Tag Archives: Yolan pel’Kirmin

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 29

In which Aelliana frames and tries a piloting addendum under stringent field conditions.

I have to admit that the details of Aelliana’s course addendum go straight over my head. But it certainly sounds impressive.

The quote at the beginning of this chapter is the fragment that eventually grew into the short story “The Space at Tinsori Light” (which, chronological order being what it is, we have already had). Here, its purpose is only to add another angle to the introduction of the pilot’s ring.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 28

In which Aelliana dances.

Daav doesn’t appear too put out that Aelliana has realised he tipped off Zan Der pel’Kermin, even though he asked that worthy person not mention his intervention. I surmise that he wouldn’t have minded Aelliana being told about Daav’s involvement, but wished to avoid any mention of that inconvenient person Delm Korval.

Things are going well for Aelliana and Daav at this point, but last chapter and this contain reminders that they both have troubles lurking in the background which, when they strike, are only going to strike the harder for having been successfully dodged thus far.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 27

In which several people ask, reluctantly, “Now what?”

I’ve said this before, in the comments under Chapter 39 of Local Custom, but I might as well say it again so it appears in a post: I don’t believe that lifemating works on the basis of there being a pair of people predestined to join together. (Which is a relief, because it’s a pretty horrifying idea, as Daav suggests here: what if something happens to one half of the match before they meet, and the other is left forever incomplete?) Every time we see a lifemate bond form in this series, it’s a consequence, not a cause, something that happens to a pair of people who have already joined together in other ways. It makes sense that some people can’t form a lifemate bond at all, and that those can can’t do it with just anybody, but I don’t believe it’s as reductive as each person having one and only one possible partner.

Here’s an interesting sentence: “Jelaza Kazone had not spoken and he wished, with everything in him, to be at Binjali’s.” Is it that the Tree did manage to suggest an idea to Daav without him realising, or is it that the Tree didn’t speak because it knew that he was already, on his own initiative and by his own desire, going to do what it would have told him to do?

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 26

In which Samiv tel’Izak is introduced to the Tree.

The Tree disapproves of Samiv tel’Izak, and is not shy of making its disapproval known. What the basis of its disapproval might be is less easy to see. It’s unlikely to be merely that marrying her would make Daav unhappy; the happiness of its fellow creatures has not always been the Tree’s primary concern, and Daav was making some progress toward a comfortable union before the Tree itself stomped on his efforts.

One suspects that it disapproves of Pilot tel’Izak because she is not Aelliana Caylon and the Tree has realised, as Daav has not yet, that Aelliana Caylon is an available possibility. Presumably it’s aware of Aelliana second-hand, through Daav — though one does wonder what other sources of information it might have, remembering that it was a suggestion from the Tree which put Daav in Pilot Caylon’s path in the first place…

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 25

In which Delm Korval goes visiting.

Zan Der pel’Kirmin and his family join the collection of impressively detailed one-off characters. From the little we get to see of them, I like them a lot.

Ran Eld is locking himself into a course that’s going to take him nowhere good; every hint he gets that he might be in serious trouble is just making him stick to it with greater determination. It doesn’t help that his mother doesn’t seem to have realised how much trouble he’s in either; another delm might have twigged, for better or for worse, that there’s more to Ran Eld’s enthusiasm for this scheme than just misguided optimism. Is Ran Eld that good at deceiving her, or does she just not want to consider that her bright-eyed boy might be mixed up in something really nasty? A bit of each, perhaps.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 23

In which Aelliana receives the fruits of her previous day’s work.

A relatively quiet chapter, after all the excitement, though perhaps the calm before a storm. It worries me that I can’t remember what it portends that Aelliana has been left undisturbed, nor why the house is so quiet.

“She thought the tables had been revised fifty or sixty years ago!” I suppose when eight years is half one’s lifetime, the difference between eight years and fifty is not so significant as all that.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 22

In which Daav sees Aelliana home.

Another progression of similar situations across chapters: Two chapters ago, Daav and Aelliana started holding hands “that they should not lose each other” in the crowd. One chapter ago, Yolan took Sed Ric’s hand in the darkness, “to lead him, she told herself fiercely”, with the implication that that wasn’t the only reason. In this chapter, Daav and Aelliana hold hands again, “though the station was barely crowded”.

A thing that amused me when I noticed it: The glossary at the end of the book includes the Liaden word va’netra, which is translated as “stray puppy” in this chapter when Daav uses it to describe Yolan and Sed Ric. The word itself appears nowhere in the novel except only in English translation, but it’s in the glossary all the same.

The subplot of the stray puppies seems at first glance to have no connection to the main plot, but it has thematic links forward and back. Their situation as Aelliana describes it here, “without kin on Liad, with no hope of going elsewhere”, is the situation Aelliana herself might have been in now if the luck had not been with her. And the idea of a person being cast out from their clan is going to reappear later.

Daav tells Aelliana that the custom to shun the clanless and withhold all aid is only custom, “the Code, not the Council”. Even the Code may be less strict on the matter than it’s usually interpreted to be, at least based on the section of it quoted at the head of an earlier chapter. That excerpt is very clear that a person cast out from their clan must be shunned and denied aid by the members of the clan that cast them out, but is less restrictive as regards the members of other clans. Another clan may not offer the outcast the benefits of a full clan membership, but there’s nothing there about not being allowed to, for instance, lend them a few dex and help them find a job.

I’m beginning to worry about Voni. Does she never think for herself?

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 21

In which desperate pirates are no match for Aelliana and her co-pilot.

Aelliana’s self-confidence is coming along in leaps and bounds; here she’s making significant decisions on a moment’s notice, without hesitation or apology. And she’s spent the whole evening tracking around in public without her “armor”, apparently without missing it except that it would have kept her warm.

It’s interesting that we’ve had two chapters in a row featuring people making desperately unwise decisions out of owing amounts of money they can’t scrape together honestly. Sed Ric and Yolan are in rather more desperate straits than Ran Eld (at least for now), a fact underscored by the tiny amount of money their future depends on. The dex, according to the handy table in Balance of Trade, is the smallest unit of Liaden currency, and the cantra is the largest. The four cantra Ran Eld borrowed, probably to pay for things he could well have lived without, is worth more than a one and half thousand times the four dex Yolan and Sed Ric need. The twenty cantra he now owes is equivalent to nearly thirty-five thousand dex.

(It’s a handy reminder, too, when the cantra is the unit most often mentioned, and the children of Korval are rich enough to carry cantra coins like loose change, that one cantra is actually a quite substantial amount of money.)

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 20

In which Aelliana is having a much better day than Ran Eld.

Ran Eld is not just personally unpleasant, he’s taking advantage of his status to embezzle money from the clan to fund his lifestyle. When he’s not funding his lifestyle by borrowing money at ruinously high rates of interest, with the result that he now owes to one creditor more money than Aelliana earns in a year. Not only is he a crook, he’s not a very smart crook. (I suppose he might not have needed to be, as long as his mother’s regard tended to shield him from the consequences his actions might otherwise have had.)

Meanwhile, Daav is introducing Aelliana to a Terran dish called ”pecha” (sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on why…) and telling her stories about his days in the Scouts. Here we get the story of the planet where he gained his earring, which sounds a lot like the planet Tol Ven yo’Endoth visited in “Sweet Waters”, though the Mun are not one of the tribes he encountered and their traditions are not exactly like the traditions of the Sanilithe.