Tag Archives: Ynsolt’i

Balance of Trade – Chapter 22

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Day 125
Standard Year 1118

Modrid

In which Jethri and the master of Modrid Trade Hall make their opinions of each other very clear.

Jethri shows a couple of times in this chapter that he doesn’t expect the regard of others. As Master ven’Deelin notes, when the Hall Master refuses to accept him as Master ven’Deelin’s apprentice he’s more upset about the insult to her than the corresponding slighting of himself. And then he admits that it hadn’t occurred to him that his uncle might have genuinely considered that he had properly earned the right to hold the ten-year Combine key. Perhaps it comes of being the baby of a large family, with or without the addition of a parent who wants nothing to do with him. It’s something he’s going to have to work on; humility is well and good, but a trader is not going to get very far without a sense of his own consequence.

The historic tapestry of surpassing ugliness is an amusing detail.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 10

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Day 65
Standard Year 1118

Kinaveral

In which Mr Rumor has been doing the rounds.

I like “at sevens and eights”, which is presumably the same as “at sixes and sevens” only worse.

Mac Gold seems like an unpleasant fellow, and I wonder how much of the rumor he recounts is what Mr Rumor is actually saying and how much is him putting his own spin on it for his own purposes. (I mean, people do talk, and people who talk don’t always need encouragement to assume the worst, but based on what we’ve seen of him so far I wouldn’t put it past him.)

Balance of Trade – Chapter 7

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Day 42
Standard Year 1118

Elthoria
Arriving

In which Jethri begins to find his place in his new home.

I like the bit at the end of this chapter where Jethri finds that his new quarters are in some ways very different from the old quarters he left behind last chapter, and in some ways just the same.

Between Norn ven’Deelin and Gaenor tel’Dorbit, there’s probably quite a bit of information to be gathered about how Liaden differs from English in the matter of sentence structure and so on, if one is of a mind to gather that sort of information.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 6

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Day 42
Standard Year 1118

Gobelyn’s Market
Departing

In which there are secrets in all families.

With Paitor and Grig wanting to let Jethri know a few things, there’s a lot of background filled in here, not all of which ends up being noticeably relevant in the rest of this novel.

Allowing for a bit of linguistic drift, it seems likely that the blusharie the three of them share is the same kind of drink as the blusherrie Niku and Friar Julian drink in celebration at the end of “Eleutherios”.

Speaking of things returning under new names, the fractins – the Fractional Mosaic Memory Modules – seem likely to be the same as the data-tiles that were all over the place in Crystal Dragon. (Interesting that we get more description of what they look like and what they’re made of in this book than we ever did in the one where they were all over the place. I suppose when they were all over the place, none of the viewpoint characters paid them much attention.) And the suggestion that within a few years something is going to start happening to them is one of those bits that isn’t picked up in this novel, but might be in the sequel.

I’m not sure what to make of the business about there possibly having been more than one Terra.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 5

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Day 35
Standard Year 1118

Gobelyn’s Market
Dockside

In which Jethri finds his ship.

I can never decide whether Jethri’s tendency to assume a person is being straight with him until proven otherwise is a testament to his own honor or just a sign of naivety. I’m not saying it’s wrong to give people the benefit of the doubt, but to never even consider the possibility of a deception seems like a weak point in a trader.

You probably know that “Balance of Trade” was originally a short story that ended up as chapters 2 through 5 of the novel. This being chapter 5, it seems like the right moment to cast an eye over the differences. There is some tweaking of wording and punctuation, unsurprisingly, and it’s expanded a bit with extra details that will be relevant after the point where the story ended: most of the mentions of Jethri’s family apart from his mother and uncle, and all mentions of fractins and of Combine trade keys. So far as those go, they might be regarded as storyteller’s choice of what to include or leave out, but there are also parts of the story that are flat-out different. The details of Arin’s death, what few there are, are different (and fewer) in the novel, and most of the fine details involved in the trades, of who bought how much of what for which price are changed. The numbers being thrown around during the negotiation over the cellosilk are an entire order of magnitude lower.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 4

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Day 34
Standard Year 1118

Ynsolt’i Port
Zeroground Pub

In which Norn ven’Deelin is not what Jethri expected.

My heart was pounding during Jethri’s visit to the Master Trader. Physical danger in stories generally doesn’t bother me much, but a character on a course to, as Jethri puts it, learn the depths of his own folly, that’ll get me every time. (One has more respect for the dangers with which one has had personal acquaintance.)

We meet our first Master Trader, wearing our first Master Trader’s amethyst ring. Which, so soon after Crystal Dragon, prompts a thought I’ve not had before: I wonder if the amethyst was chosen as the mark of Master Traders in honor of Tor An yos’Galan’s remarkable eyes.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 3

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Day 33
Standard Year 1118

Ynsolt’i Port
Textile Hall

In which Jethri passes his first day of unsupervised trade.

Jethri makes three bargains this chapter, some to better effect than others.

I have read enough about the art of the con that I think the conversation with Sirge Milton would be setting off alarm bells even if I didn’t already know how it turns out. (Also, I reckon the flattering bartender is either a carefully selected prop or a confederate; she has a knack for saying just the right thing to keep the wheel turning.)

I do wonder a bit that an apprentice trader hasn’t been taught more about how to tell when somebody’s trying to fleece you, but perhaps that’s one of the things that’s slipped through the cracks with him being the youngest that people don’t always bother telling things to.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 2

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Day 32
Standard Year 1118

Gobelyn’s Market
Jethri’s Quarters

In which Jethri gets the bad news.

The downside of this being a re-read is that I’m mostly inspired to talk about the things that strike me new or different, so I don’t really have anything to say about the conversation between Jethri and his uncle, which hasn’t changed notably since last time I read it.

The sequence of Jethri and the calendar is a nice bit of characterization, both of Jethri the teenaged boy and Jethri the spacer who’s spent most of his life in a tin can and feels uncomfortable without a ceiling close over his head.

The calendar also offers a worldbuilding hook in itself, or perhaps I should say a worldbuilding bridge; the reader who is familiar with 21st-century Terran garage calendars will find things to recognise in certain aspects of it.

Speaking of which: The Gobelyn family are Terrans, a word which appears here for the first time this re-read.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 1

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Day 29
Standard Year 1118

Gobelyn’s Market
Opposite Shift

In which Jethri Gobelyn has one of those shifts.

In this chapter we’re introduced to the family-run trade ship Gobelyn’s Market and its crew, particularly young Jethri, who has some trouble fitting in, partly due to the usual issues of being the youngest, and partly on account of certain particular issues which will doubtless be revisited later.

We also hear our first about some actual Liadens, in both a lurid version and a more considered version which amounts to suggesting that the Liadens are more subtle than the lurid version indicates, but not necessarily any less dangerous. Presumably they’ve changed some from when we last heard about their ancestors, since that was a while ago (possibly even as much as 1118 years and 29 days).

It’s interesting that the first novel with Liadens, by chronological order, ended up being the one with the foreword laying out exactly how the Liaden currency and calendar work. Useful place to have it, if one happens to be reading by chronological order. I don’t know if that was something the authors had specifically in mind, though I’m pretty sure I remember them saying somewhere that this was deliberately set out to be a novel that would work as an introduction for people who hadn’t read any of the earlier-later novels yet.