which the cargo pod is opened, and many things are revealed.
This is the chapter in which Jethri gets his family background – and someone does indeed mention him and the word “clone” in conjunction, though the details are skipped over for the present moment.
I like how casually the matter of Grig’s true age is dropped in, near the beginning of the chapter.
It is also established that “duplicating unit” is what Grig’s family call the type of device Cantra called a “first aid kit” – which raises a few questions about what they used them for before they figured out the first aid kit function.
Well, all right, one thing they apparently used them for was duplicating people, what Raisy calls “reproducing the pure stock”. Pure what, she doesn’t say. Anyhow, that brings us back around to Jethri being a clone.
Day 178
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae
In which a friend in need is a friend indeed.
It is saddening, although perhaps not entirely a surprise, to find that even a Healer may turn out to be the kind of doctor who thinks he knows his patient’s feelings better than the patient does. I suppose being able to see inside someone’s head is no help to a person who is confident he knows the answer before he even looks.
Day 168
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae Port
In which there are several beginnings for Jethri and his family.
This is another chapter where I’d probably have a lot to say if I were reading it for the first time, but this time round it’s more the minor details catching my attention.
One really trivial detail is that when Jethri’s thinking about all the people at the Tarnia clanhouse he misses already, one of those listed is a “Mrs tel’Bonti” who is not mentioned anywhere else in the book. Presumably the person being referred to is the cook, Mrs tor’Beli, who does not otherwise appear in the list.
Seeli’s news settles it: there’s definitely something going on between her and Grig. I wonder for how long? “A couple of Standard Months” is since they began their stay on Kinaveral, but of course there’s nothing to say they haven’t been carrying on longer than that.
It’s an interesting touch that the Spacers would prefer their baby to be born in space. Seems to me that would mean they’re a long way from help if anything goes wrong, but then again a Spacer’s life consists almost entirely, one way or another, of being a long way from help if anything goes wrong.
Day 166
Standard Year 1118
Elthoria
In which Norn ven’Deelin considers her options.
Master ven’Deelin is decisive in moving to assist her foster son, not that I expected anything different from her by this point.
I am not sure I have correctly untangled that very long sentence which comes third in this chapter. It sounds like it has a story behind it, whatever it means.
Day 165
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae
In which Jethri and, for a change, Miandra and Grig each have a long and incident-packed day.
Boy, and I thought last chapter was long.
This chapter opens with the first scene in which we’ve seen one of the twins without the other, and it apparently presages that their paths are going to be more distinct from here on in.
As part of that, we get an elaboration of the subtext about Healers and dramliz from Jethri’s first day here. Meicha is a Healer, and a good one, with the rare gift of being able to heal the body as well as the mind. Miandra is a dramliza, which puts her in an uncomfortable position since the people of Irikwae are prepared to accept Healers but abominate the dramliz; Miandra’s grandmother wants her to be safe but thinks the problem can be solved by Miandra restricting herself to being a Healer, a course of action which Miandra is finding increasingly untenable.
(I don’t remember now which comment thread it was, or in what context, that someone mentioned the anecdote about Korval Herself arguing for the survival of the dramliz on Liad, but anyhow this is the chapter where that appears.)
I find myself wondering whether the Healer who gave it as her professional opinion that Miandra couldn’t have held back the storm really believes that, or if she deliberately steered away from officially marking Miandra as a dramliza. (And if so, for whose comfort she did so.)
I like the bit comparing how Jethri expresses himself in Liaden and Terran, now that he’s fluent in both.
Over in Grig’s half of the chapter, he’s having a philosophical disagreement with his family. I wonder whether it’s Grig, or anyhow people who thought like him, whom Val Con and his contemporaries have to thank for their autodocs and suchlike.
Also, there is an unusual and interesting application of the word “brother”. If the byplay about “Arin’s youngest brother”, added to Iza’s insistence on Jethri being Arin’s son alone, means what I think it means, I’m not at all surprised that Iza’s still hacked off about it eighteen years after the event. (It also raises the question of what other ‘brothers’ Arin might have.) Grig’s thought about family resemblances in the elevator seems to suggest that the non-standard definition of “brother” might extend to him and Raisy as well.
(Reading that back, I realise I’ve done that thing again where I leave something out because it seems obvious to me. So, to be clear, the word I’m hearing in this conversation even though nobody says it is “clone”. The implication, as I read it, is that Jethri Gobelyn is a clone of Arin Gobelyn, and that Arin used Iza as a surrogate without her knowledge or consent. I also get the feeling, partly from the word “youngest”, that Arin Gobelyn was himself a clone, and that when his family talk about Arin in this chapter it’s not always Arin Gobelyn they’re referring to.)
I remember wondering, the first time I read this chapter, whether Grig’s Uncle was the same person as Dulsey’s Uncle, seeing as they had certain similarities in personality and interest, and then getting to the bit where Grig’s Uncle has a name, and thinking maybe they weren’t, at least until Dragon Ship came out. (By the time I got here, I’d forgotten that one of Dulsey’s associates was named Arin, or I’d have wondered about that, too.)
Right now, I’m not sure whether Uncle Yuri is the same man as The Uncle, though it seems he’s pursuing the same line of work. Perhaps he is The Uncle’s younger brother…
(I’ve compared the physical descriptions of the two Uncles, which was unhelpful to a point that seems almost suspicious. They have very little overlap in which details they focus on: only one mentions an eye color, only one says anything useful about hair color, and so on. The only details that coincide are that both are tall and lean, and many men are both of those. Grig, for one, as we were reminded a few pages earlier – and that makes me wonder, for the first time, whose younger brother he might be.)
Day 161
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae
In which Jethri and Khat each have a long and incident-packed day.
Well now, this is a long chapter.
Khat’s day brings her to Banth, an inhospitable planet which a surprising number of Liadens seem to want to visit. And among them, the chel’Gaibin and her son, who reacts badly to encountering one of Jethri’s kin. I really like the sequence with Khat’s friend Keeson and his sister, which probably wasn’t strictly needful to the plot but adds a lot of texture to the story.
Jethri’s day, in between encounters with tailors and dancing instructors, takes him out to the vines, teaches him a few things about the local fauna, and leads to a possibly unwise bright idea involving the device Grig called a “weather maker”.
It’s been alluded to previously, but this is the first time the Code of Proper Conduct has been mentioned by its full title. Also mentioned is that it’s currently three volumes long, a state of affairs that I seem to recall does not maintain itself indefinitely.