Solcintra

In which some details are hammered out.

Of all the familiar names that unexpectedly turn up in the duology, dea’Gauss is probably my sentimental favourite. (Although I feel moved to note that he’s not as accomplished a contract-wrangler as his descendant, if that’s not too obvious a thing to be worth saying; I can’t imagine the modern Mr dea’Gauss letting a clause get past him that was so ambiguous as to support several centuries of dispute about its interpretation.)

Another amusing thing in this chapter is the list of things the Solcintrans avoid using: genetic engineering, AI, mobile phones — in short, all the technologies whose absence might have caused a reader in 2006 to regard the twenty-year-old future established in Agent of Change as a bit dated.

(That said, it makes sense for a culture who use body language so heavily as the Liadens do to not make much use of mobile phones. You can’t bow properly over a mobile phone.)