Tag Archives: Korval’s Diaries

I Dare – Chapter 11

2 Replies

Teriste Casino District
The Practical Statistician

In which Pat Rin is offered a piece of jewelry at a price he is not willing to pay.

In a way, the Department is doing Pat Rin a favor, by forcing on him the melant’i of Korval. It is a considerable burden, to be as far as he knows the last person left to uphold the Clan, but it also allows him options he would not otherwise have had. Before, when he was literally the last person in the Clan’s line of succession, he had no choice but to decline Natesa’s offer of assistance in accordance with the Clan’s policy; now that he speaks for the Clan, he has not only the right but the responsibility to make a choice for the best good of the Clan.

I’m not sure how long the situation would have held together if Pat Rin had agreed to the Department’s offer; for one thing, the rest of the clan might be scattered and hidden but Anthora is plainly still alive. Perhaps at this point they were still confident they could fix that problem by the time Pat Rin got home.

The scene in the casino is the first time we’ve seen Pat Rin handle dice since that day when he was a child and he found he could make dice come up with any number he chose. That might be happenstance; another interpretation is that Pat Rin still has that facility with dice but has chosen, as an honorable man, not to use it except in cases of dire need, a distinction for which this situation might reasonably be held to qualify.

I Dare – Chapter 9

1 Reply

Day 50
Standard Year 1393

Lytaxin
Erob’s Medical Centre
Catastrophe Unit

In which healing goes forth.

Erob’s medical technicians think a lot of themselves, don’t they? To be fair, I suppose they have a right to, most of the time; it’s just that this situation is unlike anything they’ve been trained for.

A couple of unexplained visions occur. Shan gets a vision of Moonhawk to match his vision of Lute last week (I really hope those get elaborated on some day), and Miri gets a vision of Val Con in Jelaza Kazone’s garden. Val Con’s easy enough to explain, given the lifemate link, but it seems unlikely, even given the givens, that he and she have literally travelled all the way back to Liad; perhaps it’s Val Con’s metaphor for some safe space within himself that he retreated to for protection from the damage that was unwittingly being done him. It might not be an inappropriate metaphor, at that; the way the Tree meddles with its mobile branches, it might be personally responsible for Val Con’s survival even if it’s not directly present.

I like the moment where Shan thinks of the room he’s in as the “room of catastrophes”, leaving it open whether it’s a room in which catastrophes are dealt with, per the official designation, or a room in which catastrophes are created.

Plan B – Chapter 20

Leave a Reply

Erob’s Hold
Practice Grounds

In which Val Con and Nelirikk speak of Jela.

The news that the entire 14th Conquest Corps is acting out of turn suggests the possibility that the Yxtrang we’ve encountered so far, who value prestige over effective action, are atypical, and most Yxtrang are more sensible. On the other hand, there’s still the decision High Command made about Nelirikk, and if Yxtrang High Command doesn’t behave typically of Yxtrang, who does? Perhaps these Yxtrang are atypical not in the sense that they behave unlike Yxtrang, but only in taking typical Yxtrang qualities to an unusual extreme.

The bit about what “the Troop did not know — or did not tell” is interesting, in light of the prequels. The Troop does know how Jela died, or at least did at the time, since Cantra told them; indeed, Jela’s Troop was named in his honour only after he died. Perhaps the story was lost to memory because it contained too many things that the Yxtrang would not wish to remember: Cantra herself, for one.

Plan B – Chapter 17

6 Replies

Erob’s Hold
Practice Grounds

In which Nelirikk is introduced to his new compatriots.

It occurs to me I’d never given much thought to how old Nelirikk is. If he’s been shaving for 25 years, that would put him… about 40 years old? A few years older than Val Con and Miri, anyway. (Miri’s just turned 28 Standards, and Val Con’s in his early thirties. Nelirikk’s precise age remains uncertain, given lack of information regarding Yxtrang physical development and the exchange rate between Standards and Cycles.)

I don’t think I’d noticed quite so clearly in earlier readings how much leeway Nelirikk’s given in this chapter, what with being unlocked, unguarded, unescorted, and entrusted with weapons he could do a lot of damage with if he chose to. It makes sense, though; if Val Con’s right about him, he can be trusted to behave, and the only way to make progress with him is to show him that he is trusted. And if Val Con’s wrong, I suppose, better to find out as soon as possible.

The business with jin’Bardi is one of my favourite scenes in the novel.

Plan B – Chapter 6

Leave a Reply

Lytaxin
Erob’s Clanhouse

In which nobody’s going anywhere just yet.

Jase’s initial failure to recognize Miri has several faces to it. One, explicitly identified, is that she’s wearing uncharacteristically high class clothes, placing her in a context Jase has never seen her in before. (So is Val Con, which presumably goes some way to explaining why Jase doesn’t recognise him either, though in his case it’s more understandable since Jase only met him the once.) Another is presumably that she’s carrying herself more like a Liaden, thanks to the studying she’s been doing to pass muster with Erob. (Though I suspect her body language would have shown at least a bit more Liaden anyway, after being stranded for months with Val Con.) And then there’s the family resemblance, which, added to the clothes and the body language, not only produces an impression of an unfamiliar person but suggests a specific incorrect direction for Jase to try and figure out how she knows him. (And confirms again, if it were needed, that Miri really is of Erob.)

Plan B – Chapter 5

1 Reply

Dutiful Passage
In Orbit

In which Priscilla learns some history.

The dateline doesn’t say what Dutiful Passage is in orbit around. It might be Krisko, since that’s what they were in orbit around the last time their location was mentioned, and they were loading extra weapons then and they’re loading extra weapons now. There’s been the dramatic business with Shan going to speak to Val Con in between, but there’s no reason that couldn’t have happened in orbit around Krisko too; all things considered, it didn’t actually take very long.

If Shan was seventeen when he recruited Seth, then Seth has been with the ship around twenty years. The story of that recruitment has echoes of Shan’s rescue of Ren Zel dea’Judan (“That’s my man, sir”), and for that matter of his hiring of Priscilla (“Always need a good pilot”, even if there’s no vacancies).

I was going to say that I was surprised Shan didn’t pass his discovery on to Nova and save her some trouble, but then I remembered that Plan B is effect and he doesn’t know where Nova is now.

We don’t, I think, know any of the people involved in the last contract between Korval and Erob, when the child came to yos’Galan. The only yos’Galan child of that generation we know of is Petrella, Shan’s grandmother, but we know both her parents and neither was of Erob, so there must have been another yos’Galan who died untimely.

All this talk about the close ties between Korval and Erob has brought on the realisation that they have similar designs for their clan badges: each has a dangerous winged creature flying over something tall and enduring. I wonder if the founders of Erob did that deliberately.

Breath’s Duty

7 Replies

Delgado
Leafydale Place
Standard Year 1393

In which Scout Reserve Captain Daav yos’Phelium returns a favour.

Speaking of first published appearances, this is Kamele’s, brief as it is, and it gave me entirely the wrong impression of her until Fledgling came out. I blame the translators’ decision to use “mistress” as a substitute for whatever word they use on Delgado, because while it has the advantage of bypassing a lengthy explanation it fails to capture the actual spirit of Kamele’s relationship with Jen Sar. On the other hand, I admit there were also some failings of comprehension on my part, regarding (a) the actual likelihood of Daav getting in the kind of relationship that “mistress” implies, and (b) the fact, which is mentioned right there in the story, that they’ve been together long enough for her daughter to be grown up.

This may also be, even more briefly, the first published mention of timonioum.

One of the purposes of this re-read was to see what new associations would come out of the stories by reading them in a different configuration: what would come out of a story by reading it near another story I maybe hadn’t read it near before? In this case, a new thing that struck me was the first dissonant detail: after a couple of pages of Jen Sar Kiladi getting ready for a fishing trip, just as he always does, he pauses to run through the Rainbow pattern. Reading the story so soon after Carpe Diem, with everything it has to say about the Rainbow and about the Rainbow being a Scout thing, that really jumped out at me as a sign that Professor Kiladi isn’t the groundhugging academic he appears. It says, if one didn’t already know, a great deal about his background in a very few words.

Another association that I don’t think I picked up before this re-read is that Acting Scout Commander sig’Radia has the same surname as Senior Scout Cho sig’Radia, the friend and mentor of Daav’s daughter. Probably a relative, not the same person; “Phoenix” has established that sig’Radia has a history of producing Scouts, and this story says straight up that Daav doesn’t know her. (I wonder, though: I don’t think Kiladi ever actually met Cho sig’Radia other than through written correspondence, and if he did notice the connection Daav wouldn’t make anything of it while he’s keeping the Kiladi connection quiet; conversely, of course, Cho sig’Radia knows Theo’s father only as Kiladi and has no reason to suspect he’s Daav. And one who was a Senior Scout a few years ago might have progressed far enough to become Acting Scout Commander now — especially since the “Acting” suggests that the Department’s recent actions have resulted in some rapid movement in the line of succession.)

I’m pretty sure I got the significance of the Richard A. Davis Portmaster Aid Foundation first time, though.

I seem to recall there being something I wanted to say about the bit where L’il Orbit casts shade on Kiladi’s piloting skills, but the only thing that’s coming to mind now is that it was never Kiladi, in the old days, who was called “schoolteacher”. And that there’s a bit of an irony in Daav yos’Phelium being named as a reliable pilot considering what happened the last time he was seen piloting a spaceship.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 29

3 Replies

Vandar
Springbreeze Farm

In which Priscilla’s message is received.

Val Con mentions that Korval has been led by “thirty-one generations of yos’Pheliums”. If we assume a round figure of a thousand years since the founding of the Clan, that gives an average spacing of 30-35 years between generations, which is not unreasonable and accords with the information we have about the ages at which various yos’Pheliums have become parents.

It does, however, contrast interestingly with the information established elsewhere that the number of actual Delms to date has been 85. That works out to an average of 2-3 Delms per generation, and each Delm holding the post for an average of slightly over a decade. And we know that there have been stretches where there was only one Delm in each generation, and Delms who have borne the ring for as much as fifty years, so there must also have been periods when the turnover was even more rapid than the average suggests.

The message from Priscilla, with its implication that Korval is enquiring into matters relating to the doings of the Department, leaves Val Con determined that they must do something, and soon. It remains to be seen, however, what can be done.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 39

Leave a Reply

In which Daav plans his Balance against the enemy which took Aelliana.

I’m interested by the implication that the thoughtfulness of Daav’s Balance here owes something to his previous experience of loss and Balance, which taught him the limitations of the method of direct reprisal.

Using that Diary entry as the chapter heading also provides another more subtle bookend: the last time it was used was on the chapter in which Daav and Aelliana first met.

It’s a bit difficult to know how much to talk about what else happens in this chapter when it hasn’t been explicitly called out yet, even though as a re-reader I know — and, since this is a prequel, even on the first read I knew — what’s going on. I think I’ll save that for next time.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 35

1 Reply

In which Aelliana and Daav welcome Val Con yos’Phelium into the world.

Again, if things had been otherwise than they are, this might well have been where the book ended. But as things are, there are still places for the book to go, and the conversation at the beginning of the chapter reminds us that although the immediate issue of Daav’s abduction has been resolved, the underlying problem continues.

Aelliana and Daav’s shared vision of themselves as dragons flying together clearly owes something, somehow, to the Tree; it reminds me of “Dragon Tide”, and of the way the Tree used to visualise Cantra and Jela.

The other interesting thing about that shared experience is the way it’s mentioned as having strengthened their bond into something solid and ineluctable; one wonders whether subsequent events might have been different if Aelliana had allowed the Healer to send Daav away.