Tag Archives: Ristof

Saltation – Chapter 20

Piloting Praxis
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo is not going home for the holidays.

There is a saying: If you can’t be a good example, perhaps you can be a horrible warning. The price of fame is that Theo’s teachers seem inclined to use her as one or the other.

Being of a mind to look for connections with other stories, I idly wonder if any of the master-adjudicated piloting errors the students are set to study is the one that was at the centre of “Changeling”. The odds are not necessarily good, though, even if the timing does work out right (which at this point I’m not sure it does); in the wide universe, there are surely more than enough piloting errors to choose from.

Saltation – Chapter 11

Counseling Center
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo is given some paperwork to review.

Theo goes to see the counselor Chelly recommended, meets Kara again, and receives a letter from Captain Cho informing her, among other things, that news of her dramatic landing has been directed to her mother, on the Safe World of Delgado. Kind of a transitional chapter, this, full of consequences unfolding but not yet unfolded far enough to be clear on how they’ll turn out.

Saltation – Chapter 9

History of Piloting
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo meets Kara ven’Arith.

Theo is learning a lot of family history without knowing it, lately. Although I suppose that was to some extent inevitable once she started learning piloting, considering how much the history of piloting is bound up with the history of Korval.

I think Inspector Johansen is being unfair, here: it would have been one thing to be down on Theo for not doing all the assigned reading, if that was what she had done, and I would even allow that it would have been reasonable to be somewhat disappointed by the class’s lack of initiative — but to mock them for not doing something they hadn’t been called on to do seems to me to be pushing it, especially since I get the impression that Johansen was counting on them to have not done it so she could be grumpy about it. Or maybe I’m being unfair now, and she was just in a bad mood about something.

Kara, with her own version of having grown up between Liaden and Terran cultures and a willingness to share her understanding, could be a useful friend for Theo to have. (Not that I’m saying, of course, that usefulness ought to be an only or a primary criterion for a friendship.)