Tag Archives: prime meal

Accepting the Lance – Chapter 1

In which one remains in plain sight and vulnerable.

One’s own mother used to say “Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite”. Apparently bedbugs are one unpleasantness that isn’t found on Surebleak. (They prefer a tropical climate, I gather.)
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Degrees of Separation – Chapter 3

Liad

In which Don Eyr fails to persuade Serana to leave him.

I was actually kind of surprised by how useful Don Eyr and Serana found the melant’i plays as a guide to Liaden behaviour; people who have tried that in other stories have had mixed success due to their source texts being unrealistic, melodramtic, or outright fraudulent.
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Degrees of Separation – Chapter 1

Liad

In which Don Eyr is taken away and educated.

I knew two things going in to “Degrees of Separation”: that it’s a prequel to “Block Party”, which is not unusual for a Liaden story, and that the cover image prominently features the Eiffel Tower and a globe of the Earth more-or-less centred on France, which is. Earth (or Terra) has been mentioned occasionally, but has never yet appeared on-screen.
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Neogenesis – Chapter 20 part VII

In which there is some excitement at dinner.

I notice that when Val Con and Miri are rendering Korval’s judgement, the placement of the quotation marks indicates that they are speaking alternate sentences, but there’s a lack of dialogue tags indicating who is speaking which sentence. In a way, of course, that’s only appropriate because it doesn’t matter — either way, it’s Delm Korval speaking — but I’d be interested to know whether the judgement itself is spoken by the half of the delm whose idea it was or the half who had to be convinced that it would work.
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Neogenesis – Chapter 1 part II

In which there are many meetings.

Many meetings, and more reintroductions, and an innocent request concerning grapes that may or may not turn into something larger.
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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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Alliance of Equals – Chapter 31

Admiral Bunter

In which the bombshell is dropped.

I’ve been going back and forth on the cover illustration: at first I assumed it depicted Dutiful Passage, more or less because that was the only ship I knew would be in the novel, then later I thought perhaps it was Admiral Bunter. Now it looks like I was right the first time.

When Shan and Higgs went out, leaving Padi behind at the hotel, my first thought was that they’d been lured away so that someone could attack Padi. Then the attack on the Passage happened, and now I think it’s that Padi’s going to get wind of that and have to deal with it without Shan around to offer guidance.

It could still be that Shan was deliberately lured away. (In-story, I mean. It’s pretty obvious that it was deliberate on the part of the authors.) Perhaps it’s a two pronged attack. Perhaps it’s coincidentally an attack from Plishet with no connection to the attack on Priscilla. On the other hand, perhaps it’s just that Shan found conversation with Master Rusk congenial and lost track of time.

(Perhaps it’s good news that keeps him – it suddenly struck me as I was writing this that maybe she has news to impart of Lomar Fasholt. Although I don’t really have anything to back that up with beyond the flimsy observations that she’s female and it would be nice to have news of Lomar by the end of the book.)

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 28

Surebleak Port

In which Tolly lifts out, and Rys has news.

I’d never really thought about the issues involved in fitting an Yxtrang into an autodoc designed for a smaller person. This is probably a worst case, being a shipboard autodoc, which means it would take up as little room as possible, and on a Liaden ship whose designer presumably envisaged it only being needed by Liadens.

Tolly’s apology to the pilot for getting Korval tangled in their business by bringing Hazenthull onto the ship suggests that he doesn’t know that pilot, ship, and business all belong to Korval already. And I don’t understand why not. I can see that Tolly comes from the kind of background where you don’t speculate about your employer’s identity if they choose not to tell you, but why not tell him?

I suspect, given the way Korval’s Luck tends to run, that Rys and Val Con’s visit to Yulie is going to intersect in some interesting way with the Syndicate’s plan to take over the farm.

The incident at Bob’s Grocery reinforces the point that Bosil was reflecting on during the first incident at Quill’s Bakery: if the new way of doing things survives on Surebleak, it’s not going to be just because the Bosses insist, it’s going to be because the ordinary people see the advantages and are willing to fight to keep them.

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 24

Surebleak

In which there are meetings and partings.

I’m still inclined to the idea that Tolly is the specialist Jeeves is sending with Tocohl. Conversely, this implies that Jeeves is the colleague who encouraged Tolly to settle on Surebleak, which raises the interesting question of what enterprise they might have been colleagues in.

I haven’t the faintest idea what High Judge Falish Meron (whose name is given here for the first time) might want with Val Con. Based on past performance, this probably means I haven’t been paying attention and it will be obvious as soon as it’s said.

Smealy’s meeting with Miri is sure to go badly for somebody, but I’m not confident in guessing who. Miri might send him out with his tail between his legs, the way Val Con did, but he’ll be more inclined to fight back this time, because he needs a success to show his colleagues. He might be tempted to do something foolish because Miri is small and female, in which case he’d be making a mistake in underestimating Miri – not just because she’s ex-merc and Korval, but because she grew up on Surebleak, and was pretty tough already before she was either of those other things. I suspect the Syndicate Bosses are similarly underestimating Surebleak’s population in thinking the campaign of examples will make them roll over.

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 20

Surebleak Port

In which Val Con has a meeting, and Tolly avoids one.

I speculate that the crew who made an attempt on Yulie’s growing rooms are connected to the group Rys encountered near the gate of the Bedel. Nothing really solid to go on, just a sense that they were both sniffing around places that they ought not to even know about.

I don’t believe we’ve heard the name of Tan Ort before. I note that the description Val Con gives, as far as it goes, matches Herb’s description of the Liaden Tolly is anxious to avoid meeting, but I don’t think that necessarily means anything; the description doesn’t go very far and probably fits a lot of Liadens. There’ll be a fair few who are of a portly bearing, red hair isn’t entirely uncommon (look at Miri’s entire family, for a start), and it’s a rare Liaden who isn’t shorter than Val Con.