SPOILER THREAD: Dragon Ship eArc

[rolanni]

In case you missed yesterday's excitement, the eArc for Dragon Ship, the Fourth Book of Theo Waitley, is now available from Baen. To recap:

Download it here.

Dragon Ship art by David Mattingly

This topic is for those ambitious souls who have already read the book and who are bursting to talk about it.

There will be spoilers here! You have been warned.

I ask those who wish to discuss Dragon Ship, to, please, keep to this topic and not spill out into others. Your courtesy is appreciated.

Comments

[muirecan.livejournal.com]

Well why I wonder is this quote from Dragonship.

"Arin is a good name, and there was a thinker upon a time, a trader he was who worked hard for his people, who had that name. I will send you a copy of a document he wrote, one that was sent out to traders and pilots. While the times were angry and confused, this thinker Arin, he had an idea of how to make trading work for people -- to make happy pilots and happy traders and happy people all at the same time." - Denobli of The Carresens.

I know that Lee & Miller are doing two more trader books and I wonder if this is a clue of the ultimate fate of Jethri. There is no reason he might now post such a thing under his/his fathers name since he has a perfectly valid right to use Arin himself.

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

Jethri was not the only one of Arin's kin besides Arin who was part of the social unit which Jethri grew up in. Arin had chose nto focus on and work with/for/on behalf of the Loopers, as opposed to other interests. He'd had the choice, and a very high prestigous position before choosing to tie his future to the social unit he joined. And he wasn't the only of his kin in that social unit.

Arin had secrets and history and legacy he never told Jethri, and which others refused to or were otherwise held back from telling Jerhtir--and they might not, for that matter, have known the secrets.

When Arin's Toss showed up in Ghost Ship, I originally thought it had been Arin's ship, since I thought that he had had a courier-type ship of his own once upon a time... the Uncle commissioning and naming it in Arin's honor, seemed less likely to me when I was reading Ghost Ship. But now, I wonder whom the Uncle intended as crew of Arin's Toss, and why Arin's Toss was uncrewed when Uncle hired Theo to be pilot and captain of Arin's Toss... and I wonder what the Uncle did with Arin's Toss after Theo returned Arin;s Toss to the Uncle.

Balance of Trade Spoiler

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

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In Balance of Trade Jethri was formally adopted into the High House Liaden Clan. When he left the ship he'd been born on, his mother the Captain made if very clear that Jethri was no longer even a begrudgingly accepted member of her kinship group. His relatives ironically were--she'd accepted Arin's relative or relatives on the ship she became Captain of long ago, but Arin had died before she'd become accepting of the stunt Arin had pulled, impregnating her with a clone of Arin and turning her into a walking womb for Arin's clone. Jethri was not hers genetically, and she had not volunteered to be a surrogate mother/walking womb for a child not genetically her own. She might not have been willingly pregnant, either. She didn;t abort, but that could have been for any number of reasons--the sake of the relationship between her and Arin, perhaps a personal aversion to induced abortion, perhaps she originally though Jethri was her biological child, the attitudes of the rest of the crew....

When Arin died she was still not reconciled to Jethri. However, her crew included Arin's kin and Jethi -was- was she had left of Arin, however angry she still was at Arin for impregnating her with a clone and for dying leaving her without Arin and with Arin;s clone who thought he was her and Arin's son.

She negotiated a deal to put Jethri on-board an all-male ore ship staffed by kins of hers--that kept the kinship ties, and got him off the ship which was going into a shipyard for overhaul and upgrading, and which was going to gain a new crewmember born to the crew. Jethri did not want to go to that ship--it was not an interstellar trade, it was a nasty ore-hauled and its crew included abusive bullies... so instead he negotiated himself a deal with a Liaden trader to join -her- ship... which infuriated the Captain of the ship he'd been born on. He was repudiating a deal she'd made, AND doing it to join -Liadens-, firece trade rivals... and he wasn't even her -real- kin, he was a clone of the lover who'd gotten himself killed and stuck her with the clone to bring up!

Jethri and the Uncle's kin who stayed as crew with the ship of Jethri's birth mother, broke with the Uncle fully in Balance of Trade They'd previously tossed their lot in with the Loopers but hadn;t broken with the Uncle previously. Again, they formally broke their ties in Balance of Trade.

So anyway, there were Arin's kin, and non-clone biological descendants of them gestating, in galance of Trade. Meanwhile, Jethri moved on to life with Liadens, on a Liaden ship and formal adoption into a High House and training as a son of the House, and learning also the work of the tending of the vines of the vineyards of the House on an off-Liad planet--with the irony being he was a more careful and concerned and empathic to the vines vineyard worker, than tow of the biological dughters of the House, one of whom not only hated working in the vineyards and disliked the fins, but was a -killer- of the grapevines....and a dramliz, which was TOTALLY anathema to that at least branch of the Clan....

Way back in A Conflict of Honors, a character had mentioned that Terrans had married into/become part of Clans, long before Anne Davis married Shan's father. The DoI was quite unhappy about the pollution of Liaden clans with Terran genes and members. Jethri became a member of a Liaden clan generations before Conflict of Hnors. Reading Balance of Trade, I was thinking of the reference from Conflict of Honors particularly (The DoI had issues not only with Korval, with but pollution of Liaden purity with Terran genes... I expect Jethri was one of the earliest ""polluting" the pure Liaden DNA the DoI was so focused on (apparently the DoI was unaware of Korval's antecendents... ironically the first yos'Galan came from a clan which tended vinyeards.... Korval genes ought to have had some spread through Liaden genetics--anyone descended of the Erob-Korval cross had Korval non-Liaden genes, for example. ) I suspect the twins' father was from Erob, which would give them those long-earlier yos'Galan vineyard positive-genes... which did NOT manifest in Meicha! !!!)