Tag Archives: Ms Taylor

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 37

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In which the first day of school is an exciting time for everybody.

Rys says explicitly that he knew when Agent bar’Obin explained the mission that he wasn’t going to survive it, but it’s also implied that Agent bar’Obin, who is inside the building she’s about to blow up, doesn’t expect to survive either. The Department doesn’t care for the lives of its people.

I want to note that there are quite a few taxis in this chapter, with at least three and probably more simultaneously present outside the school at one point. I’ll have more to say on that subject in a couple of days.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 36

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In which everybody has plans for the first day of school.

In the author’s note to one of her books, Connie Willis suggests that all the best stories with heartwarming/uplifting endings have a moment not long before the ending where it seems that every chance of a happy ending has been destroyed. Here we are now at that point in Rys’s story.

The horrifyingly plausible thing about Agent bar’Obin’s revelation is that although we know enough about Rys Lin pen’Chala before he fell into the hands of the Department to know he wasn’t the kind of person who would want to destroy a shipload of Terrans (including a friend) because one of them mistreated him, we also know enough about the Department to know that he might have become such a person by the time they were done with him.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 35

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In which Rys has a reunion.

But of course it doesn’t occur to Syl Vor that Ms ker’Eklis was asking something of him in advance of his age and ability; he’s used to living under the Plan B conditions which regularly did the same.

At last we have a name for Rys’s former colleague – and it’s one that has appeared before in this novel. Isphet bar’Obin was present, credentialed as a member of the Blair Road Patrol, when Mike Golden interviewed the criminals who mugged Rys. Several details about that scene seem much more significant, reading it again now, starting with the description of her eye colour, moving on to the fact that Mike only assumes she’s a Scout, and finishing up with the bit where Mike delegates to her the task of discovering the owner of a knife found among the muggers’ possessions.

And this naturally explains how she came to be in the bakery during the meeting, in such an artfully covered position that I assumed at first she was one of the Road Patrol assigned to be Nova’s backup: it’s because she was. How very amusing for her.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 34

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In which lightning strikes.

I don’t think Ms ker’Eklis’s argument about time pressure really stands up. It’s true that a pilot may need to field an answer to a problem in less than thirty seconds, with lives hanging in the balance – but that’s one of the reasons why children Syl Vor’s age aren’t allowed to be fully-qualified pilots. At Syl Vor’s age, that kind of performance is a goal to work toward, not an ability to be expected.

(I wrote that sentence and then had to stop and think about why it sounded familiar. It’s because it echoes what Silain told Nova about one of the problems Kezzi has as the youngest sister with no near age-mates: people sometimes get impatient with her because they forget she’s not yet capable of whatever they want from her.)

I would also say that her example doesn’t actually fit the case she’s arguing, because when a pilot has to come up with a solution in a hurry, it’s the solution that matters, and Syl Vor got that; it’s not often necessary for a pilot to show his working in an emergency. In fact, it’s been made clear previously that a pilot in charge will generally get, and insist on if it’s not offered, authority to act first and explain later in emergencies, precisely because if you’ve got thirty seconds to implement a solution the last thing you need is to stop and give a detailed explanation.

Regarding the lesson that a person of melant’i responds to provokation by noting the circumstances so they may be Balanced in due time, a Terran might say that Liadens believe in revenge being a dish best served cold, but I think it’s more that for Liadens revenge is a dish best served with precision. If one gets angry and leaps to retaliate immediately, one may make a mess of things, and one may miss out on a better opportunity that would have come if one had waited.

The card Kezzi’s working on resembles the Tower card from the Tarot deck, both in the picture and the story it represents. The story of the card is another thing in this chapter that echoes: it’s the card Rys might have drawn if he’d drawn a card and if the cards really could see the future.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 33

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In which Rys goes for a mug.

There are several things to be suspicious of in this chapter, but I don’t know if I’m suspicious of them only because I know where the story’s going; I can’t remember what I thought of them the first time I read the novel.

Droi’s anger, “anger that was more than half vey“, is interesting, both for the half that is vey (that is, inspired by the gift by which she sees things that others don’t see), and for the half that isn’t.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 30

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In which a packed day draws to a close.

Silain has a good point, which I hadn’t considered when I was reading this novel for the first time and expecting Rys to wind up being accepted into the kompani. He fits in well enough now, but as he himself said earlier they can’t make a definite decision until they know how he might be changed by regaining his lost memories.

Another thing I hadn’t properly considered when I was reading this novel for the first time is that when Kezzi asked if it might be possible to find a ship that had been lost, I thought she was thinking of the ship that the headman and the luthia were discussing a while ago, the overdue ship that was to have come for the kompani at the end of their chafurma. Of course it isn’t; even if the headman and the luthia hadn’t decided on a wait-and-see course about that, I don’t think any child of the Bedel would tell gadje about their ship, let alone invite gadje to track it down. (In fairness to my younger self, I don’t think we’ve actually been shown Kezzi learning about the ship that she is asking about, which may have thrown me off.)

I think giving Peter and Luce another chance to find their place at school is the right decision. Maybe they’ll take it, and everybody will be happy, and if they don’t at least they’ll be somewhere someone’s got an eye on them. Between those two possibilities, isn’t that pretty much the point of the child-off-the-street policy?

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 29

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In which it is sometimes necessary to attend to one repair at a time.

The two plot strands in this chapter are connected by the issue of rushing things: Udari, inspired by having something to work with, attempts to rush Rys’s recovery, with no good result; Pat Rin finds that circumstances are forcing them to rush the opening of the new consolidated school.

(If it can be said that the opening is rushed when the school building is so far behind schedule, thanks to the people Rys used to work for. And that reminds me that one of those people is still on the loose, so the fact that there has been no further sabotage on the school might just mean that they’re having another go at lulling the Dragon into a false sense of security.)

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 28

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In which Syl Vor and Kezzi are early to school.

And this, of course, is exactly the kind of thing one might expect to happen when a child of Korval promises to be no more trouble than necessary.

We’re getting a lot more Surebleak street names in this book than we have before. I wonder if the authors had their own map, and played their own version of the school route-learning game.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 26

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In which Kezzi has dinner with her family.

The description of the “yellow plate with a design that might have been flowers or birds, or both, painted around the edge” reminds me of this plate, which comes from a 19th-century English dinnerware set that inspired the classic young adult novel The Owl Service. It’s been long enough since I read The Owl Service myself, though, that I don’t have any definite thoughts about what might be suggested by the comparison, even assuming it’s not just a coincidence.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 25

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In which Syl Vor introduces his sister to a game.

The information-trading game is interesting, because it’s never been mentioned before in a Liaden story, but it’s very similar to a game featured in one of Lee and Miller’s non-Liaden works.

Master Walk was published in a chapbook about a decade ago (the ebook edition is still available), and also appears in the print anthology Double Vision. I get the impression it was hoping to be the first of a new series – it’s got that feeling about it, like how you can often tell if a telemovie started life as a pilot episode – but so far there have been no sequels.

It’s science fiction again, set in a galaxy that is like and unlike that of the Liadens in various respects. The trading of information is a big thing both in the setting in general and the plot of Master Walk in particular, and the traders of information play the token-swapping game to keep score during a transaction. (It is considered that a transaction has not been completed with honor unless each participant gives and receives equal value.) The full game, at least in that version, uses tokens of several denominations, allowing a considerable amount of precision when indicating how much value is placed on a piece of information received.

There’s a moment that’s stayed with me, where a trader asks a question, receives the answer, and hands over a token indicating how valuable they found the answer to be – and the person they’re dealing with immediately also hands over a token, indicating that they’ve received valuable information from the size of the token the answer elicited.