Tag Archives: Petrella yos’Galan

Trader’s Leap – Chapter 9 (V-IX)

Dutiful Passage
Millsap Orbit

In which Padi has a long day.

Shan has a plan: to visit the Redlands, which it turns out is not one country, or even one planet, but a system with three inhabited planets.
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Accepting the Lance – Chapter 12

Jelaza Kazone

In which Val Con receives a letter from an old family friend.

Timeline sorting: The last two Surebleak chapters of Neogenesis each focus, as this chapter does, on half the delm starting the morning’s work. This one appears to fit between those two; it’s the morning after the first of them, in which Val Con receives the news from Tinsori Light. The second, in which Miri receives an unexpected visitor, appears to yet be in the future.
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Due Diligence – Epilog

In which Fer Gun visits a friend.

I’ve enjoyed this story a lot. Without wishing to slight any of the others, it’s definitely my favourite Liaden story of recent years.
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Due Diligence – Chapter 8

In which Chi yos’Phelium’s son is born.

Good morning, Daav. Welcome to the world. It’s going to have its ups and its downs, but that’s life for you, I’m afraid.
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Due Diligence – Chapter 6

In which Comet is hiring.

This will be the first post to drop after I finished reading the novella, so I’m bumping the original opening paragraph to apologise for how touchy I was last week. There was other stuff going on, and my anticipation for this story was one of the bright spots of the week, so I was a bit defensive about it. I don’t want to discourage anybody from being enthusiastic about this story, or from sharing that enthusiasm with other readers, particularly since I share that enthusiasm myself.

Now, on with the story:
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Due Diligence – Chapter 4

In which Fer Gun pen’Uldra gets married.

And so here is the context for the things that had puzzled me about Chi’s behaviour.
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Due Diligence – Chapter 2

In which Petrella yos’Galan is diligent.

I had some things I was going to say about how I still didn’t understand why Chi is going to these lengths, but they’ve been rendered moot by the helpful person in the previous post’s comments who wished to spare me the trouble of waiting for the story to explain itself. So.

I like the discussion of the difference between offending nobody and offending everybody.

The thing Petrella thinks she remembers about Line pen’Uldra, which has not yet been revealed, is I suspect likely to be connected somehow with the fact of Fer Gun being the last of the Line.

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 11

Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which the carpet shop has a visitor who wants Pat Rin to pay.

The discussion of how the dream adapts itself to the dreamer (and is not, for one thing, just restricted to “do you kill this person who is important to you?”) is reassuring in regard to the question of whether every one of the captured agents will be able to be offered a choice. But now I have another concern: The fact that many of the Department’s agents were bound unwillingly to a course and a goal they wouldn’t have chosen in their right minds doesn’t necessarily imply that there are no agents who would support the Department’s aims if given a free choice.

Quin’s story is a reminder of how long we’ve been following Korval’s recent history; “great-grandmother” sounds like such a long time ago, and I thought at first of some unknown ancestor, but count it back and it’s Chi yos’Phelium, whom we already know. (And that’s the second mention of her in two chapters. I don’t know if that’s going to be significant, or is just a coincidence.)

A garnet trade ring is pretty good; not the Master Trader’s amethyst, but only a few rungs below it.

Beslin vin’Tenzing’s attack would be a useful illustration in a discussion about why “revenge” is not always an appropriate synonym for “Balance”. It’s not a well-considered Balancing, even if one accepts that Pat Rin bears full responsibility for the people killed when he fired on Solcintra (and I think a full account of the responsibility there would need to consider the role of the Department, who chose to use those people as a human shield). If nothing else, it’s an attempt to redress vin’Tenzing’s losses that leaves out all the other people who sustained losses in the attack. There is more than one family that lost a child, and there’s only one Quin; they can’t all settle it by shooting him.

…though that doesn’t mean vin’Tenzing is going to be the only one to give it a try.

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 10

Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which Kareen and Kamele have an informative conversation.

I was a bit glib and a lot unfair when I suggested that Kareen might view Kamele as a performing dog. A better way to characterise the situation might be that Kamele has a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for learning the intricacies of the Liaden language, which makes it easier for one to forgive any stumbles since she’s clearly doing her best and it’s not her fault she’s not fully fluent yet. One might be less forgiving of a Terran who seemed to have made only the effort required to get by, for instance.

Also, they seem to actually like each other, a fact of which I took some convincing if only because Kareen has generally not made friends easily and it seemed unlikely that she would find it any easier with a non-Liaden.

(It’s interesting that, after Kamele was worried she might miss nuances if the conversation about the portrait was in Liaden, Kareen makes what must have been a deliberate choice to step out of Liaden into Terran to tell her about it, perhaps specifically to spare her that worry.)

Kareen’s description of the circumstances of Er Thom’s birth didn’t quite make sense to me at first: I wasn’t sure why it would be necessary for yos’Galan to produce a back-up delm of certain piloting ability when there was already Sae Zar. I think, though, that the problem with Sae Zar as a back-up delm is that he didn’t have the training for it; we know that training for a delm’s heir begins when he or she is very young, as happened for Daav (and Er Thom, as the designated back-up heir, got the same training). Also, Sae Zar was already designated as the heir to yos’Galan’s Master Trader, and to add Delm’s Heir to his pile would have been a disservice to yos’Galan, to be avoided unless no other solution was available.

Of the delms Kareen mentions in passing, we have heard of Jeni yos’Phelium, who helped establish the Scout Academy, and Theonna yos’Phelium, who was responsible for the Tactical Defense Pods. Edil yos’Phelium and Var Ond ter’Asten are new names. (ter’Asten is itself also a new name, unless it’s an alternate transliteration of “ter’Astin” – Jethri’s friend the scout was named Jan Rek ter’Astin.)

The implication of Kamele’s remark about Aelliana also being delm is, as I understand it, that her death wasn’t as simple as Daav failing his duty as delm to protect the vulnerable and husband the clan’s resources; Aelliana was also acting as delm, with a different assessment of who was most vulnerable and which resources the clan could least afford to lose, and no time for the two halves of the delm to reach a consensus.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 37

Dayan
First Sunrise

In which Priscilla has speech with a sister.

Dayan, like Sintia, worships the Goddess; it does seem to be the same Goddess, with a common basis indicated by Priscilla’s expressions and gestures being recognised by the women she speaks to. Like Sintia, too, the priestesses of the Goddess are apparently the temporal as well as spiritual leaders, and possibly not handling it as gracefully as they might. In some ways it’s worse than Sintia; there are hints in some of the Moonhawk stories that men on Sintia are second-class citizens, but on Dayan their status doesn’t even reach that high. There are signs of hope: that Lomar Fasholt speaks with Shan as an equal says something, and that she considers it (and without any apparent doubt or hesitation) appropriate to secure her husband an education says something more. (And that echoes something in the Moonhawk story “The Wine of Memory”, come to think of it.)

Shan notes that Priscilla shows signs of her continued education in proper Liaden in her ability to produce an appropriate phrase; it also shows, I think, in the way she is able to put a name to the bow Shan offers Lomar Fasholt.


According to my notes, tomorrow’s schedule calls for doing the next three chapters in one go.