Tag Archives: Sergeant M. Lorit

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 20

Vanehald

In which the world-shield is right where they left it.

It occurs to me that it might turn out to be an advantage that Commander Gorriti ran away before the trouble started. If he’d still been in charge, I suspect he’d have been more of a hindrance than a help.

And this would appear to be, more or less, the end of the subplot about the world-shield – which I’d completely forgotten before I began this re-read, even though it’s Jela’s motivation all the way through. I think it failed to sink in the first time I read these books because, reading them as a prequel, I already knew that the world-shield wasn’t going to be the thing that mattered in the end.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 18

Vanehald

In which the luck continues to run with Jela and Cantra.

One of the fun bits of this duology is finding out about what Solcintra was like and comparing it to the way the Liadens remember it. Apparently dividing the wide universe into us-and-them was a trait even before the Migration.

I notice that when Dulsey’s colleagues are introduced, we get descriptions of Arin and Jakoby, but not of Fern. We don’t even get told whether Fern takes masculine or feminine pronouns, the authors apparently being willing to leave it entirely up to the reader (at least for now) what kind of person’s waist Jakoby might put her arm around.

The mention of Jela’s logbook, which he’s asked Cantra to deliver to his troop, reminds me that I don’t think we’ve seen Cantra keep a logbook of her own, although we know that she left one to her descendants. I wonder if that’s just because it’s never been important to mention, or if it’s something she only started doing as Delm Korval (or perhaps as Captain of the Migration, to the extent that that’s a distinction with a difference). If it was something she only started doing later, it would explain why all the recorded mentions in her logbook of Jela are in the past tense.