Tag Archives: Ranny Suki

Trade Secret – Chapter 20

9 Replies

Tradedesk, Gallery 770

In which Jethri receives some good advice.

The story is really picking up now. It’s getting harder to put the book down for a day at the end of the chapter.

I wonder if Tan Sim has a specific reason to be interested in the Uncle, or if it’s just that anybody who can throw around money as seemingly-casually as he just did is a person a trader might find interesting.

I like the moment when Jethri and Tan Sim are “a riot of emotions for Liaden eyes, and the picture of restraint to Terran”. Moments of comparison like that are some of the things I love this series for. (It also reminds me of one of my favourite non-Liaden novels, Janet Kagan’s Hellspark, which is written in a similar mode and has many cross-culture moments like this. In the arena of idly wondering what protagonists of your favourite stories would make of each other, Clan Korval and the crew of the Margaret, Lord Lynn are pretty high on my list.)

Trade Secret – Chapter 18

8 Replies

Tradedesk, Gallery 770

In which it is always good to have news of kin.

The red bar, it appears, indicates a person who’s been invited to the traders’ after-dinner. That number includes, apart from Jethri and Grandma Ricky, Samay pin’Aker and Infreya chel’Gaibin, but not Bar Jan chel’Gaibin. With Infreya chel’Gaibin, instead of her son, is a pilot Jethri doesn’t recognise – perhaps Former Scout yos’Belin – wearing her red badge tag “slightly askew”, which may be an indication that she’s been adjusting the number and colour of tags from those to which she is properly entitled.

Jethri gets to learn some more of the things about his father that people assume he knows already. In this case, it’s about Uncle and Dulsey, and the fact that Arin looked as much like Uncle as Jethri looks like Arin. Which, as Jethri himself notes, is interesting.