Tag Archives: Mr dea’Gauss’ ancestor

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 32

10 Replies

Quick Passage

In which the new clan gathers allies.

Yes, I thought that was where I remembered the gambler reappearing.

And I’m thinking that what we have gathered here is the beginnings of Korval’s ally, Clan Erob. Though I’m not sure if it’s all of them, or just the red-headed ones. 🙂

This chapter shows the flip side of Solcintra’s insularity. It neatly explained why the Liadens don’t have some of the things they don’t have, but it also means that another neat explanation is called for regarding why they do have some of the things they do have. Like, as the gambler points out here, healers, seers, and others with abilities resembling those of the dramliz.

The ink is hardly dry on Korval’s charter, and already they’re showing their form as a clan who won’t meekly wait on the Council’s decisions when the right course is plain.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 31

5 Replies

Quick Passage

In which Clan Korval exists.

I had always assumed, before I read the duology, that the Tree-and-Dragon emblem of Korval was a combination of the emblems of the two founding lines, and that since the Tree was obviously yos’Phelium’s contribution, the Dragon must have been yos’Galan’s. This turns out to be true in a sense, since Clan Alkia’s emblem is a dragon (which is not just the mascot of Light Wing after all), but it seems kind of unbalanced when yos’Phelium has dragons of its own.

Though perhaps the way to look at it is that both lines are represented by the Tree and the Dragon. yos’Phelium is the tree (for the obvious reason) and also the dragon (because of the branches-with-wings); yos’Galan is the dragon (for the obvious reason) and also the tree (perhaps representing, for Tor An, the piata tree that grew by his family home, and by inference the home itself and all that went with it).

The Clan investiture (which reads very much like a wedding ceremony, which I suppose is not inappropriate) also gives us our first mention of melant’i.

It occurs to me that one of the side-effects of reading on a fixed schedule of one chapter per day is that it messes with the pacing. An author who wishes to give the impression that events are picking up speed might go for lots of short chapters, but at one chapter per day shorter chapters mean that events proceed slower (and the long, slow chapters zip by in comparison).

I had completely forgotten the wrinkle involving Mr dea’Gauss’s family. I look forward with interest to seeing what Cantra intends to do about it.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 30

5 Replies

Solcintra
Near Orbit

In which a new venture calls for new names.

The Service Families have declared themselves the new High Houses of Solcintra. That didn’t take long.

Partly in response, Cantra and Tor An decide to strengthen their association, from perhaps-temporary co-pilots to permanent clanmates. (As I recall, Shan’s recounting of the Clan’s history in one of the later novels implies that they didn’t take that step until after landfall, but it does make sense for them to take the step now, for all the reasons Tor An mentions – and it has always been said that the contract was with Clan Korval, so that’s all right. In situations like this, Lois McMaster Bujold is wont to say that “the Management reserves the right to have a better idea later.”)

And on reflection, while it makes first-glance sense for the idea of forming a Clan to have presented itself later, at the point where the voyage was over and Cantra and Tor An needed to decide how they were going to carry on into the future, I’m not sure the Cantra we’ve come to know in this duology would have made this choice then. Forming Clan with her co-pilot means hitching her destiny to someone else’s in a way she’s never done, and I get the feeling that on some level she’s only letting herself do it now because it’s not going to matter if they all die soon anyway. If they’d waited to decide until they knew for sure they had the rest of their lives ahead of them, I don’t know that she might not have got cold feet.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 29

6 Replies

Solcintra

In which some details are hammered out.

Of all the familiar names that unexpectedly turn up in the duology, dea’Gauss is probably my sentimental favourite. (Although I feel moved to note that he’s not as accomplished a contract-wrangler as his descendant, if that’s not too obvious a thing to be worth saying; I can’t imagine the modern Mr dea’Gauss letting a clause get past him that was so ambiguous as to support several centuries of dispute about its interpretation.)

Another amusing thing in this chapter is the list of things the Solcintrans avoid using: genetic engineering, AI, mobile phones — in short, all the technologies whose absence might have caused a reader in 2006 to regard the twenty-year-old future established in Agent of Change as a bit dated.

(That said, it makes sense for a culture who use body language so heavily as the Liadens do to not make much use of mobile phones. You can’t bow properly over a mobile phone.)