Outside of a Dog: Lee, Sharon, and Steve Miller: (07) I Dare

Phil Boswell

Phil Boswell wrote on January 27, 2004 at 9:50 PM:

Rather late, but no-one else seems to have commented. The apostrophe would seem to imply a contraction of "away". Given that Liaden tend to the grandiose in their manner of speech (I haven't completed "I Dare" so forgive me if I've mis-attributed the snippet) the sense is of an archaism being vernacularised.

There, two possible neologisms in a single sentence. My work is done here :-)

HTH HAND

David Tate

David Tate wrote on September 26, 2007 at 12:41 PM:

More belated comments...

Throwing [the last pages of _I Dare_] in, though, when the next three books are going to be about other people, seemed gratuitous.)

For the Liaden books, I don't think it's safe to assume that publication order = composition order. They've had every conceivable difficulty in finding publishers and keeping publishers, have self-published, have e-published serially, etc. This on top of the fact that the grand arc of the story was worked out between them long ago. I suspect that the stories in Local Custom and Scout's Progress were written, at least in dense outline, before I Dare was begun. To the authors, those (plus Balance of Trade?) aren't "the next three books" in the same way that they would be for a one-book-at-a-time writer, even in an ongoing series.

And yup, the lifemates thing still bothers me, but I was expecting that.

If I understand your hangup with "the lifemates thing", it hinges on the idea that there is one unique perfect match out there somewhere -- but I'm not sure where you're getting that from, because I haven't found anything in the text to indicate that there is only one potential lifemate for any given person. It's clear that not everyone is "made for a wizard's match", but there's no indication that those who are so capable only have one compatible potential partner. For me, that makes a big difference.

Besides, there's no hint of mystical match (so far!) in the lifemating between [SPOILER]...

I think my real problem with the book is that it feels unbalanced. It largely splits its focus between Miri, Val Con, and the rest of the people on Lytaxin on the one hand, and Pat Rin on the other. Which is all well and good, but Pat Rin's part of the story covers about six months from the opening to the climax, while the Lytaxin crowd's covers four days�in what feels like about the same number of pages

Blame (as usual) the publisher.

The Pat Rin story was supposed to be interleaved with the Vandar story in Carpe Diem, but the publisher panicked about the length and freestandingness of Carpe Diem and forced the authors to excise that subplot and push it into the next book. With the result that, as you say, the timing and balance are both off. Grrr.

Two more gripes and then I'm done. One is a gripe about the physical book, not the writing: the copy editing was just bad.

Did you read the Meisha Merlin, or the Ace? I found the MM's to be almost unreadably poor in their copyediting; the Ace editions rather better (though still not perfect). I greatly regret what the bankruptcy of MM has done to Lee and Miller (and other authors) and the progress of the Liaden series, but I have to say their products were consistently shoddy.

David (blasting from the past) Tate

Kate

Kate wrote on September 26, 2007 at 1:03 PM:

As for the cliffhanger ending:

1) Regardless of what publication or composition order is, it's a rotten thing to do to your readers;

2) Since they're just now writing a parallel book (_Fledging_) to get them to a place where they can write the next book after _I Dare_, it hasn't been composed.

Lifemates: I was referring to the fact that wizards' matches are literally two halves of the same soul, which I dislike; and are viewed in such a way that a character could think, without sarcasm, of people being "merely" in love.

Copy-editing: Meisha Merlin. The Ace weren't out at this point.

David Tate

David Tate wrote on September 26, 2007 at 1:36 PM:

1) On cliffhangers, agreed in general. I didn't find the "...it's kind of complicated" to be much of a cliffhanger, though -- no immediate obvious peril.

Still, I do see your point. Such a small teaser could just as easily be the prologue to a later book. It's not as though Korval fans don't already have their faces pressed to the shop window.

2) I was speculating that the authors might not have known what was going to be "the next book" at the time they submitted I Dare, and might even have expected it to be a direct sequel. I agree that they had not yet composed any direct sequels. From reading their blogs, I find that there has been far more weirdness and unpredictability in what they've been able to sell than I would have expected.

(I could really wish they were financially set for life. The next book out, other than the pre-editing serialization of Fledgling, is going to be Duainfay, set in an entirely new fantasy universe along Faerie lines. Not what I was hoping for, though it may pleasantly surprise me.)

Lifemates: if you get a chance someday, could you point to the "two halves of the same soul" reference? I don't remember it, which is not to say it isn't there plain as day. It's also not clear to me that the description necessarily applies *before* the lifemating event; it might just be a description of the result.

However, I do agree with you that comments about "merely in love" aren't desirable, which is part of why I was happy to see a lifemating without psionic reinforcement. (Though what Lady Kareen must think about *that* breach of Code boggles the mind...)

At any rate, I'm not trying to be argumentative or confrontational -- I'd just had a rather different take on what was being said, and was curious how you had come to such a different understanding.

Kate

Kate wrote on September 26, 2007 at 9:32 PM:

Lifemates: I misremembered slightly. In _Scout's Progress_ Daav asks the Tree if he is "formed as one-half of a wizard's match," and the comments from the Healer at the end about Aelliana's pattern indicate to me that the match is intrinsic.

Paul A.

Paul A. wrote on December 13, 2007 at 9:21 AM:

Since there's already a precedent for reviving this conversation after a long pause:

I never read the Healer's comments as saying anything more than that the match exists now. (It might be different if the Healer had seen Aelliana's pattern before the link had already begun forming, as the "could have danced all night" scene shows us it had.)

And Daav's remark says only that he thinks (or has been told) that that's how a wizard's match works; he may be wrong.

(Since 'I Dare', as you may know, there's been that prequel set in the days of the first dramliz, when they still knew how the wizard's match worked and what purpose it was created for. It's not clear, though, to what extent the wizard's match still works the same way; and after much thought I'm frankly not sure whether, if it did, that would make the whole situation better or worse.)

Kate

Kate wrote on December 15, 2007 at 10:35 AM:

Paul A.--yeah, I should really give those prequels a proper read and booklog them and all. I skimmed the Embiid versions but didn't find that a good way to read and then never got around to finding a better copy.