Tag Archives: Melina Sherton

Moon on the Hills

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Surebleak

In which Korval acquires a new neighbour.

It’s an evocative name, “World’s End”. There’s the obvious sense in which the place is named, referring to a physical boundary, a place where the world comes to an end, but there are other things it could mean, such as a temporal boundary, a time when a world comes to an end. Sometimes a person’s world can come to an end even though the planet continues untouched. Yulie’s world might have ended when he lost the last of his kin. It might have ended today, if Boss Conrad had been someone other than the person he is.

(And isn’t it interesting how, when he’s talking to Yulie, he’s mostly Pat Rin but sometimes he’s Boss Conrad for a moment or two?)

It’s also interesting to speculate how things might have gone differently if Yulie’s brother hadn’t got himself killed before Boss Conrad showed up, and had been the one handling the negotiation for road access.

I Dare – Chapter 46

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Day 44
Standard Year 1393

Surebleak

In which Surebleak Port requires the assistance of the planetary government.

The two Juntavas pilots join the collection of characters for whom the authors have not chosen to provide pronouns, although the fact that we have their names and that they’re Terran names gives one a basis for speculation if one chooses.

I think this is the second mention of timonium in publication order, and the first mention of it being commercially developed in the present, although there are numerous mentions in the early prequels – which kind of makes me wonder what it’s used for in the present, because in the prequels it’s associated with forbidden Old Tech, which I would have thought would mean there wasn’t much money in digging up more of the stuff.

I Dare – Chapters 41 & 42

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Day 32
Standard Year 1393

Blair Road
Surebleak

Day 38
Standard Year 1393

Liad
Department of Interior Command Headquarters

In which business is picking up for pilot-friendly Surebleak.

And that’s why you never ask what harm it could do.

(It’s interesting that the Juntavas, a Terran organization, prefer the Bank of Solcintra as the guide for currency transactions. I suppose it’s connected to Liad’s cantra being widely accepted as the hard currency. Widely agreed-upon currency rates are, all together now, good for business.)

I Dare – Chapter 40

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Day 31
Standard Year 1393

Surebleak Spaceport

In which good intentions sooner or later need cash to back them.

A whole month has passed since we last saw Pat Rin and company, so it’s now only a few weeks before Val Con and Miri are going to start worrying about them. The way things are, though, there’s still a lot might happen in a few weeks.

If anyone ever compiles a book of advice for people caught up in adventure stories, one of those pieces of advice will surely be to never, ever, under any provocation, ask the question “What harm can it do?”

I Dare – Chapter 36

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Day 376
Standard Year 1392

Blair Road
Surebleak

In which Boss Conrad throws a party.

And that brings us up to the end of Pat Rin’s 1392. If you don’t keep track of these things, that means he’s just about caught up with the end of Carpe Diem.

Which is interesting, because it’s been nearly three months since Pat Rin got the Plan B scatter order that kicked all this off, an event which is shown occurring – anyone? – that’s right, very near the end of Carpe Diem.

Now, that’s not a problem in itself, because I’d already figured out that the not-on-Vandar scenes in Carpe Diem aren’t necessarily in sync with the Vandar scenes – witness the entire journey of the Dutiful Passage from Arsdred to Krisko, sandwiched between two Vandar scenes that occur on a single day – but I do tend to wonder about some of the corollaries. If it was really three whole months from the Plan B scatter to when Korval started coming together again, what were people doing for all that time? Where did Nova go for three months before showing up on Liz’s doorstep? What were the crew of the Passage up to? (Apart from refitting the Passage as a battleship, which, to be fair, I have no idea how long that would be likely to take.)

And, what really bothers me, what were Val Con and Miri up to for those three months? Everything after the scene where Priscilla gets the info from Miri that leads to Nova activating Plan B is set during the week of Winterfair, right at the end of the year, so if Plan B was activated three months before the end of the year, that means Miri and Val Con had a very active first month on Vandar and a very active last few days, and in between was two or three months of nothing much happening. Which doesn’t feel right, somehow – not that it’s necessarily unlikely for a group of people in a remote town on a remote planet to have a quiet couple of months, but when I read Carpe Diem the gap doesn’t seem that long, and the active period preceding it feels like more than one month.

I Dare – Chapter 30

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Day 355
Standard Year 1392

Hamilton Street
Surebleak

In which Pat Rin and Natesa come to an understanding.

The bit about the “familiar flames of loss” is telling: events have taught Pat Rin to expect that everything he loves will be taken from him, one way or another.

So the fact that he expects incorrectly this time will be good for him in more ways than one.