Tag Archives: Korval’s Diaries

Accepting the Lance – Chapter 63

Six of Us
Daglyte Seam

In which Korval’s Luck leads to unexpected meetings.

I almost didn’t include the final paragraph of my last post, you know, but then I thought about how clever I’d feel if it turned out to be true. I wasn’t expecting it to be settled quite so quickly.

Accepting the Lance – Chapter 38

Jelaza Kazone

In which there is a new mission for the Pathfinders.

If Spiral Dance is being taken up again, one hopes that Nova didn’t re-engage all the safety features, or at least left her delm with instructions on how to disengage them at need.

One also wonders if anybody’s going to be provoked by yet another instance of a ship taking off from Korval’s back yard instead of a proper shipyard.

Neogenesis – Chapter 20 part III

In which Val Con and Miri are not getting much sleep tonight.

Chapter 20 is shaping up to be a long chapter, to the point that I’m almost wondering if I need to subdivide the sections even further. Makes sense, though, since this is the chapter where a whole bunch of plot strands come together, not just from this book but from the four books preceding it.
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Neogenesis – Chapter 15 part II

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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Neogenesis – Chapter 1 part I

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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Alliance of Equals – Chapter 26

Langlastport
The Torridon Hotel

In which there is conversation after dinner.

I don’t know if it’s significant that Shan describes the Liaden tongue as “the language of home” when speaking to the jeweller, after all the reminders there have been that the children of Korval need to stop thinking of Liad as home. Probably it’s just that that’s a conventional phrase and the situation is not appropriate for a more precise description.

I also don’t know if it’s significant that we’re getting a reminder now of Master Moonel, who appeared in Local Custom. That was back when Shan was a small boy, and Moonel was already the most respected jeweller on Liad, so it is not a surprise to learn now that he has since died. (Shan mentions that his shop stands empty; I wonder if that’s a sign that it happened recently, or perhaps that he was so respected nobody wishes to try taking his place.)

Possibly it is the death that matters — it makes two scenes in a row where the subject of death has come up in proximity with Padi, which helps things remain ominous even as her conversation with her father seems to be going well.

Dragon in Exile – Epilogue

In which the Road Boss comes home.

I spent the entire epilogue waiting for Theo to show up, or Daav and Aelliana, or all of them together, but it didn’t happen. Perhaps Daav’s homecoming, like the downfall of the Department, is a large enough thing to require the length of an entire book to tell it.

Maybe Daav and Aelliana are even home already and the narrator’s just not mentioning it, to avoid being distracting. Or they may be just about to arrive; the hint of the seed pods could go either way. Theo’s definitely not back yet, judging by Miri’s reaction to the vision of her with the seedling from Spiral Dancer; Miri doesn’t know it’s a thing that’s actually happened. (It has to be a thing that’s happened, because the business with Admiral Bunter shows that this is after Dragon Ship – so it’s interesting that it’s in among a bunch of visions of things that haven’t happened yet. I wonder if the young woman in Scout leathers is who Lizzie will grow up to be.)

Another thing that’s happened is “The Rifle’s First Wife”, since there she is among Korval’s other guests. I suppose that means the events of that story have been happening alongside the events of this one (or perhaps in the gap between the last chapter and this epilogue, if it’s large enough, although I seem to recall “The Rifle’s First Wife” begins when Hazenthull is still on Surebleak and Kareen is still guesting at Jelaza Kazone).


And that’s it. Nothing left to read. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow: A few retrospective posts.

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 31

Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which a team comes together.

I was wrong about why Val Con found Tocohl’s voice familiar, but at least I was inside the ball park.

It occurs to me that Val Con thinking about his plans for his daughter’s future actually fits in well in the midst of Rys and the free agents planning, because the potential for Talizea to have a future is one of the things they’re fighting for.

Whatever plan they decide on, there’s no chance now they’ll get it done before the end of the book, but that’s no surprise; The Decisive Attack on the Department was always the kind of thing that was going take a whole book to tell.

It’s interesting that the free agents apparently don’t know about Val Con. The Department knows, of course, but it makes sense that a particular agent wouldn’t have been told unless there was some reason they needed to know. After the attack on Solcintra Headquarters, it would have become general knowledge that Korval was acting in opposition to the Department, but perhaps not the details of how that came about.

I wonder if Claidyne, the former director, knows.

Dragon in Exile – Interlude 10

Vivulonj Prosperu
In Transit

In which Aelliana eats a sandwich.

Mint has been established as the characteristic scent/flavour of the Tree’s seed pods, so Aelliana waking up with it on her tongue suggests that the Uncle was able to get her to accept hers.

That’s an intriguing hint about Arin having taken his own path. Does that mean he’s still out there somewhere, following his own path? Or did his own path take him somewhere that meant he could no longer share the Uncle’s kind of immortality? (And why is it his name that occurs to Aelliana?)

Also intriguing is the Uncle’s choice of meal to offer as her first in this new existence: tea and shaped sandwiches is the first meal she had as she began her new life with Daav. It might just be a coincidence, or shaped sandwiches might be a common enough thing on Liad (or perhaps specifically in Healer’s Halls) that he thought would be soothingly familiar, but there’s also that slight chance that it’s a sign he knows details of her life he probably shouldn’t have had access to.

It occurred to me, reading this chapter, to ask: Are Daav and Aelliana still lifemates? In the general sense, obviously, yes, but what about the spooky inside-each-other’s-heads sense? Daav’s inability to sense her presence, and hers now to sense his, might just have been because each was woken while the other was in a coma, but it may be that the bond has been broken because Aelliana is in a fresh new body, and will have to be rebuilt. Under other circumstances there might be a question of whether it can be rebuilt, with Aelliana in a new body that might not have whatever predisposition her original one possessed, but I expect that’s one of the things the seed pods are for.

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 1

Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which Val Con yos’Phelium receives two messages.

I confess to some surprise at the idea of Kareen being a mild and unruffled tutor. Perhaps there is something in Kamele’s manner that she finds pleasing. (Perhaps it’s the harmonica-playing dog principle: while a Liaden student would have high expectations to rise to, a Terran’s fumbles are rendered insignificant against the fact that a Terran is essaying Liaden at all.)

Necessity’s Child also had an early incident in which an attempt to reach out to one of the captured agents ended badly; the way the Department of the Interior operates, such attempts are unlikely to end otherwise. That novel did subsequently feature Rys’s breakthrough, and perhaps another breakthrough will occur in this one, but they will always be too late for the people lost along the way.

If Melsilee bar’Abit did manage to break her conditioning – and even if her behaviour portends something else – it’s striking for having apparently occurred without an external trigger. Val Con and Rys both started getting loose of their conditioning after major changes in their life circumstances, but Agent bar’Abit has been sitting for the last while in a prison where little changes from week to week, so the question is: what caused this to happen now?