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Tracker; Line-by-line
Topic Started: Mar 28 2015, 03:25 PM (1,814 Views)
Eupathic Impulse
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BlueCatShip,Mar 31 2015
06:12 PM
Leading to the next book series:

FIVER ~ Paradoxically, the series counts down instead of up.

Fiver: ~ The fifth volume.
Trumpeter ~ The more brassy of the group. There are oliphants, of course. Pink oliphants.
In-Wader ~ In which it's revealed the In-Wader is not the hero's father.
Rower ~ The one with the Irish Setter, a Wild Rover, often wearing a very fetching Boater. (*)
Shadower ~ The more circumspect. The mysterious opening (or closing?) volume.

I had better be a good Hider, after so many puns.

Hider?
Groaner?

Must...stop...punning....

Less than a week to go before Tracker arrives.

Edit: (*) Oh, and of course, the Rover can help by dog-paddling the rowboat.... :: ruff, ruff, ruff ::

We had a very long thread on Old Shejidan where we went through possible names of future books. I made quite a few of these, but some that still come to mind are (with new interpretations):

Sensor -- Bren has a good hunch.
Censor -- An alarming piece of news has gotten out to the public too early for Bren and Tabini's comfort, and they have to spend their time vetting newspaper articles on Mospheira and the mainland.
Censer -- A little too much sweet smoke, when Bren throws in the towel and decides to become an Orthodox priest.

As well as

Klesmer -- Jase discovers his Eastern European Jewish roots on Old Earth, and decides to express his feelings about his rediscovered heritage through music.
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Busifer

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I'm on Facebook too, sometimes exchanging communications with Shejidani associates.

He'd slipped over into actively speaking the language the first week. Tabini had pushed that situation.

Pushed him until he'd begun to operate outside the rules - begun to speak the language. Now he primarily thought in it.

Tabini-aiji wanted more technology. Under Tabini, planes became jets, radio became television, and industry proliferated. Atevi took to computers and improved what they were handed, finding their own path, making their own discoveries.

Then Phoenix turned up, back from centuries of absence, brining a wealth of old history, old human quarrels, and a single question: which government on Earth had the industrial power they needed? Cultural kinship linked the ship, for good or ill, to Mospheira. Need linked them to Tabini-aiji.

The job of the paidhi-aiji instantly changed. More, the ship appointed its own paidhi - Jase, who'd parachuted down the way the colonists had - to build a relationship with the continent, which had the range of earthly resources a space program needed. It had meant Jase learning Ragi. It had meant atevi building a space program while Mospheira argued about it. And ultimately it had meant getting atevi and Mospheirans to cooperate - because control of half the orbiting station had been the price of Tabini-aiji's cooperation.
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BlueCatShip
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This sounds wonderful, exciting, and reminds me why I like CJC's writing so much, even though it's a summary of events up until now. Her talents really shine, though, once she gets into things, character interactions, motivations and group actions, and the plot. That, and how she uses the language so well as a tool to tell the story. Few other writers wield words so well. ... And she does it so concisely. I wish I could do that nearly so well.
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byrdstation1

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"wields words" - yes, indeed, a most excellent summation. Ms. Cherryh paints pictures in my mind with those words and her work calls to my mind two other authors who, though quite disparate from one another (and from Ms. Cherryh), did likewise for me: Hemingway and Sabatini. As a fatter of mact, whilst waiting for Tracker, I have been re-reading some of Sabatini. Ah, Scaramouche! Methinks Andre-Louis would've made an excellent paidhi.
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Busifer

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Everything had changed, like so many snowballs headed downhill. Atevi were in space now, equal partners with Mospheirans on the station in a fifty-fifty arrangement which had two command centers and two stationmasters, cooperating together in a three-way arrangement with the four Phoenix captains - of whom Jase was now third-senior.

And Bren Cameron had ceased to represent Mospheira at all, in any regular way. His personal loyalty - his man'chi, in the atevi way of putting it - rested on the atevi side of the straits, and not just because that was the job he could do best. He represented Tabini-aiji's interests not only to humans on Earth and aloft, but to atevi lords on the continent, and he held a district lord's rank in order to do it.

So he'd come a long, long way from Mospheira, mentally speaking - a long way from human allegiances and human politics. He'd not visited the island in nearly four years - two of which he'd spent in deep space, remote from the world, one of which he'd spent down here, trying to patch the damage the push to space had done to the balance of power on Earth.

Of human contacts he still kept active, there was his brother Toby. There was Barb, who had been his lover, and now was Toby's partner.

And there was Jase, now third-senior of the starship's four captains - but still technically ship-paidhi, too. Jase knew atevi customs and he spoke Ragi, the principle atevi language, passably well.

And being ship-folk, a stranger to any planet, Jase's mindset was not Mospheiran. Jase's instincts might biologically match Mospheiran instincts, but his native accent was ship-folk, and he had never set foot on Mospheira, nor cared to go there.
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Busifer

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Well, that was all right, in Bren's thinking. There was still no one he had rather see in a position of influence among the ship-folk. Jase wanted the survival of Mospheira and the safety of the ship and the station aloft, and he wanted the survival of the atevi. They shared the same set of priorities.

And if there was one person on the planet who truly understood what he was and how he thought - it was Jase.


That was why, in Jase's company, at the railing of a moving boat, Bren could draw a breath right now with an ease he didn't feel with others, even the atevi lords whose survival he fought to ensure, or the Mospheiran president he tried to keep generally abreast of what atevi were doing - or, for that matter, with the aiji he served. They shared a job. They shared the same worries. They served the same interests.

So perhaps it was a little selfish of him to wish his area of the world could float along in the lazy way it had beengoing for a few more days, just one or two days more, before he had to go back to what Jase called his duty-book.

By tomorrow evening he'd be back in that highly securitied apartment in the privileged third floor of the Bjujavid, the great fortress and legislative center of the capital city. There'd be no duty-book, no computer files waiting for him on his return, but there would certainly be a message bowl sitting in his apartment foyer, a bowl overflowing with cylinders from people wanting a slice of his attention - lords and department heads with agendas that had been suspended for the last few weeks while the Assassins' Guild had a meltdown and the aiji's son celebrated his fortunate ninth birthday.
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Busifer

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Missing from that bowl, to be sure, would be the unwritten problems - a determined handful of people who wouldn't write to the paidhi-aiji politely and officially advising him they wanted him dead, and who wouldn't be Filing Intent with the Assassins' Guild. Oh, no: a legal Filing would never pass muster with the Guild, let alone Tabini-aiji, and his enemies couldn't gain any partisan following to demand it. So they couldn't succeed above-board. That meant anything that might come at him would not follow the rules.

That problem went with the title, the estate, the boat. He'd gotten back to the world a year ago from a two-year voyage into deep space - to find the aishidi'tat in chaos and Mospheira bracing for war.

He and the aiji-dowager and the will of the people had set Tabini-aiji back in power, a movement carried on the shock of their arrival and the revelation that neither Tabini nor his young heir was dead.

Well, things were better. He'd actually been able to take a vacation - give or take a few stitches in his scalp, and Banichi's need for rehab on that shoulder.

And now...

Now Jaishan had put her stern to the setting sun and her bow toward the end of the bay. Her sail had filled with a golden sunset, and the wet wind was carrying her home with the hum of the rigging and the rush of water under her white hull.

And that was all he needed think of for the better part of an hour.

"Want to take the helm for a while?" he asked Jase.

Jase laughed. "They never let captains take the controls up there, you know. Helm won't have it."

"Well, there's that island over to port. That's the only thing in this part of the bay you have to miss. Want to do it?"

"Love to," Jase said, and they left the rail and crossed the deck. Tano was perfectly content to turn over the wheel and instruct a novice how to handle it. Easy job, with a perfect wind carrying them and not much to do but keep Jaishan's bow headed for home.

She nodded a bit as Tano demonstrated how she was handling. Then she cut through the water with a steady rush, fast under sail, beautiful in her spread of canvas. And Jase at the helm no, delighted.


This must be the last set of paragraphs from me; I'm soon off north and will spend tomorrow on the road and the day after that at my father-in-law's funeral and memorial service. After that, social obligations, and more travel but this time home.
Perhaps someone else want to pick the torch, if there's still demand after people are starting to get their books?!

:t
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Kroyd
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Thank you Busifer! Safe travels!
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BlueCatShip
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My copy of Tracker was shipped early this morning. The ebook release is due out tomorrow. Looking forward to it.
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Neco the Nightwraith
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Well, it is Tuesday April 7, so I dunno if I get to see it ship today or not. If BCS got his shipped a day early, then I should at least get it shipped today. XD
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Kokipy

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Busier, I am so sorry to hear about your father in law. Thanks so much for your generosity to this thread while dealing with that grief. Much hugs to you and your family.
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joekc6nlx
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BlueCatShip,Apr 6 2015
01:00 PM
My copy of Tracker was shipped early this morning. The ebook release is due out tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

so was mine, estimated delivery is Friday, April 10.

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pence

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Sympathies Busifer. And Thank You
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Neco the Nightwraith
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"Your Amazon.com order of "Tracker: A Foreigner Novel" has shipped!"

*screams in excitement*

:fluffy:
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Eupathic Impulse
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I immediately bought my ebook version from the Kobo store, only a couple of hours after it dropped. But then I had to go to work.
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