Tag Archives: shared origin

Plan B – Chapter 2

Standard Year 1393
Vandar Orbit and Jump

In which Miri is not keen on sleep-learning.

The timing gets tricky again here: Val Con says that he and Miri have been together on Vandar for eight months, but there’s a solid date near the beginning of Carpe Diem and there’s a solid date near the beginning of I Dare and the gap between them is closer to four months.

Four Standard months, that is: Val Con doesn’t say what kind of months he’s thinking of, and since they’ve only just left Vandar, maybe he’s thinking of Vandar’s months — and if that’s so, and a Vandar month is about half the length of a Standard month, it all fits together.

If this is the case, it would also neatly solve the puzzle in Carpe Diem where Val Con said it had been slightly over a month since they left Lufkit and Miri said it was less than a month and the best estimate I could come up with said it was about 20 days. If Val Con was already thinking in local months (which would make sense for a Scout who’s trained to pick up local customs) and Miri was thinking in Standard months (which would make sense for an untrained person who was struggling to pick up the local language), that fits together too.

It’s a good thing I enjoy figuring out how much smarter than me the authors are, considering how often it happens.

Something else I’ve been wrong about, that I need to make a note of because it’s come up in the comments before: I’d always thought before this re-read that autodocs and sleep-learning units were the same thing, but every time I re-read a bit that I thought supported that impression I turn out to have misunderstood it. This chapter is where the confusion started for me; it’s the first time in publication order we see someone go into a sleep-learning machine, and I thought it was the same device as the autodoc Miri was in a few chapters ago, partly because Miri lies down in both and partly because Val Con gets her tested by the autodoc to see if she’s ready to try sleep-learning. On this re-read, I’m picking up the differences, like the autodoc having an entrance hatch on the side that cycles open and closed and the sleep-learner having a lid on the top that raises and lowers.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 39

In which Daav plans his Balance against the enemy which took Aelliana.

I’m interested by the implication that the thoughtfulness of Daav’s Balance here owes something to his previous experience of loss and Balance, which taught him the limitations of the method of direct reprisal.

Using that Diary entry as the chapter heading also provides another more subtle bookend: the last time it was used was on the chapter in which Daav and Aelliana first met.

It’s a bit difficult to know how much to talk about what else happens in this chapter when it hasn’t been explicitly called out yet, even though as a re-reader I know — and, since this is a prequel, even on the first read I knew — what’s going on. I think I’ll save that for next time.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 13

In which Aelliana and Daav communicate.

Now, this is more like it. I’m glad this isn’t one of those stories where the characters drag on in misery for chapters on end over something that could be cleared up easily if they just talked about it.

It occurs to me that Daav’s error is in some ways similar to Aelliana’s error of a few days earlier. Aelliana shut out her comrades for fear of them getting hurt, without giving them a chance to decide for themselves what level of risk they were prepared to accept for her sake, when as it happened they would have been prepared to accept the risk and to point out that the risk was less than fear made it seem; that also describes what Daav tried to do to Aelliana. Fortunately, this time it got sorted out before anyone got seriously hurt.

And in the midst of all that drama, a passing mention of a plan of the delm’s that will become important later. No, two passing mentions of projects of Daav’s that will become important later; this chapter is also the first in which the name of Kiladi is mentioned.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 11

In which Aelliana and Anne go shopping.

And here already is an illustration of my point: Aelliana can feel Daav’s emotions, but not the process of thought that produced them, so without an opportunity to ask Daav she is left with the knowledge that he was horrified but with only speculation about what, and whom, he was in horror of. If Daav absented himself deliberately to avoid disturbing her peace of mind, he’s having the opposite of his intended effect.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 27

In which several people ask, reluctantly, “Now what?”

I’ve said this before, in the comments under Chapter 39 of Local Custom, but I might as well say it again so it appears in a post: I don’t believe that lifemating works on the basis of there being a pair of people predestined to join together. (Which is a relief, because it’s a pretty horrifying idea, as Daav suggests here: what if something happens to one half of the match before they meet, and the other is left forever incomplete?) Every time we see a lifemate bond form in this series, it’s a consequence, not a cause, something that happens to a pair of people who have already joined together in other ways. It makes sense that some people can’t form a lifemate bond at all, and that those can can’t do it with just anybody, but I don’t believe it’s as reductive as each person having one and only one possible partner.

Here’s an interesting sentence: “Jelaza Kazone had not spoken and he wished, with everything in him, to be at Binjali’s.” Is it that the Tree did manage to suggest an idea to Daav without him realising, or is it that the Tree didn’t speak because it knew that he was already, on his own initiative and by his own desire, going to do what it would have told him to do?

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 24

In which Clonak tells Aelliana a story about Daav, and Korval responds promptly to an insult.

As usual I’m going to duck talking about how this chapter was emotionally affecting, and talk about something else instead, like how this chapter does some clever work of incluing and foreshadowing. For instance, the list at the beginning of the chapter of the people who have been entrusted with Daav’s private number does multiple duty by introducing the reader to Olwen and Frad, so that their names glide smoothly by in Clonak’s story later.

I even caught myself thinking that the last scene of this chapter did a remarkably good job of foreshadowing the end of Mouse and Dragon, considering that this was written so many years before that was, before I remembered that that end had already been established in another book that was in its turn published many years before this one.

Another interesting thing about the list of Daav’s near ones is that it includes, apart from Aelliana, his brother, and his former Scout teammates, one Fer Gun pen’Uldra, Daav’s father. One gets the impression that there are not many Liadens who know their out-Clan parent at all well, let alone remain so close as to include them in such an exclusive list. (The situation with Aelliana’s father illustrated in Chapter 9, where he has had no further contact with Mizel since the conclusion of contract and Aelliana doesn’t even know his name, seems more typical.) Is there a story there? If so, it’s one we haven’t been told yet; Daav’s father is mentioned only rarely, by name even more rarely, and as far as I recall has never made an in-person appearance.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 14

In which Hedrede calls upon Korval.

I am suspicious of Delm Hedrede’s attempt to discredit Anne’s scholarship. Certainly, prejudice may be found in all walks of life, but the description of Hedrede as a clan that usually keeps to itself and doesn’t start anything in Council makes me wonder if somebody put her up to it. (If it was the same people who were behind Fil Tor Kinrae and the earlier, more direct attack on Anne and Scholar yo’Kera, one would expect them to know that Daav could invoke Scholar yo’Kera to defeat the implication of Terran duplicity. Perhaps they did, but felt it was worth a try anyhow, as long as they had Hedrede to absorb the consequences if it didn’t work out.)

While Daav is busy defusing ticking social bombs of various kinds, Aelliana is having a much better day. Being around people who give her honest respect for her achievements — and are able to bring her to accept the respect she’s earned, which the Scouts are able to do in a way her students have never had the status for, however much they respected her — has been doing her some lasting good.

Local Custom – Chapter 40

In which the last pieces fall into place.

I think, if memory serves, this is the first place (in publication order) that the lives and times of Cantra and Tor An were described in any detail. And the details given here, I can’t help noticing, differ in some significant respects from how the story was eventually told in the Crystal books. (One could suggest that the differences are due to the details here coming from Cantra’s logbook, which Crystal Dragon tells us she didn’t actually start keeping until after the War, when she would have been depending on a perhaps-fallible memory. Or perhaps she remembered fine, but chose to present things somewhat differently from how they actually happened; I note that one of the differences of detail is that the logbook entry quoted here presents itself as having been written during the War, before Jela’s death.)

A little detail that might easily be missed (in fact, I don’t recall having consciously noted it on any of my previous reads): Anne is now wearing the ring Er Thom gave her, the “never goodbye” present.

Tomorrow: Scout’s Progress

Local Custom – Chapter 36

In which Er Thom hears Anne calling.

The chapter epigraph lays out, bluntly, how much of a leap into the dark Er Thom is making in choosing to go with Anne: if he leaves the clan to follow her, he leaves everything.

There’s an intriguing bit of worldbuilding in one of the incidental details in this chapter: what kind of place is the Academy of Music on Terra, that it has marksmanship as a required course of study?

Local Custom – Chapter 26

In which there is something missing from Scholar yo’Kera’s work space.

Er Thom is very carefully concealing from Anne the fact and extent of his disagreements with his mother. I can see how this is the course of action suggested by the principles of hospitality – the aim of ensuring the guest’s comfort might not be served if the guest were aware of the disruptions occasioned by her presence – but I’m not sure it’s the course of wisdom.

The bit about Jin Del yo’Kera’s youth abroad is interesting. A Liaden who had not spent time among Terrans might not have succeeded in finding the connection between Terran and Liaden, if it had even occurred to such a one to try.

(I have a certain fondness for the fact that his treasured memory is of an Aus sheep station. My own grandfather was the manager of an Australian sheep station, though he’d retired by the time I knew him. I don’t recall him ever expressing an opinion on the intelligence of sheep, but he mustn’t have found them too unbearable as company because even in retirement he kept a small flock.)