FOREIGNER: Discussion Post #3, Spoiler Edition

[krait]

If you have discussion points for Chapters 3-4 you wish to bring up but which include spoilers, please post them here. Then link your comment in the general post, so those who want to avoid being spoiled can do so!

Comments

[cheyinka]

I liked that he was afraid of Ilisidi even before he left Shejidan - really set a nice tone for their first meeting. It makes me wonder if the only atevi Bren can relate to are the ones who frighten him on some level...

On the "he's still a baby paidhi" front, when he thinks of his two original servants he thinks "he liked them, even if they probably wouldn't understand that idea," rather than "he liked them, even though that was a human emotion" or the like.

Do we ever hear of the Nisebi again? It's not ringing any bells, and it seems we've only encountered the cultures more traditionalist than the Ragi - the Edi and the whatever Ilisidi is, the "East" I guess.

Do we ever hear of the Malguri-area residents speaking a different language than Ragi, either? I don't remember that at all, but Maigi and Djinana are either intentionally excluding Bren or that got dropped when Bren started spending a lot of time around Ilisidi et al.

It struck me as interesting that despite being somewhere no human had ever been, Bren isn't worried that supper will accidentally poison him. Or breakfast, or lunch. It's not until Cenedi gives him a cup of tea that he worries. (And apparently children are warned against taking and touching things from strangers, which makes sense, except then Cajeiri will muse that minor children were totally off-limits in feuding, many books from now...)

[spaceoperadiva]

The poisonous tea is one of my favorite scenes from the whole series. Bren knows better than to eat or drink strange things without careful inquiry, but he's so tired/disoriented he simply isn't thinking well and the consequences for that can be pretty dire. Ilisidi is one of my favorite characters, and this whole mistaken tea thing is a wicked and wonderful introduction.

Bren does seem disconnected from human society, but one supposes that's a hazard of his job, both in training and in execution. It would take a special kind of personality to want to go live alone among a foreign species, and Bren himself muses on the hazards of getting too disconnected from humanity based on the effect on previous padhi.

I want to live in this castle. Not for the gilt covered everything, but for the stone castle next to the lake and the mists and the rain and the mecheiti.

Spoiler for the most recent book in the series:

[cheyinka]

So we know Tabini isn't putting Bren somewhere safe while he wrecks Mospheira; it wouldn't make sense to do it out of fondness, and if he's planning on wrecking Mospheira, why would he need a paidhi?

On the other hand...

[spoiler]


The office of 'paidhi' predated humanity; it was an emissary from one lord to another, who would negotiate on his lord's behalf but also try to act in the foreign lord's interest as well. Since Bren is clearly pretty good at being a human-atevi paidhi, it's not impossible that Tabini would have wanted to use him as a paidhi to another lord, especially since, as a human, he would be obviously completely neutral.

[end spoiler]