Ack, sorry everyone, there was an Unexpected Critical Internet Failure, so I couldn't comment yesterday!
Thoughts and observations:
1. Mecheiti can be induced to ignore herd-ranking, at least for a little while!? Wonder what exactly this says about atevi...
2. That, thousands of years after humans took to the stars, Shakespeare is still taught and cherished - delights me. :D To be or not to be, that is indeed the question Bren's facing at the moment.
3. Bren checks the bodies of the guards to make absolutely sure he's not leaving an injured person behind -- ♥ ♥ Never mind that his own survival is rather more critical to an entire species than the life of one of Ilisidi's security (and that he's not a medic, and probably couldn't do anything for a critically injured man anyway, in the dark and unsupplied), he still checks. I think that's rather touching, and also evocative given his self-acknowledged distance from human relationships -- he wants to be alone (that is, in his mind, the same as "without my mother and without Barb"), but he still can't bring himself to leave someone alone, even an ateva, whom we already know do leave their own behind when they have to. Pretty human of him!
4. On the Bren-as-bridge, and leaning toward Bren-understanding-atevi, front: on page 400 he recounts arguing with Hanks over the "country associations", that they matter to the aiji and to the Western Association as a whole; two pages later, he muses that man'chi isn't just duty, but also a grouping-instinct, "the drive that held the company together".
By that definition, Bren seems to have it. In spades. :D
6. The uses of 'nadi' caught my attention when the dowager says something to Bren. According to the index, one says "nadi" along with every distinct statement, to convey politeness; we've seen it a lot in this book, for sure! Nonetheless, we haven't seen it as often as we might have, and sometimes it's absent in situations where the tone otherwise seems polite and the receiver doesn't seem offended. So: is the author omitting it sometimes because she doesn't want our eyes to burn out? :D Is Bren just not registering it because he's so used to it? (It's certainly included in his own speeches...) Is Bren being subtly human, and not noticing its absence so long as the person in question isn't shouting/otherwise being outright offensive?
7. This reading is the first time I really noticed that half-paragraph about Hanks: in Shejidan for a week without a word to the FO, like she'd been "dropped in a black hole"? What has Tabini done to/with her, and what is she experiencing? She's probably terrified out of her mind, even if all he's done is lock her in Bren's old apartment with a pair of "servants" to keep her there... I don't think I've ever felt sympathy for Hanks before, but she's living a small slice of Bren's nightmare (I'm cut off from the FO, nobody knows where I am, I have no way to communicate with home or influence the events/atevi going on around me, and there is no hope of rescue). Yikes.
no subject
Thoughts and observations:
1. Mecheiti can be induced to ignore herd-ranking, at least for a little while!? Wonder what exactly this says about atevi...
2. That, thousands of years after humans took to the stars, Shakespeare is still taught and cherished - delights me. :D To be or not to be, that is indeed the question Bren's facing at the moment.
3. Bren checks the bodies of the guards to make absolutely sure he's not leaving an injured person behind -- ♥ ♥ Never mind that his own survival is rather more critical to an entire species than the life of one of Ilisidi's security (and that he's not a medic, and probably couldn't do anything for a critically injured man anyway, in the dark and unsupplied), he still checks. I think that's rather touching, and also evocative given his self-acknowledged distance from human relationships -- he wants to be alone (that is, in his mind, the same as "without my mother and without Barb"), but he still can't bring himself to leave someone alone, even an ateva, whom we already know do leave their own behind when they have to. Pretty human of him!
4. On the Bren-as-bridge, and leaning toward Bren-understanding-atevi, front: on page 400 he recounts arguing with Hanks over the "country associations", that they matter to the aiji and to the Western Association as a whole; two pages later, he muses that man'chi isn't just duty, but also a grouping-instinct, "the drive that held the company together".
By that definition, Bren seems to have it. In spades. :D
5. The numbers of the plane, which can hold "ten plus crew" -- a human-made number, given its infelicity? Wonder if the ateva who protests that it holds "up to" ten and crew is a strict number-counter, trying to weasel around the infelicitous ten? Slight spoilers for later books; it reminded me of another instance of number-weaseling.
6. The uses of 'nadi' caught my attention when the dowager says something to Bren. According to the index, one says "nadi" along with every distinct statement, to convey politeness; we've seen it a lot in this book, for sure! Nonetheless, we haven't seen it as often as we might have, and sometimes it's absent in situations where the tone otherwise seems polite and the receiver doesn't seem offended. So: is the author omitting it sometimes because she doesn't want our eyes to burn out? :D Is Bren just not registering it because he's so used to it? (It's certainly included in his own speeches...) Is Bren being subtly human, and not noticing its absence so long as the person in question isn't shouting/otherwise being outright offensive?
7. This reading is the first time I really noticed that half-paragraph about Hanks: in Shejidan for a week without a word to the FO, like she'd been "dropped in a black hole"? What has Tabini done to/with her, and what is she experiencing? She's probably terrified out of her mind, even if all he's done is lock her in Bren's old apartment with a pair of "servants" to keep her there... I don't think I've ever felt sympathy for Hanks before, but she's living a small slice of Bren's nightmare (I'm cut off from the FO, nobody knows where I am, I have no way to communicate with home or influence the events/atevi going on around me, and there is no hope of rescue). Yikes.