Tag Archives: sleep learning

Saltation – Chapter 19

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Erkes Dormitory, Suite 302
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Win Ton takes Theo to dinner.

Although, as when yos’Senchul and Veradantha included Theo in their dinner plans, it might be that the flight time and experience is as great a gift as the dinner. (Which is not to knock the dinner; one is getting the impression that a dinner at Howsenda Hugglelans is no small thing itself.)

When the kissing gets started, Win Ton kisses Theo’s temple, her neck, and her ear; it’s Theo who kisses Win Ton on the lips, a move he’s not expecting. We’ve seen this before with couples kissing across the Liaden-Terran cultural divide; between Liadens, face-to-face kissing is an especially intimate gesture not usually added to the repertoire until a relationship is considerably further advanced than this.

Saltation – Chapter 2

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New Student Orientation
Ozler Auditorium
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo meets her roommates.

Although Theo noticed last chapter that things here are more freewheeling and less closely monitored than was the case on either of the planets she’s previously left footprints on, the wider ramifications haven’t all sunk in. She remarks to herself that the way Asu acts you’d think her home planet didn’t have a Safety Office — but she clearly means it as a joke, and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that it’s very likely true.

Asu says her age is “Eighteen Standards, and a half”, and Theo repeats the “and a half” before conceding that Asu is older than her. I’m not sure whether that means that it’s the half year that makes the difference in their ages or just Theo quietly pinging the unusual degree of precision. It would make sense in general that two people starting school together would be within a year of each other in age, but I’m not sure if that applies to a piloting academy; presumably pilots arrive at whatever age they’re ready. Still, I’d like to think it’s that, if only because that would mean we have an idea of Theo’s age in Standard Years and not just in the still-undefined Delgadan years.

I don’t think I like the detail from the orientation speech about the planetary government requiring them to graduate a minimum number of pilots per year. There are so many ways a requirement like that could go wrong.

After spending so much time on Delgado, I find myself wondering whether Ozler and Erkes were men or women. Which is the unmarked case on Eylot?

Changeling

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In which a pilot lives and dies in a family of shopkeepers.

Given the way Liaden clans tend to specialise each in a profession, the question of what happens when a child is born whose aptitudes do not suit the family business is one that appears a few times in the series. Clan Obrelt, it has to be said, handles the arrival of a pilot child with considerable grace (more, for instance, than Clan Korval has sometimes shown when handling the arrival of a non-pilot child, if I’m remembering correctly a particular flashback we won’t be getting to for some time yet).

There is no specific date given in the story itself, but the Partial Time Line places it in Standard Year 1390, a few years after Conflict of Honors. This invites speculation about whether Shan would have so readily come to the aid of a Clanless and cast-out person if he hadn’t already had the experience of getting to know the comparably-situated Priscilla. On the whole, I’m inclined to think he would have; Nova remarks in Conflict of Honors that his championing of Priscilla is only the most recent example of an established tendency to pick up stray puppies, and the fact that he’s immediately aware that Ren Zel’s casting-out was no reflection of Ren Zel himself (“politics, not balance”, as Mr dea’Gauss said of Priscilla) would tend to make his attitude toward it less respectful. (And while there are some Liadens who might comfortably treat with an outcast Terran and still feel obliged to shun an outcast Liaden, I don’t think Shan is one who privileges Liaden custom that way.)

On the other hand, the fact that Shan is carrying a single-button-press “crewmember down” emergency signal just might be a result of how many times Priscilla could have used such a thing during her first tour on the Passage.

I like the detail of the medic’s reaction to Shan finding a way through the Code to allow Ren Zel to be treated. Even though he was being Liaden-stoic about it a moment earlier, it can’t have been easy for him to have a man bleeding to death at his feet and not be able to do anything about it.

It only occurred to me on this most recent re-reading that when Delm Obrelt argues for Ren Zel keeping his license on the grounds that it balances Elsu being permitted to keep hers, he’s not just using a technicality in Ren Zel’s favour: he’s taking a veiled poke at Jabun, by alluding to the fact that Ren Zel faces death only because Jabun shielded his daughter from being convicted of misconduct that would have resulted in her losing her license if she’d lived.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 48

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Shipyear 65
Tripday 182
Second Shift
8.30 hours

In which Priscilla is welcomed home.

There’s a moment in “Moonphase” where Priscilla stands in front of the Temple and speaks her name, and the reaction she gets (or doesn’t get) drives home to her the fact that she is no longer Priscilla Mendoza, Maiden of the Circle. The moment in this chapter where she stands in front of the mirror and speaks her name, and adjusts her self-image to accept the person she is now instead of defining herself by the person she was, feels like a bookend, or the far end of a period of transition.

I wonder where Lina did get the clothes she gives Priscilla. If they’re handmade to specification, it’s unlikely that they were ordered and made in the time Priscilla’s been asleep. It was mentioned earlier that she was head of her Line, so she’d have clothes of that kind for her own use, but would they fit Priscilla?

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 20

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Shipyear 65
Tripday 143
Fourth Shift
18.00 hours

In which Lina consults with a colleague.

A lot happens in a very little space in this chapter, but I don’t have much to say about it. Some of it is like Lina’s attempt to explain melant’i and her more successful word-picture of Lady Kareen, which I think are each respectively the first such published in the series, but both of which have in this chronological re-read been well and truly pre-empted by the prequels. Some of it is like Lina and Shan’s discussion of where he stands with regard to Priscilla, which falls into the area of things I’m just not good at talking about generally.

I do like the warmth and attention to detail in the depictions of Lina’s conversations with each of her friends in this chapter.

The mention of Lina’s interactions with Shan when his mother died and again when his father died suggest to me that he was on the Passage both times. Not that I believe he would shun her company when they were home on Liad, in the normal course of events, but a death in the family is not in the normal course of events, and the ones we’ve seen have generally been accompanied by withdrawing from social contact for the period of mourning.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 10

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In which a walk in the garden has a distressing outcome.

I worry that Daav might be reacting inappropriately to the situation with Aelliana. I don’t say over-reacting; a strong reaction is appropriate. But the possible direction is a concern; he appears to be taking the view that it’s up to him to find a solution by himself, without Aelliana, which is precisely the wrong thing to do in this situation. If you can’t rely on a magical link that communicates thought directly, that’s when it becomes even more important to make use of the traditional and often underappreciated communication methods known as “talking” and “listening”.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 5

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In which Aelliana does not feel safe under Mizel’s roof.

The heading quote is being pointed again, but in a slightly more underhanded way. Some of the people who constitute Aelliana’s clan do indeed frown on her conduct, but I am confident that this is a deficiency in them, not in Aelliana. (It makes a pair with the last time this heading quote appeared, which was the chapter in Scout’s Progress that revealed how much the clan’s beloved son Ran Eld was undermining the clan for his individual gain.)

The part where Delm Mizel accuses Korval of attempting to coerce Aelliana and valuing her only for her exploitable resources strikes me as one of those occasions where the guilt a person sees most readily in others is the guilt they would find if they looked straight into themselves.

And she does rather undo any mollifying effect she might have achieved (perhaps she was still counting on Aelliana to be obedient to the delm regardless) when she admits that regardless of Aelliana’s achievements she would rather have had anybody else if there had been anybody else to have.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 2

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In which Daav returns to Chonselta.

I wonder about Aelliana’s grandmother sometimes. She usually comes up when Aelliana is reminded of happier times, before Ran Eld was nadelm, and it’s clear that under the old delm’s eye he’d never have gotten away with behaving the way he has done. And yet… the situation which allowed him to get away with it once the old delm was gone did develop under the old delm’s eye; he was already showing the kind of man he’d grow into before she died, and some of how he turned out must be due to how he was raised by his mother — and thus in some measure to how she was raised by her mother.

The half of this chapter with Daav in it is a reprint from the final chapter of Scout’s Progress, give or take a few punctuation tweaks and altered choices of wording. Most of the latter are in the narration; the only ones that result in an actual change of event, if you’re interested in comparing them, are a couple of refinements in the paragraph where Master Kestra describes the treatment Aelliana has been given for her various injuries.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 1

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In which dead women do not need new clothes.

And the sequel starts, straight out of the gate, by picking holes in the happy ending of the previous book. Which is unexpected, perhaps, only in how quickly it gets down to it, since if there were no holes in the happy ending it would not be necessary to have a sequel.

(I do wonder whether the authors were aware all along of the issues Daav and Er Thom lay out here, and glossed over them for the sake of a tidy ending, or if they only realised them after further thought, during the time between publishing Scout’s Progress and beginning to write Mouse and Dragon. I do not mean this as a slight, to suggest that it may have taken them a while to realise what Daav realises almost immediately; after all, they are authors, not Delms, and have not spent thirty years learning to think like a Delm the way Daav has.)

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 37

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In which there is a death in the family.

I do really appreciate the glimpses we get in this novel of Birin Caylon, the human being behind Delm Mizel. Possibly the more so because there are so few of them.