Tag Archives: string game

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 3

In which Syl Vor is certainly not having trouble sleeping.

Our third viewpoint character is, for a change somebody we already know, though not yet well: Syl Vor yos’Galan, Nova’s son.

A couple of other people we know, but not yet well are Syl Vor’s cousins Mik and Shindi, who sleep through the entire chapter and even so get more characterisation than in the entire series up to this point. Though that’s fair enough, considering they’re only about a year old and their life to date has largely consisted of their family trying to keep them away from the exciting things the readers are interested in.

On which note, we also learn this chapter that, although all the children survived Plan B physically untouched, the pressure of having to always be prepared for the other possibility has left its mark on Syl Vor.

(And an intriguing side-note: in Syl Vor’s thoughts, Lady Kareen is appropriately “Grandaunt”, but Luken bel’Tarda is “Grandfather”, without even as much justification as when Quin did it. Perhaps it’s been decided that Luken is Grandfather to all the children, since the clan has no other grandfathers to offer them.)

Ghost Ship – Chapter 34

Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which the party becomes unexpectedly exciting.

More unnamed party guests. I’m particularly interested in the “buxom, jolly lady whose face was older than her hair”, because that amount of description implies that we’re expected to recognise her, but it’s not ringing any bells.

The idea that Theo’s ability to see pilots is her touch of Korval strangeness has been sneaking up gradually since it started in Fledgling. The early examples were often of her identifying pilots in motion, where it was plausible it was just a case of recognising something about how they moved. It’s developed gradually from there, to the point where in this novel she’s capable of not only identifying a pilot on sight but instantly assessing what grade they have attained or could attain, and now the definitely non-straightforward example of identifying a pilot who hasn’t even been born yet. Another thing that camouflaged the nature of the gift, which Theo alludes to, is that it came on her when she was seeing pilots for the first time after living her entire life on a planet with no pilots that she knew of, so it would make sense that she’d be alert to the differences. But another way of looking at that, which I think Daav alludes to, is that it was the period of her life when her half-formed instincts were shaking out and getting into adult shape, the period where one might expect a psychic gift to manifest. (Though without the trip to Melchiza she’d perhaps have been restricted to noticing that certain people were different in some way without being able to name the difference, just as I suspect she wouldn’t have been able to distinguish grades of pilot now without her education at Anlingdin.)