Tag Archives: Vanehald

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 26

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Solcintra

In which Rool Tiazan comes visiting.

Rool Tiazan warns Cantra that her actions on Vanehald have attracted the Enemy’s attention, and that the fact that Spiral Dance obeyed her then doesn’t mean it’s free of the Enemy’s influence, only that the Enemy has not chosen to exert that influence – yet.

Cantra expresses some doubt to herself and to Rool Tiazan that humanity is either saveable or, perhaps, worth saving, but I think it says something that when his lady asks her if she wants to keep Jela’s child, she doesn’t hesitate to say yes.

(I also appreciate that the pregnancy needs a bit of dramliz-healer help to be confident of a good outcome. It underlines how much work the tree had to do to get it going at all.)

Tor An’s Aunt Jinsu, whose advice about being well-rested he starts to offer, has been mentioned before: she’s the aunt who used to travel with Scholar tay’Palin in her younger days.

Liad dea’Syl is an observant man, and I wonder how much he has observed about Rool Tiazan. (Apart from the fact that Lucky likes him, which would have been pretty hard to miss.)

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 25

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Solcintra

In which Tor An reads Cantra such a scold as she hasn’t heard since nursery.

I think I’ve said already that one of the things that amuses me about the duology is getting to see Solcintra as it was, not as the Liadens fondly remember it being. Though there are bits that sound familiar – there’s already that obsession with High Family status and, as I also think I’ve said already, that us-and-them mentality. (Speaking of which, the fact that they count smartstrands as a them thing neatly explains why the Liadens don’t have them.)

Cantra’s observation that the ship Jela’s given her could carry “the keepings of a small planet” is a nice bit of ironic foreshadowing.

Tor An bailing Cantra out is another of the incidents that had previously appeared as a chapter-heading quote in Scout’s Progress. In the logbook quote, Cantra describes him as acting “all according to co-pilot’s duty”; what that brief excerpt from the logbook didn’t reveal is that this is the first time she’d accepted him as her co-pilot. (I don’t remember which chapter it was the heading of; I’m going to be interested, when we get up to Scout’s Progress, to see if there’s a reason why that particular chapter was matched with that quote/this incident.)

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 23

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Solcintra

In which some more reunions take place.

Cantra is still planning to go off on her lonesome at the first opportunity, but there are several people not wanting to give her that opportunity.

I’m intrigued by Wellik’s tattoo. What we’ve been told about X Strain tattoos is that they’re large and gaudy, to off-balance the people who have to look at them, and that a tattoo signifying the soldier’s born-to troop goes on the right cheek. Wellik’s tattoo is not large and gaudy, nor is it on the right cheek, so although he’s following the general trend of face tattooing he seems to be avoiding all the specific rules. Presumably he’s making some kind of statement; I wonder what it is.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 21

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Vanehald

In which it’s not always true that old soldiers just fade away.

I said in the comments for last chapter that the emotional parts of these novels are just as important to why I love this series as the plot mechanics, but I’m not good at talking about them. This is a true thing.

So it should not be taken as any slighting of the emotional parts of this chapter that the only thing I have to say is to note that we’ve now been told Fern is female (but still no description of what she looks like or what her voice sounds like, apart from the self-evident fact that she moves like a pilot).

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 20

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Vanehald

In which the world-shield is right where they left it.

It occurs to me that it might turn out to be an advantage that Commander Gorriti ran away before the trouble started. If he’d still been in charge, I suspect he’d have been more of a hindrance than a help.

And this would appear to be, more or less, the end of the subplot about the world-shield – which I’d completely forgotten before I began this re-read, even though it’s Jela’s motivation all the way through. I think it failed to sink in the first time I read these books because, reading them as a prequel, I already knew that the world-shield wasn’t going to be the thing that mattered in the end.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 19

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Vanehald

In which there are more reunions.

“Fratellanzia” is an impressive word. I have no idea what it means. Arin doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to tell us, either.

(Nor do the authors seem to be in any hurry to tell us any more about Fern.)

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 18

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Vanehald

In which the luck continues to run with Jela and Cantra.

One of the fun bits of this duology is finding out about what Solcintra was like and comparing it to the way the Liadens remember it. Apparently dividing the wide universe into us-and-them was a trait even before the Migration.

I notice that when Dulsey’s colleagues are introduced, we get descriptions of Arin and Jakoby, but not of Fern. We don’t even get told whether Fern takes masculine or feminine pronouns, the authors apparently being willing to leave it entirely up to the reader (at least for now) what kind of person’s waist Jakoby might put her arm around.

The mention of Jela’s logbook, which he’s asked Cantra to deliver to his troop, reminds me that I don’t think we’ve seen Cantra keep a logbook of her own, although we know that she left one to her descendants. I wonder if that’s just because it’s never been important to mention, or if it’s something she only started doing as Delm Korval (or perhaps as Captain of the Migration, to the extent that that’s a distinction with a difference). If it was something she only started doing later, it would explain why all the recorded mentions in her logbook of Jela are in the past tense.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 17 & Interlude

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Spiral Dance

In which some are parted and others are reunited.

One thing I’m finding about reading a chapter a day, instead of speeding through both books in a single weekend the way I did the first time, is that I’m feeling the emotion more at the places where people are lost to one another, because they’ve known each other longer. I mean, in the story it’s the same amount of time, but the relationship has more weight to me when it’s been sitting in my head for weeks instead of hours.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 14

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Osabei Tower
Landomist

In which Cantra renews an old acquaintance.

Though Scholar tay’Nordif experiences the revelation that tay’Welford is aelantaza as a spur-of-the-moment inspiration, I suspect this is just an opportune occasion for it to come out and the actual recognition occurred some time ago. At least as far back, say, as the evening when she found vel’Anbrek’s suspicions of tay’Welford worth mentioning in Jela’s hearing. (Conversely, he probably recognised her on day one, since his skills and experience don’t have years of dust on them and it’s implied he’s seen Cantra more recently than Cantra has seen him.) I wonder if researching his rise to the Prime Chair was one of the ways she passed the time in her office when she was supposedly progressing her life’s work.

It’s interesting that we’re getting so much backstory for Maelyn tay’Nordif as she fights against losing herself. It shows how much detail needs to go into constructing a person. (And I’m intrigued that she puts her succession of “patrons” in quotation marks; it might just be that she doesn’t consider them all proper patron material, given that she adds that some of them were no better than bandits, but I do wonder if it also means that some of them were interested in her for reasons other than her mathematical ability — which is, I admit, a thought that had already occurred to me back when her last patron’s cover letter was calling her things like “the most precious sister of my soul”.)

Jela is finally able to ask about the world-shield of somebody who can answer. It’s not physically present at the Tower, just that the Tower has a record of its location. And has apparently been unable to secure a grant to study it, which seems typical; saving entire populations is all very well in its way, but where’s the money to be made in it?

Oracle Odd Lots, the supplier of the “shortcut”, was also the merchant who sold Cantra the three learning toys. I don’t know if that’s significant; Cantra did say to Jela that there’s a lot of odd-job traders on the Rim who have sheriekas tech pass through their hands.

Veralt has only himself to blame for ending up with a knife in his throat. Taunting the hero with her parent’s death right when you have her at your mercy and she’s on the point of giving up is one of the classic blunders, and I should have thought they’d teach better than that at genetically-engineered-assassin school.