Tag Archives: wizard’s match

I Dare – Chapter 55

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Solcintra
Liad

In which the Captain acts for the safety of the passengers.

The mode of Ultimate Authority, which is referred to twice in this chapter, has, perhaps unsurprisingly, not come up much before: three times in the series up to this point. Priscilla adopts it briefly when putting Sav Rid Olanek in his place at the end of Conflict of Honors; Commander of Agents is said in Carpe Diem to use it when dealing with his underlings; and Val Con, greeting the Tree in Plan B, places the Tree in the position of ultimate authority.

The fact that it’s used twice in this chapter, and by whom, is the central conflict in a nutshell: the first is Commander of Agents again, and the second is Miri when she takes on the melant’i of Liad’s Captain. And I think it says something that, whereas Miri adopts the mode temporarily and in a situation where she is in fact the duly-appointed ultimate authority until the emergency is resolved, the Commander is not only self-appointed but apparently expects to be regarded as the ultimate authority all the time.

There’s a leap near the end of the chapter that I’ve never been able to follow. After the doomsday weapons are activated, ter’Fendil says he can deactivate them if Val Con gives him the control device, and Val Con does. Then it cuts to another scene, and when it cuts back everybody’s running for their lives and talking about the urgent need to do something before the weapons break out and start killing everybody. Is there something missing, or is it just me missing something?

I Dare – Chapter 51

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Day 54
Standard Year 1393

Dutiful Passage
Jump

In which various people spend time in transit.

I haven’t been noting it every time a relevant detail has come up, but I think by now we have to acknowledge that in the Liaden universe cats are sapient and capable of dramliz-type abilities. Some cats, anyway. Merlin, at least. (Come to that, I wonder if Val Con knew how appropriate the name was when he chose it…)

I feel like I should say something about the scene with Hazenthull and Nelirikk, but nothing particular is coming to me.

It’s good to see Trilla again.

I Dare – Chapter 44

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Erob’s Clanhouse
Lytaxin

In which Pat Rin is still missing, Ren Zel is still processing his change in circumstances, and Mr dea’Gauss is, as always, remarkable.

More evidence suggesting that this is actually Day 52: it was on Day 51 that Val Con and Miri learned that Pat Rin had disappeared, and it seems unlikely they’d wait an entire day before asking Nova if she knew anything.

Nova, by the sound of it, is still hoping that they might bring matters before the Council of Clans and have a solving without resorting to anything that might be described as a “war”. Val Con and Miri are less optimistic. I think I’d be with Val Con and Miri, even without the information (which we have and they don’t) that the Department is even now moving against Korval through the Council. (Indeed, considered from Val Con’s point of view, it might be said that it is already too late, and that the war has been going on, with casualties on both sides, for some considerable time already.)

Ren Zel, it appears, is of the dramliz (a thing for which there have been several hints already, which Ren Zel has been shying away from acknowledging), with power and potential that impresses even Anthora, who’s reputed to be one of the most powerful dramliz now living. In the scene where he explores the starweb of creation, he reminds me of the surpassingly powerful dramliz of the Migration-era prequels. (There are several other aspects of this match that remind me of the old dramliz, too – which is perhaps not to be wondered at, considering that this is the first “wizard’s match” we’ve seen since the prequels to occur between two actual wizards.)

I Dare – Chapter 38

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Lytaxin
Erob’s House

In which Delm Korval hears for the first time of Sector Judge Natesa.

I notice the interweaving of the chapters is set up so that we’re in some suspense about Pat Rin and Natesa, too. We know more about what they’ve been doing than Val Con and Miri, and more recently, but the most recent we know of them is still two months ago, which is plenty of time for something to have happened to them.

I Dare – Chapter 37

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Day 51
Standard Year 1393

Departing Lytaxin

In which Daav and Aelliana go on a journey with several surprises in store.

I find myself wondering when Edger found time to acquire the new shuttle and have it fitted to the ship of the clan. The months he and Sheather spent waiting on Shaltren to see if the Juntavas could find Val Con and Miri seem most hopeful, except that they didn’t have the ship with them, it having gone on to Volmer and them having opted to go straight to Shaltren on a Terran vessel.

That also gets me wondering how they got from Shaltren back to Lufkit to visit Liz, and then from there to Lytaxin. They must have switched back to the ship of the clan at some point, since they arrived at Lytaxin in it.

Perhaps when Edger and Sheather left Lufkit for Shaltren, Edger sent Handler, Selector, and Watcher ahead to Volmer, to secure the ship of the clan, make arrangements for the addition of the shuttle, and await them there. Then after Sheather’s visit to Liz, Edger and Sheather went to Volmer, collected the upgraded ship, and proceeded to Lytaxin. That seems to cover everything, except that we’re still left with the question of where Handler, Selector, and Watcher are now.

I Dare – Chapter 28

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Day 51
Standard Year 1393

Lytaxin
Erob’s Grounds

In which Val Con and Ren Zel are lofted away to places they didn’t intend to go.

Halfway through the book, and we’ve only just got through the first day of this plot strand. An eventful day all round, really.

Here I was, just thinking that if Pat Rin and Natesa did end up together it was fair enough, since at least they’d been living and working together three times as long as Val Con and Miri had when they declared lifemates, and here are Anthora and Ren Zel apparently determined to make Val Con and Miri look the very picture of sober forethought.

(I think the Tree and Merlin are, somehow, conspiring against them, though Anthora seems to have some idea of it and not to mind much.)

I’m intrigued by the statement that “Damning the Commander to twelve dozen hells would be futile from this distance” — does that imply that there’s a distance from which it would be more effective?

If this were Earth, which of course it isn’t, the co-ordinates Val Con gives Priscilla would describe a point in the vicinity of Baltimore. Difficult to say if that means anything; perhaps a hint as to the sort of climate and geography the authors had in mind for the surrounding area.

I Dare – Chapter 24

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Day 50
Standard Year 1393

Lytaxin
Erob’s Clanhouse and Garden

In which kin share news of kin.

The bit about Shan and Nova having different preferred languages for casual speech is a nice reflection of the fact their lives have taken different paths despite them being siblings. Shan was raised as a Terran among Terrans for the first few years of his life, and although he’s embraced his Liaden heritage, he spends much of his time as a Trader out in the wide universe and often surrounded by Terrans again. Nova was born and raised on Liad, and her line of work keeps her there for the most part; she must have left the planet a few times, if only to earn her pilot’s licence, but this here may well be the furthest she’s ever been from home.

I’m not sure I understand how Val Con knew about his mother, but I don’t feel too bad about that because it sounds like Val Con isn’t too sure himself.

I Dare – Chapter 19

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Day 50
Standard Year 1393

Lytaxin
Erob’s House

In which Erob’s house has many visitors.

This is one of those chapters where there’s potentially a lot to talk about, but I’ve read it so often nothing really stands out to me.

Well, there is one thing: I don’t know if it’s me being really unobservant or just having a bad memory, but I don’t remember having understood before that Hazenthull Explorer might have only been intending to stick around long enough to get her senior patched up. (I notice, by the way, that her senior finally gets a name in this chapter.) How she planned to get around having sworn an oath of loyalty to get that far, I don’t see; perhaps, as Daav says, she hadn’t planned that far ahead.

Another point of connection between the two separate plot strands of the novel is that they’re now both concerned with issues of appropriate behaviour between oath-holder and oath-sworn.

I Dare – Chapter 13

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Day 50
Standard Year 1393

Dutiful Passage
Lytaxin Orbit

In which Nova greets her sister.

Ren Zel’s impressions of Nova as she entered the ship reminded me of Liz’s first impressions of Nova when she entered her house, not because they are similar but because they aren’t: a reminder that the same person can be quite different things in the eyes of different people. Shifting between tall and short without any physical change is perhaps only the most obvious. A more subtle one is Ren Zel noticing that she speaks with “the accent of fabled Solcintra”; apart from the obvious point that Liz’s familiarity with spoken Liaden doesn’t extend to recognising such details, it’s a reminder that Ren Zel himself, though Liaden, is not from Liad.

This chapter has another case of one person being quite different things, this time depending on which hat she wears. Shan’s sister Nova yos’Galan is glad that he and Priscilla have declared lifemates, even though Shan’s First Speaker Nova yos’Galan has her doubts about the timing and is not impressed about not being consulted first.

For a moment, both of the novel’s plot strands revolve around the concern of Korval being left without a pilot to be Delm, which does go some way to weaving them together despite their large separation in space and time.

I Dare – Chapter 9

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Day 50
Standard Year 1393

Lytaxin
Erob’s Medical Centre
Catastrophe Unit

In which healing goes forth.

Erob’s medical technicians think a lot of themselves, don’t they? To be fair, I suppose they have a right to, most of the time; it’s just that this situation is unlike anything they’ve been trained for.

A couple of unexplained visions occur. Shan gets a vision of Moonhawk to match his vision of Lute last week (I really hope those get elaborated on some day), and Miri gets a vision of Val Con in Jelaza Kazone’s garden. Val Con’s easy enough to explain, given the lifemate link, but it seems unlikely, even given the givens, that he and she have literally travelled all the way back to Liad; perhaps it’s Val Con’s metaphor for some safe space within himself that he retreated to for protection from the damage that was unwittingly being done him. It might not be an inappropriate metaphor, at that; the way the Tree meddles with its mobile branches, it might be personally responsible for Val Con’s survival even if it’s not directly present.

I like the moment where Shan thinks of the room he’s in as the “room of catastrophes”, leaving it open whether it’s a room in which catastrophes are dealt with, per the official designation, or a room in which catastrophes are created.