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Dragon in Exile – Chapter 4

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Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which situations develop.

I am impressed and horrified by Agent bar’Abit’s plan and by the circumstances that led to her attempting it. I’ve said before that the Department does not treat its people well; I’m increasingly feeling the depth by which that’s an understatement.

I’m on Val Con and Miri’s side about not wanting to give up on the prisoners, but at the same time I’m aware that that’s very easy for me to say when it’s just a hypothetical situation for me.

I don’t think I believe in the existence of the man who supposedly asked Mr Kipler to play a joke on Hazenthull; the explanation doesn’t fit the things he actually said. I particularly keep coming back to the bit where he went off on a tangent about the Road Boss, which doesn’t fit his narrative. (It also makes me wonder about whether he’s telling the truth about having nothing to do with Liadens; would someone who didn’t care about Liadens care about Korval attacking Solcintra?)

Boss Conrad’s plan for dealing with Baker Quill’s problem seems straightforward and well thought out, but the fact that the novel’s cover depicts a shoot-out near a bakery inclines me to suspect it won’t go off entirely without a hitch.

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 1

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Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which Val Con yos’Phelium receives two messages.

I confess to some surprise at the idea of Kareen being a mild and unruffled tutor. Perhaps there is something in Kamele’s manner that she finds pleasing. (Perhaps it’s the harmonica-playing dog principle: while a Liaden student would have high expectations to rise to, a Terran’s fumbles are rendered insignificant against the fact that a Terran is essaying Liaden at all.)

Necessity’s Child also had an early incident in which an attempt to reach out to one of the captured agents ended badly; the way the Department of the Interior operates, such attempts are unlikely to end otherwise. That novel did subsequently feature Rys’s breakthrough, and perhaps another breakthrough will occur in this one, but they will always be too late for the people lost along the way.

If Melsilee bar’Abit did manage to break her conditioning – and even if her behaviour portends something else – it’s striking for having apparently occurred without an external trigger. Val Con and Rys both started getting loose of their conditioning after major changes in their life circumstances, but Agent bar’Abit has been sitting for the last while in a prison where little changes from week to week, so the question is: what caused this to happen now?