Tag Archives: Road Protection Agreement

Ghost Ship – Chapter 32

1 Reply

Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which the housewarming party begins.

I recognise from their descriptions some of the party guests whose names Theo doesn’t know – the man with the eyeglasses is certainly Penn Kalhoon, and I’m reasonably confident that the lady in the crimson jacket is Ms Audrey – but I’m not sure about the man in the lab coat talking to Shan. Of course, it may well be someone we haven’t been introduced to yet ourselves.

More foreshadowing is coming together: We’ve had several interludes remarking on the campaign to sabotage the road repairs and school building, with one last chapter establishing that the policy of sabotaging machinery but leaving people unharmed – in spite, as we were reminded, of Surebleak’s usual more direct response to disliked persons – was deliberate and insisted on by the campaign’s mastermind (who was not named, but in context and given the reported attitude is very likely an agent of the Department). And now we see that Val Con and Miri are perhaps letting their guard down a bit on the assumption that people who have made a policy of not hurting anybody will continue to do so – which is, I suspect, the intended effect of the policy. It is not only Korval who does things in layers.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 29

1 Reply

Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which Theo meets more relatives.

It occurs to me that, as out-of-place as Kareen might have seemed as an expert on the Code in a family widely seen as a Code unto themselves, it pales next to being an expert on the Liaden Code of Proper Conduct in a family that’s never going to set foot on Liad again. That’s going to be something she’s going to need to work out for herself – is she a Liaden in exile, upholding the standards of Proper Conduct among rag-mannered barbarians, or would she be truer to herself if she set herself with equal diligence to learning what’s proper to her new situation?

(The rest of the family, I think, has less of an adjustment, because they’re pilots and familiar, at least in principle, with the variation of local custom. And there’s always been that level on which Korval always considered itself not really Liaden, just temporarily resident on Liad.)

There’s a lot of foreshadowing going on: mysterious people about on mysterious jobs, dubious ships in orbit, and so on. Some of it will doubtless come out at the “housewarming party”; that, dramatically speaking, is what important diplomatic events are for.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 27

Leave a Reply

Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which preparations are made for dinner.

The scene where Val Con drives Theo to Jelaza Kazone echoes scenes from earlier books, among them Er Thom driving Anne and Daav driving Aelliana. The similarities, of course, highlight the differences – such as the considerably less accommodating road.

(I’m not entirely sure about the idea of building a bridge over the worst stretch of road to save the Bosses risking their cars on it: how if someone were to destroy the bridge and trap everyone at the wrong end of the Road? But then Miri does say someone will be keeping an eye on the bridge; I suppose somebody would be keeping an eye on that stretch of road in any case.)

I’m not sure Val Con isn’t sending Theo into battle insufficiently armed, by telling her the dress code is “informal” and not telling her what that really means. On the other hand, given that there’s not enough space left in the schedule to dig stuff out of house stores, and that therefore Theo is going to have to go in what she’s got anyhow, maybe telling her would only give her an extra half hour of worrying about not measuring up, with nothing useful to be done about it.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 12

Leave a Reply

Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which Clan Korval looks to the future.

Jelaza Kazone is currently housing all the members of the Clan, excepting the children and the two adults who are with them, and they are ten in number. That would be Daav, Val Con, Miri, Pat Rin, Natesa, Shan, Priscilla, Nova, Anthora, and Ren Zel: ten. Doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know already, but does confirm that there aren’t any extra members of the Clan everybody’s forgotten to mention.

And just when they’re beginning to feel they’ve got their feet under them, in walks Clarence O’Berin, whose presence surely portends something, though whether good or bad remains to be seen.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 8

3 Replies

The Grand Progress
Surebleak

In which Delm Korval is given more welcomes, in a variety of styles.

I’m not sure what to make of this: we’ve had at least two people remark on how much Val Con resembles Pat Rin, and at least one say she doesn’t think the resemblance is all that marked. Different people looking for different things? Or perhaps it’s a question of expectation; with so few data points it’s difficult to be sure, but the degree of perceived resemblance might vary depending on whether a person has been told beforehand to expect it.

I like the idea that the Tree’s response to being moved is to be pleasurably reminded of its younger days when it travelled regularly. I wonder if it ever got bored just standing around for years on end. Perhaps it helped that it had people around it who went and travelled, to some degree, on its behalf.

There’s a fair amount of leeway in the question of just how young the young Mr pel’Kana actually is, since the last we heard of the old Mr pel’Kana was nearly twenty years ago.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 7

Leave a Reply

Emerald Casino
Surebleak Port

In which a misunderstanding is put right.

It doesn’t surprise me that Penn takes longer to recognise Miri than it takes her to recognise him; she’d have reason to expect that returning to Surebleak would mean meeting old friends, but he’d have no particular reason to expect that he’d encounter, while going about his daily business, someone who left the planet years ago with no intention of ever coming back. And it has been a lot of years: in fact, Miri recently passed the point where she’s spent more time not living on Surebleak than she had living on Surebleak.

It does surprise me that the ‘hand says Val Con’s not carrying any weapons. I know the amount of weaponry he had on him in the last few books was a carryover from his agent days and a concession to present necessity, and it was said clearly that left to himself he’s not the weapon-toting type, but I’d have expected him to at least have his brother’s knife on him.

Re-reading this chapter, which turns on the distinction between Pat Rin’s ring and Val Con’s, it occurs to me that Pat Rin might have named his casino after his ring, and the emeralds which show it for what it is; when he opened the casino, after all, he was engaged in an enormous gamble which was begun when he received the ring.