One other thing that my rereading perspective gave me:
4. Bren's still a baby at this job in a lot of ways -- seems uncomfortably perched between humans and atevi. He's not at all comfortable with atevi violence, security, assassination, lack of convenience food, or -- sometimes -- manners (he lets his face show his emotions, he gets snappy/impolite when tired, ). On the other hand, he uses atevi vocabulary unconsciously (he mentions reading the junk mail he gets as being a chance to think in English), isn't uncomfortable with servants, has done years of work to reach this position, which is definitely no sinecure: Bren mentions "studying and competing for years to be the paidhi, and becoming, in sum, fluent in a language in which human words and human thought didn't neatly translate", so we know his skill level and talents are out of the usual already.
And he's not surefooted on the human side, either -- he's dangerously close, I felt, to considering Tabini a friend after their little outing in the countryside, and he's willing to keep his own superiors in the dark regarding some actions/requests of Tabini's... and even refrains from telling them about his current situation until it's too late...
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4. Bren's still a baby at this job in a lot of ways -- seems uncomfortably perched between humans and atevi. He's not at all comfortable with atevi violence, security, assassination, lack of convenience food, or -- sometimes -- manners (he lets his face show his emotions, he gets snappy/impolite when tired, ). On the other hand, he uses atevi vocabulary unconsciously (he mentions reading the junk mail he gets as being a chance to think in English), isn't uncomfortable with servants, has done years of work to reach this position, which is definitely no sinecure: Bren mentions "studying and competing for years to be the paidhi, and becoming, in sum, fluent in a language in which human words and human thought didn't neatly translate", so we know his skill level and talents are out of the usual already.
And he's not surefooted on the human side, either -- he's dangerously close, I felt, to considering Tabini a friend after their little outing in the countryside, and he's willing to keep his own superiors in the dark regarding some actions/requests of Tabini's... and even refrains from telling them about his current situation until it's too late...