Spiral Dance
Gimlins Approach
In which Jela receives assistance from several unexpected directions.
Or else: In which events take a dramatic turn and shoot off into left field. If I didn’t already know what was coming next, I think I would be having real trouble not going straight on to the next chapter.
(Incidentally, explicit confirmation that Jela’s whip thing is a shib. Now I can consider that question settled, and stop second-guessing myself.)
Spiral Dance
The Little Empty
In which Cantra and Jela have a talk.
The first aid kit offers to make Cantra not only good as new, but better. One is inclined to wonder, if it had been given permission to install a few upgrades, what else it might have slipped in at the same time.
Most of the chapter is Cantra and Jela talking. He tells her about the tree. She tells him about what happened to her family.
(It’s interesting that Jela says the tree hasn’t told him its name or that of its species, just because there’s a scene, in a much later novel, that mentions in passing that the Uncle does know the name of the species. It makes sense that he would have wanted to learn more about them after the encounter just finished — but who is there that he could have learned it from?)
On port
Barbit
In which Jela and Cantra go for a quiet drink.
This is one of my favourite chapters in the Crystal Duology. Possibly it’s because it’s a very Korval sort of scene in a duology that mostly sets a different tone than the Korval novels. I could see Val Con and Miri, for instance, getting into a situation similar to this one.
Though I realised on this re-read that it’s not just the Korval novels it reminds me of:
As Lobsang followed the ambling Lu-Tze he heard the dojo master, who like all teachers never missed an opportunity to drive home a lesson, say: ‘Dojo! What is Rule One?’
Even the cowering challenger mumbled along to the chorus:
‘Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!’