49 thoughts on “I HAVE QUESTIONS: Trader’s Leap Author Spoiler Discussion”

  1. For those of playing along at home, Trader Isfelm makes -how- many misplaced/long-lost clan members and cousins?

  2. I noticed that in Trader’s Leap, Padi seemed quite certain that cats and starships don’t mix, and norbears must be kept strictly confined while on board the ship. However, in Accepting the Lance, Theo has 2 cats and a norbear running loose all over the ship. I wonder if this seeming dichotomy will be further explored?

  4. Padi also says that the Terran Loop ships are known to carry cats. And I’ll note that Bechimo is self-aware, and able to monitor the whereabouts of cats and norbears and to set Off Limits. The Passage is an excellent ship, but it is not — dare I say it? — Bechimo.

  5. Korval does not seem interested in AI trade ships like Carresens-Denobli has, or is that just a future could happen thing? Korval is pilots, so the yos’Phelium side may not be in favor of giving up control and autonomy to an AI in their ships? Has Admiral Bunter left the stage for good? I keep thinking it needs a new name to go along with new start in life. Lastly, would just like to mention how I like the way you have gradually introduced new characters and new generations like Syl Vor, and Padi, and Isfelm now, rather than—and now, twenty years later…. Thanks for all the books, it has been a pleasure for many years, hoping for many more, there is so much more to tell us! Oh, and this was such a nice thing to find on my Xmas morning.

  6. As for missing/lost members of Korval there is also Del Ben yos’Phelium who was cast out of the clan at the time bel’Tarda was brought into Korval for all but ruining bel’Tarda as part of a trading scheme. Admittedly he may not strictly meet the criteria of missing/lost but if he lived after his encounter with Lisha yos’Galan he was told to change his name and was barred from all contact with and protection of Clan Korval [per the short story “Heirloom”].

    Have you ever plotted out some ideas about this black sheep line?

  8. LOL. This is a wonderful example of how readers and Writer A think differently about Writer A’s universe. I won’t know what’s going to happen in future until we’re dealing in that future and Piece A connects to Piece C, or whatever.

    I note that Korval, in the persons of Daav, Val Con, and Shan, doesn’t seem at all horrified by Bechimo. Nor do they seem to revere the Complex Logic Laws, particularly.

    Korval is SHIPS, so the saying goes. yos’Pheliums not being One Thing, I can’t tell you what any particular yos’Phelium pilot I haven’t met yet may or may not think about piloting an AI ship. Theo and her crew do seem to be doing some piloting, though, right?

    Admiral Bunter went off with Disian to be introduced to some of her many, many friends, and to give him enough data to make an informed choice about his future.

    Thank you for your kind words. We absolutely wanted to move down a timeline, and allow our characters to mature, learn, teach, and, well — live their lives.

  9. I very much enjoyed the segment at Volmer as well. So great to read the Shan and Denobli and Padi and Vanz interactions.

  10. Given the proposed future of Tinsori Light as a Free Ship port, I suspect that Adm. Bunter and Disian may make an appearance there, with the Admiral all growed up. I hope so, anyway.

  11. I see what you did there with making a post a page — very cool!
    Genre-bending is becoming more and more common — what are we poor libraries to do?! I quite like it, though I still prefer the “sci-fi/fantasy with a bit of romance” to the “romance in a sci-fi/fantasy setting.” Theo, who’s building a family around something other than a lifemating, is one of my favourite characters.
    As with all things in the Liaden Universe, it’s complicated, but Kor Vid and Daaneka could also be counted among the long lost cousins, perhaps?
    And I also enjoyed the meeting of Korval and Carresens-Denobli (at long last) and look forward to seeing what Padi and Vanz get up to!

  12. Bending genres was *just* creeping into being about the time we started in the field. Romance was starting its long-running affair with werewolves. In SF, we were the pioneers bending toward romance, while Glenn Cook was bending fantasy toward mystery.

  13. I am on my third read of Trader’s Leap. My very bad habit of racing thru a book the first or even the second time makes this necessary. My question concerns the Prologue. I am trying to place the people and the events in the context of the story. I can’t really find the place it fits. I initially thought it was when Shan healed Tarona Rusk but then some of it didn’t fit. Then maybe when the “door closed” but still not a good fit. So I am puzzled

  14. Prologues serve a lot of different uses in fiction. Some are literal — like you’re looking to fit the people in the prologue into the story. Some fill in a piece of history. Some introduce a New Idea/Location that will be used later. Some are meant to tantalize.

    In the case of Trader’s Leap, we wanted to tantalize, and also give a hint that another location was going to figure into the story. So! Something Mysterious and Unsettling was happening at what we later find out to be Colemeno. The two sisters and the engineer live in Civilization. Geritsi and Dosent, who appear later in the text, live Off-Grid. What all three have experienced are the later-called Reavers, just arrived and poking about to see how best they should carry out their orders. Now, no, we didn’t say all that in so many words, but it’s possible for readers to put it together.

  15. One of the things that jumped out at me was referring to a norbear as “fire eater”. Since I waited some time between reading that and writing this, my backbrain kicked up the thought – what if it refers to norbears being able to reduce the distress in people – removing the burning emotional discomfort. That fits better with the stories than consuming physical flames. Are norbears called “fire eaters” anywhere else ? How did they get the title?

    Among many other joys of reading the work, I appreciate the description of how trauma influences future reactions and how deep it can reach. Thank you for the message that trauma can explain why certain behaviors came to be and that healing is possible.

    I recall you have written about embedding messages and concepts (to engage and grow the reader? ) and I wonder if you map those out or they appear as an emergent property as the story unfolds (or something else) ?

  16. I was thinking it was the Reavers just from the various other parts of the story. Thanks for confirming my thoughts on that. I found the Reavers so disturbing, then the DOI was disturbing in how it treated people.

  17. LOL! You may be overthinking this, though it’s an interesting direction. “Fire-eater” is one of those Heyer/Regency phrases that escapes into the Liaden Universe(R) via the authors. A fire-eater is just someone who’s ready to fight — the implication is that they must eat fire in order to have such a ready — hot — temper.

    Yes, nowadays people don’t give the effects of surviving a dangerous situation enough credit. Shot at during school on Thursday? You oughta be back to your old self and ready to go back on Monday, and never think of it again. Err, no.

    We plan some of our subversions — we went into the work knowing that we would be supporting the idea that there is no “women’s” work or “men’s work” — there’s work, and in an ideal situation, the person most suited to do it, will. Nor are there “weak” or “gendered” emotions. If someone is sad, they should be able to cry and have their grief respected. We also went in supporting the idea of bisexuality (which is now seen as horribly naive, but hey, you do what you can, when you can). Other subversions, like Denobli apprentice, just pop up.

  18. Now this is what I call fun!
    Thank you author(s) for taking the time to thoughtfully engage with your readers!

  19. I also enjoyed the encounter at Volmer. It almost seemed to have the making of a Childe Ballad or something like that.

    You’ve got a Gallant Gentleman (Vanz), a Fair Lady (Padi), an evil Witch, a Good Sorceror, a couple of noble houses, and a terrible tragedy narrowly averted.

    It was a fun story in and of itself.

  20. I hope you and Steve are safe and well (and a big thank you to the efficacy of modern medicines and other treatments). Yes, I will be sorry to wait until 2022 for another Liaden tale, (especially with all my new questions about ‘What next????’, but your heath and well being comes first.

    Thank you so much for all your yarns – long, short and fragmentary. In some ways each are provocative and all read over and again, mulled over like conversations with an old, dear friend. Now I have introduced my son and eldest grandchild to the Liaden universe, I buy not one, but 2 or 3 copies of each new book for pressies.

    I’ve been mulling about genre bending, cross overs and splinters… Many would see ‘Speculative Fiction’ as a generic umbrella that could embrace various kinds of fantasy and SciFi. But after reading le Guin and Atwood on the subject, I feel I’ve entered into a Talmudic discourse that could last all day. (Now, how long IS a day?) Do you think Speculative Fiction works for things written about the Liaden Universe?

    Now to the ‘What Next Questions’ following ‘Trader’s Leap’. Korval is ships. Sooo, really, can’t Shan and Co. become more important and have more books where they are prominent – along with, of course, Theo and Bechimo and Co. and whatever is going to happen at Tinsori Light? With what has been happening to these folks since Korval relocated to Surebleak, things have got quite testy, dangerous and exciting.

    And, if I may ask a question that is not specifically about ‘Trader’s Leap’. Where do Norbears and Clutch Turtles come from? Where they already in the Bubble Universe? Did they come from somewhere else, not the Old Universe?

    Have a happy New Year.

  21. I’ve never met anybody who was happy with “speculative fiction.” All fiction is speculative, after all. You might as well just cut to the chase and call all genres Fantasy, or– wait! I have it! FICTION. Sadly, that doesn’t satisfy the people who only like This Thing Here and need it to have a specific name so that they don’t have to interact with any other book. Yes, that was harsh.

    For the Liaden stories, I’m perfectly happy with Space Opera, or Space Adventure, or even Space Romance (given that Romance used to carry a definition very close to Fantasy).

    Steve is lead on the next two Liaden titles — both of those are Jethri books. The book that I’m poking at will, as far as I know now, take place on and around Tinsori Light.

    The Clutch Turtles and the norbears are native to the universe the exodus from the Old Universe entered. Which is to say the “present day” Liaden Universe(R). It is *not* a Bubble Universe, since it’s specifically described as infinitely expanding. The Old Universe was fixed state.

  23. I love all your books and am looking forward to the Jethri books. This doesn’t have to do with Trader’s Leap but are the Pathfinders on Theo’s ship and the Xytrang Ambassador ever going to get together?

  26. I was surprised yet not surprised by Hugglelans’ behavior in Trader’s Leap. And just now in my rereading of Saltation hit the section where Mayko is pushing on Hugglelans’ contract signing ’round about the time of Korval’s defense of Liad. Oh, that’s right and why subconscious was not surprised. So many plotlines it is to marvel at….

  27. Win Ton needs to have a meeting with the Clutch turtles for the final medical repairs!
    An a question; How do you come up with the words/phrases in Laiden and Xytrang?

  28. Liaden and Yxtrang? There are actually fewer “native” words in the Liaden books than people think, and those are constructed by a complicated system of looking at the words already extant, what various letter combinations look like on the page, and if the word is actually pronounceable by humans. If you mean, the words and phrases said to be Liaden, but which are rendered in English for ease of reading — many of them make their bow to Regency phrases, and those that don’t also are constructed by a complicated process of looking at phrases/rhythms that already exist in the language supposedly being spoken, thinking about the society using the phrase, and Other Stuff. It’s a lot harder to explain than it is to Do.

  31. Over on the comment thread that is *not* the Author Spoiler Discussion, there’s been some back and forth as to whether Tekelia is male or female. Care to confirm, one way or the other? I find it highly amusing that people are so firmly of either opinion! I personally am mostly curious as to how they present, and minorly amused at how their body seems to be. I defaulted to female, but I think that’s because I’m conditioned to think that names ending in -a are female. I’m also very used to thinking of people as people, independent of their bodies. *shrug*

  33. Regarding Tekelia, the fact that readers are discussing male/female for them is ample proof you did a fairly good job keeping their gender out of the binary IMHO.

  34. Thoughts after a first reading: 1) I find myself glad be that the “leap” was not into yet a third universe 2) I also very much enjoyed the Volmer scenes. 3) I read the stories (Ambient Conditions, Preferred Seating) first, and they helped me understand (a little) what was happening with the Redlands. 4) I was puzzling over the evil Madame who trades in specialized textiles and makes such liberal use of Vya. What she did to Padi and Vanz was entirely clear–but not why. We are reminded that the DOI is likely not the only bad actor in this Universe. If it may be told, what were her motivations? Kidnapping for ransom? Control of the Carrasens through Vanz? And why did the other traders send Padi and Vanz there?

  35. Madame does not take me into her confidence. If I had to guess, the vendors who referred her were under her influence, a little. Enough to believe her honest, and she was, after all, a certified vendor.

  36. Is there a reason why you didn’t use the Swedish hen instead? I’m not sure about the differens between those two pronouns. Or does they just feel more chaos-like?

  37. Thanks for Tekelia! I’m a non-binary person who uses they/them pronouns, and it is so unusual to see myself in a character in a book! Also, I was in awe of the fact that you only used a handful of they/them/their’s — in case people out there don’t know, it’s really hard to write/speak without pronouns, and the Authors did a fantastic job — it was so seamless that I didn’t realize they had avoided pronouns so thoroughly until the first “their.” Anyway… congratulations on a fabulous job, and I’ll be recommending Trader’s Leap to my non-binary friends and allies!

    Also, in terms of demonstrating chaos, it is interesting but true that refusing to accept a binary gender is more chaotic in our culture than allowing the default to stand. You would think “person” would be simpler than “woman/man,” but it is not.

  38. Mostly because I had not, until you mentioned it, heard of the “Swedish hen.” And I’m not much enlightened by Google Translate, which insists that “hen” in Swedish is “hen” in English. What is the “Swedish hen”?

  39. I was curious as well. I found wiki useful:

    Hen in Swedish is a neutral gender word:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_(pronoun) Hen (pronoun) –
    “Hen (Swedish: [?h?n?] (About this soundlisten)) is a gender-neutral personal pronoun in Swedish intended as an alternative to the gender-specific hon (“she”) and han (“he”). ”

    As it is a Swedish word, I’m not sure it works in another language. Maybe Liaden’s need to find a word in their own lexicon that works for them.

  40. Sometimes it seems as if Liadens use base-12 and that is reflected in how they group time units in everyday life. Other times, they use base-10. Does Liaden culture use base-12 for its number system? Is that similar to the way English speakers will sometimes speak of dozens or scores or is that detail that gets dropped in writing every so often. Is there some other system at play?

    I offer these excerpts from Trader’ Leap:
    “She was scheduled to meet with Lina in ten minutes for another lesson.”
    “twelve minutes of sleep on the deepest levels, saving only a very small portion”
    “Millsapport, … as it had for dozens and dozens of years”

    It’s been an ongoing minor puzzle over many books.

  41. I think this is a non-issue. If you have an appointment in five minutes, say, do you automatically change it to twelve? No? If you have an appointment in ten minutes, do you automatically change it to twelve? I mean, I don’t see where there’s any problem at all with appointment times, even given a clock marked in twelves. You’d still have all the marks from one minute through twelve, so having an appointment in ten minutes is perfectly possible.

    I’m sorry it’s been baffling you, but honestly, I don’t see any problem or inconsistency.

  42. I looked it up, too — I should have said. It’s nice that the word exists, but the word is, let us be clear “hen.” In English, a “hen” is a female chicken, and that’s what everyone will immediately think of upon seeing “hen” used in a sentence written in English, and will thereby be immediately thrown out of the story by wondering how the hell that bird got in here.

  44. Shan says about the Millsap Healers Hall, “Priscilla, on the other hand, would have had the eyebrows of the entire Hall arcing into hairlines before they were admitted to the Hall.” Is he speaking from experience, and could there be a story in this?

  45. Two things: Why is there no AudioBook of _Trader’s Leap_? And two, we need more Archer’s Beach books!!!

    Harvey

  46. There is no audiobook because, uh, the publisher hasn’t told us why. The publisher holds the rights to audiobook editions, so this is not the fault of the authors. I would LOVE there to be an audiobook, or at least a reaons I could give people for why there isn’t one so they’ll, yanno, get off my back.

    No more Archers Beach books, sorry. They didn’t do well enough for Baen to commit to another. I’m working on an Archers Beach something — probably a novella. I know when I’m done. And when I am done, Pinbeam Books (the Lee and Miller indie arm) will publish it.

  48. Oh My I just re-read “Fortune’s Favors ” — The Luck is the same Luck in Trader’s Leap and the Healer at the end is Healer Dyoli in Trader’s leap. I had thought the names familiar, but in “Fortune’s Favors” the Luck is name Mar Tyn eys’Ornstahl so I didn’t connect. I realize now that the extension of his name relates to the guild he was associated with.

  49. Many thanks for naming Tocohl. I LOVE Hellspark, and just went ahead and ordered it for my Kindle, though I have the paperback on my bookshelf, and have read it multiple times (along with Uhura’s Song, also by Kagan). Also Amazon directed me to a collection of her other writings, which I ordered immediately. I think I wrote my first ever fan letter to her, and she responded with two autographed stickers which I was able to put into the paperback books. So precious.

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