Spiral Dance
Gimlins Approach
In which Jela receives assistance from several unexpected directions.
Or else: In which events take a dramatic turn and shoot off into left field. If I didn’t already know what was coming next, I think I would be having real trouble not going straight on to the next chapter.
(Incidentally, explicit confirmation that Jela’s whip thing is a shib. Now I can consider that question settled, and stop second-guessing myself.)
Spiral Dance
The Little Empty
In which Cantra and Jela have a talk.
The first aid kit offers to make Cantra not only good as new, but better. One is inclined to wonder, if it had been given permission to install a few upgrades, what else it might have slipped in at the same time.
Most of the chapter is Cantra and Jela talking. He tells her about the tree. She tells him about what happened to her family.
(It’s interesting that Jela says the tree hasn’t told him its name or that of its species, just because there’s a scene, in a much later novel, that mentions in passing that the Uncle does know the name of the species. It makes sense that he would have wanted to learn more about them after the encounter just finished — but who is there that he could have learned it from?)
Spiral Dance
Ardega
In which the Enemy makes an example.
More about the aelantaza, and about Dulsey’s background, and Cantra’s. That’s an interesting insight about why Cantra’s so cantankerous.
Cantra’s been thinking to herself lately that it’s not safe to find Jela as attractive as she does, and now it appears that Jela has been thinking to himself similar things about Cantra. It’s pretty clear where that’s headed, even if I didn’t already know.
Spiral Dance
Taliofi
In which several people are not what they appear to be.
There are, of course, no Liadens in this setting, but there are people who possess attributes that will come to be considered Liaden. A few chapters ago, it was mentioned in passing that a golden-tan skin tone is a high class marker, and here we learn likewise about the very Liaden-like manners of a person with that skin tone. The word used is “Inside”, which I suspect refers to the inner reaches of the galaxy, placing high society socially and geographically at the opposite pole from the Rim.
And Rint dea’Sord, the first person we’ve yet encountered who combines a Liaden-like skin tone with Liaden-like manners and a Liaden-like name, is a fraud. The skin tone is make-up, the manners are self-taught and wouldn’t stand up in the actual Inside, his pretty Inside accent disappears in emotional extremity, and all things considered I wouldn’t lay money on the name being authentic either. He’s putting on high-society manners for the advantage it gives him against his fellow low-lifes.
Meanwhile Cantra, it seems, is doing the inverse. She was brought up with high-class manners, which she doesn’t use, preferring to present herself as a Rimmer like Garen. In retrospect, there were several moments foreshadowing this, including the moment a few chapters ago where Dulsey bows to her and she almost replies with the corresponding bow instead of a Rimmer’s nod, and the way her reminisces of Garen have always mentioned Rimmers in a way that leaves it ambiguous about whether she counts herself as one. And the fact that she was the subject of the previous mention of golden-tan skin tone as a high class marker.
Also, she’s an aelantaza — whatever that is, the few details we’ve got so far sound worrying — and her “first aid kit” is, judging by Jela’s reaction, sheriekas tech.
Spiral Dance
Transition
In which Cantra exercises due caution.
Here is another point of distinction between this setting and the setting of the later Liaden novels: the transition from Faldaiza nearspace to Taliofi nearspace takes twelve seconds. Interstellar journeys in the later novels are more likely to take hours, if not days.
(Or am I comparing the wrong things? Most of the journeys that come to mind at the moment involve Dutiful Passage, which is a full-size trade vessel; Spiral Dance is a much smaller ship, and maybe that is the only significance difference. Something to keep an eye on going forward, anyway.)
Outbound, Faldaiza Nearspace
Approaching Transition
In which it is not better to be locked out of the pilot’s tower than to be locked in.
Another short chapter.
We get a glimpse of Cantra’s childhood as she’s waking up, in a reasonably natural and unforced bit of exposition. Followed by that classic of unnatural exposition, The Character Looks At Her Reflection So The Reader Can Find Out What She Looks Like.
There’s an interesting bit near the end of the chapter. Apparently this is the first time Jela’s slept apart from the tree since they joined forces. The tree doesn’t appear to be at all bothered by the separation, though.