1. Bren seems really isolated from human society -- he mentions one brother(doesn't discuss contacting him), and that he sends very uninformative letters to his mother, and that his father is estranged; his superiors might start missing him if he doesn't call for a fortnight; his affairs are brief and no-strings sorts from women not wanting or expecting more.
Human society doesn't seem all that attached to him, either -- his superiors wouldn't raise any fuss if he vanished mysteriously and was never heard from again, there's no mention of his brother or father possibly contacting him, and his successor, Hanks, pretty clearly isn't his friend, so if he has friends in the department we haven't seen them.
Does this really put him in a good position to be paidhi? If you were a Mospheiran, wouldn't you want the person representing you to the Big Scary Aliens to be a guy you knew, had some influence with, and could be pretty sure was on your side? ...So does the position really go to the most linguistically gifted, NO other criteria involved?
2. Malguri: wow. Especially for a spacefaring populace, the sheer age of the place probably is overwhelming! I was awed when Bren thought that it had been built before humans achieved spaceflight (or, at least, habitable colonies/residential space stations, depending on how you want to interpret that line).
Then I got thinky, and started wondering if this is a relatively near-future SF novel/space exploration isn't that far beyond what it is now. It might explain why Phoenix was carrying so many top-talent people and so much by way of historical records.
Edit: Just checked something I vaguely remembered, and in Book One I found this: They'd been screened, their skills had been tested, they'd had to have recommendations atop recommendations even to come close to this job. They didn't send foul-ups on a ship that carried Earth's whole damned colonial program, and disasters didn't happen to a mission as important as this one.
So the Phoenix was humanity's FIRST colony ship! So the atevi may well be their first encounter with a nonhuman intelligence...
Very polite reception Bren gets at first, despite being the only human ever to travel so far inland; loved the housekeeper asking Bren to sign in Mosphei' as well as Ragi. :D Bren's apartment sounds lovely, too, despite the unpromising corridor he traversed to reach it!
3. Ilisidi! I notice that she scares (well, "commands") Bren... but he still argues with her five seconds later. :D I love the mental image of Bren in the oversized chair with his arms about his knees, ready to duck if her cane comes his way! ♥ Bren, never stop being so adorable. (Don't stop being ready to duck, either.)
Ilisidi's conversational tactics make that little verbal wrangle Bren had with Jago look tame! For an ateva, she's shockingly rude, too -- she slanders him personally ("gambling... sex with the servants... perversion"), and humans (and paidhiin) generally destroying an antique tea set. Bren keeps wondering if she's mad, despite noting several proofs that she's both sane and well aware of the wider world; cognitive dissonance, because sane atevi just don't act that way?
4. Poisoned tea! Poor Bren. (My innards start hurting in sympathy just reading about his reaction!) Interesting, though, that he instinctively trusts Banichi when he's ill, and instinctively distrusts Cenedi (well, instinctively thinks Cenedi is Guild, and dangerous).
So apparently humans don't have servants, and it seems like just being born on Mospheira gives you either money or a place to live - it's how Cherryh's spacer families and stationer families work, but it doesn't make a lot of sense on a planet, especially not generations removed from living in space / on a spaceship!
And apparently Bren really needs his sleep, because he's calmly thinking things like, "Paidhiin are expendable. Mospheira isn't," upon being told he's "traveling to the country". He also accepts Tabini's explanation that going to Mospheira could endanger his relatives a little too easily - it might be true, but, still, he could say he's going to the cabin and then hole up with police escort or something until the unlicensed assassin has been caught, right? (Do we know whether Mospheira even has police? I assume they have to, and have to have a jail, even if their solution to crime is psychiatric Adjustment like in the Alliance/Union universe.)
He can't really remember his behavior during "the incident" - how much of that is from shock, like he thinks, and how much of it is because he hasn't really slept since then? It's the second day after, and he's gotten very little sleep either night; that's not psychologically healthy!
"He knew, as every paidhi before him had known, that, if someday the Treaty broke down, he'd be the first to know." And he's not thinking that it might be happening right then? Seriously, the aiji teaches you how to shoot, gives you a gun, and then hides you in the interior of the continent with no word to your office and you don't wonder "am I the only human he likes, and he's keeping me safe while he wrecks Mospheira?"?
Then he gets to Maidingi and his concern is that they're taking a van to Malguri rather than "hiring a bus" or "taking the rail" (oddly, it's those two expressions that really make me remember the Mospheirans are foreign humans to me!), rather than, you know, "I haven't slept in days and no human knows where I am"? :p
I forgot that Malguri predated human entrance into space - so the 4200s, atevi reckoning, is probably the 1800s, human reckoning. Bren discovers later that the first fortress on the site was built "two thousand years ago", so that sets the books in the 3800s, or, at least, after 3960. Nice.
aghaghaghah "clip of shells" - I have to keep telling myself that atevi pistols could use clips instead of magazines and it isn't helping. (I know that being pedantic about terminology will cause me only pain, but, uh, this is me being pedantic.) Still, his servants, sent by Tabini, make sure he's armed, and his thought is that he's in "cold storage", not that, you know, Mospheira is in trouble?
The first meeting with Ilisidi is even weirder than the first prolonged conversation with Jago - she really does seem completely insane, and Bren is huddled on a footstool afraid she's going to hit him with her cane. On the other hand, her prurient interest in his sex life is... no, that's still weird and creepy too.
He worries that the tea won't be safe, but after one sip he goes ahead and has another? Oh, Bren. And, of course, now we have the moment for which I was waiting - bam! poisoned tea. The description of the poison is really horrifying, I have to say, not to mention the antidote and the vomiting. :(
And then Banichi scolds him while he's still sick, which is just mean. Shouldn't Bren have been warned about this before he started eating food in a strange house? I mean, he never saw his supper or breakfast prepared, so that could have been poisoned just as easily!
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branchandroot
First impressions
Date: 2011-06-09 10:07 pm (UTC)Human society doesn't seem all that attached to him, either -- his superiors wouldn't raise any fuss if he vanished mysteriously and was never heard from again, there's no mention of his brother or father possibly contacting him, and his successor, Hanks, pretty clearly isn't his friend, so if he has friends in the department we haven't seen them.
Does this really put him in a good position to be paidhi? If you were a Mospheiran, wouldn't you want the person representing you to the Big Scary Aliens to be a guy you knew, had some influence with, and could be pretty sure was on your side? ...So does the position really go to the most linguistically gifted, NO other criteria involved?
2. Malguri: wow. Especially for a spacefaring populace, the sheer age of the place probably is overwhelming! I was awed when Bren thought that it had been built before humans achieved spaceflight (or, at least, habitable colonies/residential space stations, depending on how you want to interpret that line).
Then I got thinky, and started wondering if this is a relatively near-future SF novel/space exploration isn't that far beyond what it is now. It might explain why Phoenix was carrying so many top-talent people and so much by way of historical records.
Edit: Just checked something I vaguely remembered, and in Book One I found this: They'd been screened, their skills had been tested, they'd had to have recommendations atop recommendations even to come close to this job. They didn't send foul-ups on a ship that carried Earth's whole damned colonial program, and disasters didn't happen to a mission as important as this one.
So the Phoenix was humanity's FIRST colony ship! So the atevi may well be their first encounter with a nonhuman intelligence...
Very polite reception Bren gets at first, despite being the only human ever to travel so far inland; loved the housekeeper asking Bren to sign in Mosphei' as well as Ragi. :D Bren's apartment sounds lovely, too, despite the unpromising corridor he traversed to reach it!
3. Ilisidi! I notice that she scares (well, "commands") Bren... but he still argues with her five seconds later. :D I love the mental image of Bren in the oversized chair with his arms about his knees, ready to duck if her cane comes his way! ♥ Bren, never stop being so adorable. (Don't stop being ready to duck, either.)
Ilisidi's conversational tactics make that little verbal wrangle Bren had with Jago look tame! For an ateva, she's shockingly rude, too -- she slanders him personally ("gambling... sex with the servants... perversion"), and humans (and paidhiin) generally destroying an antique tea set. Bren keeps wondering if she's mad, despite noting several proofs that she's both sane and well aware of the wider world; cognitive dissonance, because sane atevi just don't act that way?
4. Poisoned tea! Poor Bren. (My innards start hurting in sympathy just reading about his reaction!) Interesting, though, that he instinctively trusts Banichi when he's ill, and instinctively distrusts Cenedi (well, instinctively thinks Cenedi is Guild, and dangerous).
What a cliffhanger to end a reading on! :D
Re: First impressions
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Date: 2011-06-09 10:20 pm (UTC)And apparently Bren really needs his sleep, because he's calmly thinking things like, "Paidhiin are expendable. Mospheira isn't," upon being told he's "traveling to the country". He also accepts Tabini's explanation that going to Mospheira could endanger his relatives a little too easily - it might be true, but, still, he could say he's going to the cabin and then hole up with police escort or something until the unlicensed assassin has been caught, right? (Do we know whether Mospheira even has police? I assume they have to, and have to have a jail, even if their solution to crime is psychiatric Adjustment like in the Alliance/Union universe.)
He can't really remember his behavior during "the incident" - how much of that is from shock, like he thinks, and how much of it is because he hasn't really slept since then? It's the second day after, and he's gotten very little sleep either night; that's not psychologically healthy!
"He knew, as every paidhi before him had known, that, if someday the Treaty broke down, he'd be the first to know." And he's not thinking that it might be happening right then? Seriously, the aiji teaches you how to shoot, gives you a gun, and then hides you in the interior of the continent with no word to your office and you don't wonder "am I the only human he likes, and he's keeping me safe while he wrecks Mospheira?"?
Then he gets to Maidingi and his concern is that they're taking a van to Malguri rather than "hiring a bus" or "taking the rail" (oddly, it's those two expressions that really make me remember the Mospheirans are foreign humans to me!), rather than, you know, "I haven't slept in days and no human knows where I am"? :p
I forgot that Malguri predated human entrance into space - so the 4200s, atevi reckoning, is probably the 1800s, human reckoning. Bren discovers later that the first fortress on the site was built "two thousand years ago", so that sets the books in the 3800s, or, at least, after 3960. Nice.
aghaghaghah "clip of shells" - I have to keep telling myself that atevi pistols could use clips instead of magazines and it isn't helping. (I know that being pedantic about terminology will cause me only pain, but, uh, this is me being pedantic.) Still, his servants, sent by Tabini, make sure he's armed, and his thought is that he's in "cold storage", not that, you know, Mospheira is in trouble?
The first meeting with Ilisidi is even weirder than the first prolonged conversation with Jago - she really does seem completely insane, and Bren is huddled on a footstool afraid she's going to hit him with her cane. On the other hand, her prurient interest in his sex life is... no, that's still weird and creepy too.
He worries that the tea won't be safe, but after one sip he goes ahead and has another? Oh, Bren. And, of course, now we have the moment for which I was waiting - bam! poisoned tea. The description of the poison is really horrifying, I have to say, not to mention the antidote and the vomiting. :(
And then Banichi scolds him while he's still sick, which is just mean. Shouldn't Bren have been warned about this before he started eating food in a strange house? I mean, he never saw his supper or breakfast prepared, so that could have been poisoned just as easily!
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