Dutiful Passage
In which Priscilla receives a history lesson.
Shan’s coaster that was a gift from Ambassador Valeking was introduced in Alliance of Equals and has appeared a couple of times, in that book and then in this one, during scenes where Padi has been meeting her father in his office.
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Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
In which a team comes together.
I was wrong about why Val Con found Tocohl’s voice familiar, but at least I was inside the ball park.
It occurs to me that Val Con thinking about his plans for his daughter’s future actually fits in well in the midst of Rys and the free agents planning, because the potential for Talizea to have a future is one of the things they’re fighting for.
Whatever plan they decide on, there’s no chance now they’ll get it done before the end of the book, but that’s no surprise; The Decisive Attack on the Department was always the kind of thing that was going take a whole book to tell.
It’s interesting that the free agents apparently don’t know about Val Con. The Department knows, of course, but it makes sense that a particular agent wouldn’t have been told unless there was some reason they needed to know. After the attack on Solcintra Headquarters, it would have become general knowledge that Korval was acting in opposition to the Department, but perhaps not the details of how that came about.
I wonder if Claidyne, the former director, knows.
Day 50
Standard Year 1393
Liad
Department of Interior Command Headquarters
In which Commander of Agents moves forward on two fronts.
One of Commander of Agents’ characteristic attributes is the way he’ll casually sweep past concepts with really troubling implications. This is at least the second time his plans for Korval have taken advantage of knowledge gained from confidential medical reports. He has no apparent problem with “retraining” Val Con to betray his own family. And then there’s the box that produces “interesting reactions” in a dramliza confined inside, currently undergoing “testing”; that pretty much has to mean live test subjects, and given the Department’s track record I wouldn’t want to bet on them being informed volunteers.
It’s not quite true that Anthora’s powers have no known limits; there’s at least one known to her kin, which was hinted at in Plan B and will be explicated later in this novel. Her family seem to have kept that one to themselves, which is just as well; the Department has had the opportunity to do a horrifying amount of damage if they’d known about it.
Dutiful Passage
In Orbit
In which Priscilla learns some history.
The dateline doesn’t say what Dutiful Passage is in orbit around. It might be Krisko, since that’s what they were in orbit around the last time their location was mentioned, and they were loading extra weapons then and they’re loading extra weapons now. There’s been the dramatic business with Shan going to speak to Val Con in between, but there’s no reason that couldn’t have happened in orbit around Krisko too; all things considered, it didn’t actually take very long.
If Shan was seventeen when he recruited Seth, then Seth has been with the ship around twenty years. The story of that recruitment has echoes of Shan’s rescue of Ren Zel dea’Judan (“That’s my man, sir”), and for that matter of his hiring of Priscilla (“Always need a good pilot”, even if there’s no vacancies).
I was going to say that I was surprised Shan didn’t pass his discovery on to Nova and save her some trouble, but then I remembered that Plan B is effect and he doesn’t know where Nova is now.
We don’t, I think, know any of the people involved in the last contract between Korval and Erob, when the child came to yos’Galan. The only yos’Galan child of that generation we know of is Petrella, Shan’s grandmother, but we know both her parents and neither was of Erob, so there must have been another yos’Galan who died untimely.
All this talk about the close ties between Korval and Erob has brought on the realisation that they have similar designs for their clan badges: each has a dangerous winged creature flying over something tall and enduring. I wonder if the founders of Erob did that deliberately.
In which equitable solutions are found for a number of problems.
It’s interesting that Syntebra el’Kemin is apparently not averse to Luken’s attentions. I mean, I totally understand that she might feel more comfortable with him than with his sharper-witted relatives — but if she thought Er Thom old, what does that make Luken?
A thing I like about this chapter is how much warmth and care there is between (at least some of) the members of Clan Korval; between Er Thom and Daav, and between Daav and Luken. (And between Luken and nearly everybody?) I particularly love that, although Luken doesn’t fit in the Korval mould, Daav genuinely appreciates and respects him for who he is.
In which Shan receives two visitors.
Our first appearance of Luken bel’Tarda, who is one of my favourite characters in the series. In a setting full of hotshot pilots and marksmen and wizards and master traders and witty banterers, it’s nice to know that it’s also possible for a person who is none of those things to be signficant just by being a thoroughly decent human being. (Though, that said, I note he’s achieved the rank of Master Merchant, which suggests that even if he’s not dazzlingly brilliant he’s not stupid either.)
We also get enough detail about Pat Rin’s situation to make it quite clear why the delm found it necessary to remove him from his mother’s care into Luken’s and why her attempts to win him back are unlikely to bear fruit. Whatever her good points may be, Lady Kareen’s obviously not going to be winning any awards for motherhood.
Anne’s estimate of Luken’s age puts him within a year or two of Daav’s sister and Er Thom’s brother. I wonder if it was just happenstance that all the Lines produced heirs around the same time, or if there was some co-ordination involved.
(The estimate of Pat Rin’s age, on the other hand – which is given from Petrella’s viewpoint, so it can’t be handwaved as unfamiliarity – disagrees with the dates in the Partial Timeline by a full three Standard Years. Which, come to think of it, is Shan’s age; I wonder if somebody got confused at some point between Pat Rin’s age when Shan was born and Pat Rin’s age when the two of them first met.)
This is also the chapter in which Olwen sel’Iprith gives Daav nubiath’a. Which goes to show that two Liadens touching each other’s faces like lifemates doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s where the relationship is going to end up – she touches his face again here, even as she’s saying goodbye. And I have occasionally wondered if Daav would have handled subsequent events differently if this hadn’t happened to him just now.
Quick Passage
In which we enter the Liaden Universe.
The tale of Moreta‘s Flight has gotta be a shout-out to Anne McCaffrey.
After being in transition for twenty-eight days, Quick Passage arrives at its destination – alone. It’s not clear here, and I remember being confused by it the first time I read the duology, but the authors have said in interviews that all the other refugees from the sheriekas made it to the new universe (by some mechanism I’m still not entirely clear on, but which undoubtedly had the fingerprints of the dramliz all over it) sooner or later.
And when I say “sooner or later”, some of them arrived later than Quick Passage – and some arrived sooner. There are places in the modern Liaden universe, about five hundred years on from here, that have histories stretching back considerably more than five hundred years. (Not to mention that if the modern era is Standard Year 1393, it’s counting from something that happened centuries before the Solcintrans arrived on Liad. Calendars don’t prove anything; Anno Domini wasn’t invented until AD 525. And even if the Standard calendar is a Liaden invention, it may be counting from something that happened back on old Solcintra.)
I wonder if Cantra bothered to ask any of the passengers before naming their planet for them.
Not that it’s an unreasonable choice. (I just suspect they’d rather have called it New Solcintra, or something.) If anything, naming one planet after Liad dea’Syl is a bit small. It’s not just solipsism: this really is the Liaden Universe.
In which we’re leaving together, but still it’s farewell.
This is the only chapter in the duology that doesn’t have a caption saying, however ambiguously, where it takes place.
I think the mention of Dancer, “singing sweet seduction to her makers”, must be where I got the idea that she was sent off to act as a decoy; whether that was Cantra’s intention, it’s what she’s doing. (And I love the image of the seedling adding its own insulting messages.)
Hands up, anyone who thinks the Iloheen’s being honest in its offer to promote Rool Tiazan’s lady if she comes quietly. Nobody? Didn’t think so.
I was right about Rool Tiazan’s bargain with the ambitious dramliza, it looks like. (Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are twelve kinds of twisty.)
The “vast and implacable greenness” is interesting. A last-ditch attempt by the ssussdriad? Or … something else? (Do they have Turtles in this universe?)
Quick Passage
Departing Solcintra
In which the Great Migration begins.
Since I missed all the cosmological hints the first time through, it was the number Master dea’Syl adds to his calculations in this chapter that brought home to me that the universe Cantra calls home is not ours. Such a number, appearing in the equations determining their destination – and then there’s the fact that not one person present in the tower stops and says, “Wait a minute, isn’t that…?”
Quick Passage
In which the new clan gathers allies.
Yes, I thought that was where I remembered the gambler reappearing.
And I’m thinking that what we have gathered here is the beginnings of Korval’s ally, Clan Erob. Though I’m not sure if it’s all of them, or just the red-headed ones. 🙂
This chapter shows the flip side of Solcintra’s insularity. It neatly explained why the Liadens don’t have some of the things they don’t have, but it also means that another neat explanation is called for regarding why they do have some of the things they do have. Like, as the gambler points out here, healers, seers, and others with abilities resembling those of the dramliz.
The ink is hardly dry on Korval’s charter, and already they’re showing their form as a clan who won’t meekly wait on the Council’s decisions when the right course is plain.