FOREIGNER: Discussion Post #5, Spoiler Edition

[krait]

If you have discussion points for Chapters 7-8 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

slight spoilers for later books?

[krait]

This comment is a continuation from the general discussion post regarding the child in the tourist group and atevi heights.


We learn in later books that a eight- to nine-year-old ateva is pretty much the same height as Bren, so it's possible the child who said that was pretty young. (A nine-year-old ateva is old enough to start feeling man'chi of his own, at least in the upward direction -- receiving it from subordinates; which might be something like puberty, though I don't think anything else pubertal is suggested, so it may be a stage which happens some time before physical maturity. At any rate, aside from that no one ever remarks on nine years old being older, mentally, for an ateva than for a human, which you'd think they would if there were that much disparity.)

Re: slight spoilers for later books?

[cheyinka]

My point was more that it's hard to tell whether it's a seven- to ten-year-old being indiscreet (everyone's thinking "hey, Shiri's kid is as tall or taller than the human!" because that's true, but nobody's saying it because that's rude), or a seven- to ten-year-old being purposefully rude (perhaps as a way of testing whether discretion applies to humans?).

And, of course, at this point I don't think we have any reason to suspect that the kid might be that young - ten at the lower end, not the higher, is what I was guessing before meeting Cajeiri!

Ilisidi implies that Cajeiri was on the later end of when a "normal" ateva starts feeling man'chi as something distinct from parental love, so I think it's not so much puberty-esque as I guess equivalent for humans wanting friends' approval in addition to / instead of parental approval, maybe? I am... ambivalent about whether I want to see Cajeiri going through puberty, tbh.

Re: slight spoilers for later books?

[krait]

Oooh, good point! Major fail on my part, not to have connected it with the "atevi instinctively push boundaries with newcomers" thing! I never even THOUGHT of that, it was so instinctively (one of those words Bren fears for very good reason) similar to a human child being rude-through-honesty.

That sure puts a different twist on it, especially given the ending! (I HAD wondered, along with Bren, at all those TV interviewers and tourists who never gave so much as a twitch to suggest what was wrong! Maybe the kid saw a TV broadcast about six days ago, eh?)

ambivalent about whether I want to see Cajeiri going through puberty

Heh. The thought, I admit, is somewhat alarming!