In which yo’Lanna achieves a crush and Surebleak achieves a coup.
After Val Con commenting at the first inspection that the decor in the entrance hall was unsubtle but mendable, I was looking forward to seeing what had been done with it, but the narration skips past it and straight to the ballroom. Then again, perhaps Lady yo’Lanna hasn’t had time to do anything interesting with it yet.
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Surebleak Port
Office of the Road Boss
In which people want to talk about voting.
I wonder if the editor of the newspaper is the same printer on Conrad’s turf who started up the first newssheet after his arrival. If so, she seems to have taken to it pretty well.
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Council Meeting Room
Mercantile Building
In which a meeting proceeds without the invited guest.
A small detail I noticed: one of the other services contained within the Mercantile Building is a bank. Remember when ‘bleakers’ response to Conrad mentioning a bank was “What’s one of them?” and “I can’t see that working here”?
Another reminder of how things have improved since Conrad arrived.
Blair Road
Boss Conrad’s House
In which Mrs kaz’Ineo has an idea.
The mention of the Gilmour Agency’s human resources manual as a recent acquisition places this chapter not long after the opening scene of “Block Party”, in which Luzeal had just made the discovery, although perhaps not after the entire story, which covers a period of several weeks.
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In which Val Con and Miri have a busy morning.
I like “a salute so smart it could have driven itself into town”. And Val Con’s interactions with the cat.
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In which Val Con has tea with his brother’s sister.
No more character reintroductions in this section, only consolidating and expanding on the threads from the previous two sections.
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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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