Tag Archives: Zam Gobelyn

Trade Secret – Chapter 30

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Gobelyn’s Market, Clawswitts

In which the Gobelyns receive news of kin.

So that’s why Jethri suddenly decided he needed to send a message to Freza.

Apart from the trade and economic factors, which I don’t feel qualified to judge, one useful effect of publishing the Envidaria that Jethri must have considered is that the Liadens will have to stop bugging his friends and family for a copy. (Whether they’ll believe, among themselves, that the published Envidaria is the real thing, is another matter – I suspect those Liadens inclined to believe in Terran trickery will consider this more of the same – but at least they’ll have to act in public as if they believe it.)

And it looks like I was wrong (again) about Ynsolt’i. I think, looking back, that I’ve been tending to get predictions wrong about this book by tending toward being too neat and tidy. Life don’t always go in for quick and tidy endings to things.

Speaking of things in life that aren’t neat and tidy, I’ve got some of my sympathy for Iza back. She’s a complicated woman, is Iza Gobelyn.

Trade Secret – Chapter 8

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Flight Deck, Gobelyn’s Market, Local Day Graceful 23 on Kinaveral

In which the Gobelyns shake the dust of Kinaveral from their feet.

And we leave Jethri for now, to go and see how the rest of the Gobelyns are doing.

Jethri’s name still comes up a few times. Partly it’s that getting the ship flying again means people are returning to old routines, and noticing the spaces that Jethri used to fill; partly it’s other things. Apparently the two trades that earned Jethri his ten-year key were interesting enough that people are seeking the Market out in hopes of doing business with him. That can’t be doing Iza’s temper much good.

Speaking of Jethri, we also find out that back in the day Arin got the ship to actually run some of Jethri’s make-believe trade routes. We don’t find out yet what resulted, but I have a feeling that’s coming.

The refit has, after all, taken long enough that Grig and Seeli’s son has been born on the ground instead of in space. The bit about Grig and Seeli not being decided about which surname, and which set of associated connotations, to give him is interesting. So is the bit where Captain Iza decides for them: she’s not accepting any relative of Arin’s and Grig’s as a Gobelyn, no matter who his mother is.

By the end of the chapter, Khat has been made first mate, on the recommendation of Cris, who was first mate before the refit; the work Cris was doing while he waited out the refit has left him rusty on skills a first mate needs, while the work Khat was doing sharpened her up some, and anyhow Cris’s other skills are going to be needed for the various issues associated with the shakedown cruise.

(I kind of wonder if she’s going to go further by the time this book’s over; there are hints that some of the crew are beginning to doubt whether having Iza as captain serves the ship as well as once it did.)

The conversation about safe-runs is, in a way, a reply to the conversation last chapter about memorizing the coords of one’s homeworld. It appears that even spacers whose birth home is a ship, now and always, have an equivalent – another thing nobody bothered to teach Jethri.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 14

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Day 81
Standard Year 1118

Kinaveral

In which the crew has a Word with the captain.

And things actually go reasonably smoothly, as far as the purpose of the meeting goes. Iza’s not inclined to be gracious, but she knows what she needs to do.

Where things get tense is when she decides to poke Grig about the things they both know (and Paitor knows some of, but perhaps not the rest of the family) about Arin and Jethri. We get what sounds like confirmation that the stuff of Arin’s that disappeared when he died wasn’t disposed of, but instead is the same stuff Paitor was nudging her in the first chapter about bundling away and never doing anything with. (And what does it say that she did bundle it away instead of just throwing it out? Or that she has decided now to get rid of it?) We also get an escalation of Iza’s insistence on regarding Jethri as Arin’s son and none of her own, though it stops short of anything that might be regarded as a clear explanation.

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 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.