Tag Archives: robot cab

Quiet Knives

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In which Captain Rolanni goes to Shaltren sooner than expected.

This is an important story for the Juntavas, laying the groundwork for them to be something a bit more nuanced than The Space Mafia.

The pacing of this story didn’t quite work for me the first time I read it, with all the build-up to Kore’s escape attempt/Rolanni’s rescue attempt, and then it suddenly didn’t matter because Chairman Trogar meets his fate in an unrelated Act of Turtle. (And I got the feeling that the role of the Turtles isn’t sufficiently set up for someone who hasn’t read Carpe Diem first — though I’m in no position to say for sure, since I did read Carpe Diem first.) On this re-read, I got a better feeling of how the two things aren’t entirely unrelated; for one thing, if Sambra Reallen hadn’t called the department heads to a meeting as a distraction from Rolanni’s rescue attempt, they wouldn’t have been on hand to witness the Chairman’s downfall, and Reallen wouldn’t have been there to take hold of the situation before it got out of hand.

(Incidentally, from the mentions of them in this story, the department heads seem to be functionally just such a council of elders as Chairman Trogar boasted to Edger did not exist and had no power over him.)

Also, I’m thinking now, Rolanni’s attempt to rescue Kore is a bit like like Marguerite’s attempt to rescue her husband in The Scarlet Pimpernel, in that whether she will succeed in rescuing him is not the big question of the story; the big question was already answered when she decided she had to make the attempt.

It struck me on this re-read that “Kore” is also the name of a figure in Greek mythology, but I think that’s probably just a coincidence, notwithstanding that this Kore also has what might be understood as a descent into the underworld.

Another more useful thing that struck me on this re-read is that Rolanni’s personal and professional history places her as part of whatever the modern equivalent is of the trading family network that Jethri’s family was part of back in Balance of Trade.

Something I noticed the first time and again on this re-read is that we get very little detail about Kore’s employer, the High Judge, not even a name; I suspect the authors were leaving room to fill in details if he showed up in another story later. The first time I read this story, I wondered if he might be Clarence O’Berin, but that was mainly because I wanted more stories about Clarence; what little we get about the High Judge’s personality doesn’t really fit. It’s definitely not Clarence, anyhow; “Shadow Partner” has him still holding down the position on Liad many years after the High Judge started on the career path that led to him being the High Judge.

Tomorrow: Plan B

Agent of Change – Chapter 4

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In which Val Con and Miri make some calls.

Miri and Val Con are clearly starting to relax into each other’s company: they’ve begun bantering.

Val Con speaks more truth than he realises when he promises Liz he will take the best care of Miri he can, for as long as he can.

Here’s an interesting exercise for a writer: the character has a small box containing everything most valuable to her in the world — what, specifically, is in it? To answer the question for a character who’s only been in the story for four chapters would require either a considerable knowledge of parts of her backstory that haven’t made it into the story yet, or a certain talent for improvisation together with a willingness to assume explanations will present themselves as needed. Or both, mixed in some proportion. (Explanations for some of Miri’s keepsakes will subsequently become apparent, but not all. Which is as it should be; a character whose past can be entirely told is likely a character lacking in depth.)

Signs that this novel was written in the 1980s: the primary medium for data storage and retrieval is tape.

Agent of Change – Chapter 3

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In which the man who was not Terrence O’Grady recalls Val Con yos’Phelium.

I am reminded of something Sharon Lee says in one or another of the various places she’s talked about the origins of this novel: that when she first started telling herself stories about what eventually became the Liaden Universe, they were about Val Con the master spy on his own, but after a while Miri came into things because — as near as I can remember the wording — Val Con was in need of someone who still knew what truth looked like.

Agent of Change – Chapter 2

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In which Miri Robertson meets Val Con yos’Phelium, and he invites her to join him for dinner.

If this is Val Con yos’Phelium, much has changed for him since we last heard of him, two or three months ago for us and six or seven years for him. Back then, he was a Liaden Scout, and a First-In Scout at that — not an occupation much given to assassinating Terran supremacists. Nor is he himself a person one would have expected to take up that line of work, despite what happened to his parents (if anything, the way he and his family reacted then supports the idea that it’s uncharacteristic for him now).

And then there’s Miri, who we haven’t heard from in about twice as long. Back then, she was a girl just embarking on a career as a mercenary soldier. How that led, a decade and a bit later, to packs of gunmen laying for her in alleys… we shall have to wait and see.

(An aside: Miri’s use of arbitrary numbers tends toward multiples of seven, while Val Con’s tends toward multiples of twelve, a Liaden attribute I’ve noticed in other novels but hadn’t realised was established so early.)

Is it just me, or does the picture of Miri on the cover of the Meisha Merlin edition look an awful lot like Jamie Lee Curtis? This is not, mind you, a complaint, because either way it succeeds in looking a great deal like Miri, an achievement by no means to be taken for granted when it comes to characters on the covers of Liaden Universe novels.