I’m giving the page a second section because page 1 was starting to behave oddly.
As always, wait at least 30 days from issue of the book before starting to discuss. And give our overseas friends some extra leeway: the distribution system doesn’t reach everywhere as fast!
want to see work on the next cover?
http://www.tolo.biz/2011/06/17/step-by-step-the-cover-for-intruder-by-cj-cherryh-from-daw-books/
that is fascinating … I have bookmarked the site. will be very interesting to see the cover in actuality ..
Very interesting to see how much work this illustrator puts into a cover. The composition looks excellent. Is that Tabini in the background, or the southern lord? Do we see Banichi, Jago, Algini or Tano anywere?
It would be interesting to see what the illustrator would make of the Kyo…
I’ve just realized there is a colour version of the illustration as well! Overall, I really like it. The composition is very good, and I like the vase (precious vases are so often mentioned in the books, though I don’t know whether this one has any particular significance). The ape-like creature is good, the dowager and the heir.
I do wish Bren’s bodyguard could be incorporated into the picture, rather than all those strange-looking atevi, and also that Machigi could perhaps look a little more atevi (slimmer face with higher cheek bones). He’s supposed to be quite good looking, according to previous books, but looks a bit brutish in the illustration.
It’s interesting also that this artist works on computer…many illustrators I know haven’t made that transition.
Oooh, i can’t wait for Intruder. Well, I guess I have to wait…so in the meantime, just finished my re-read from start to finish. How old is Ilisidi? and how long do normal atevi live? What will happen to Malguri if Ilisidi dies and Cajieri is still a child? It seems clear that the Easterners wouldn’t accept Tabini as a regent – he’s too identified as Ragi; Cajeiri has only been to Malguri once (although he’s met some of the area leaders) and won’t have the lifelong ties that Ilisidi does. Would the rest of the east even accept Cajeiri – does he need to spend more time there? Or is that a role for the next heir?
And when do the kyo show up?
@berylkit – “Regent” isn’t the right word, for something less than an aijinate, or so it seems to me. Easterners may not be happy, but I don’t think they’ll have much choice. Tabini is the only adult surviving descendant, unless Valasi had another child with a woman other than Tabini’s mother. That’s how inheritances work. Given that Cenedi will probably retire from his Guild when ‘Sidi-ma passes, he’s a likely (and acceptable to locals) steward — assuming natural death and not assassination, which he likely would be dead from also. Undoubtedly, many of ‘Sidi-ma’s folk will find new directions for their man’chiin when she goes, but I think a lot of them will stay. Nawari-ji and many of her “young men” will probably attach to Cajeiri’s fledgling household, having traveled and interacted with the boy at greater length, and seen him grow. And don’t forget how likely ‘Sidi-ma is to stick her thumb in the eye of the establishment and name Bren as steward of Malgrui — knowing how much he treasures the historicity of Malguri. Primitive accomodation and all.
I rather doubt that Cajeiri will be electable in the hasdrawd; his future sibling will probably be more so. But that’s a whole other debate.
I do see bequeathing Malguri (spelled correctly this time 😉 !) to Cajeiri as a crucial step in granting him the Lordship necessary to sit in the tashrid — and be electable or not electable by the hasdrawd as aiji. This will become the Malguri Tradition — “We are not aijiin, but should have been!” And like his “mani-ma”, even as not-aiji, he will wield tremendous power and influence. He’s very good at learning from example. Other inheritances that might come to him, via, for example, the Atageini will be much longer in coming. And perhaps instead diverted to relatives more in Uncle’s favor. That’s how I see it, anyway.
Just a place marker so that notify works for me.
It’s a bit scary how quickly Cajeiri decided another heir would be a rival and how he is scheming to remain the #1 child; maybe the relationship between Bren & Toby could be a guidepost to show him that siblings do not need to be rivals and can cooperate. With the age difference between Cajeiri and his sibling, they may always be rivals. We haven’t seen the atevi sibling relationships so far; perhaps cooperation is not be possible if both are aiji.
And although Cajeiri may be the parent/child relationship Bren experiences, I can’t believe his human side will if Cajeiri acts in a manner that harms the sibling.
Jane,
Such a well crafted comment, i truly appreciate someone that has the ability to turn a phrase as you obviously have.
I agree that despite Bren’s needing human companionship to some degree, his family and associates on the island have created an environment that isolated and alienated Bren. I know that i am deep in the Atevi world when i laugh at your comment about Barb still being alive shows the Atevi are more tolerant. I’m still chuckling.
I think i’m going to start reading some of your books while i wait for CJ’s next installment to come out. Your letter indicates that your writing skills are formidable to say the least. If your books are half as good as this comment i will thoroughly enjoy them.
thanks
Patrick
Whew! I worried about posting anything cuz I knew the topic had been pretty well quieted down, but it’s a potentially very interesting discussion. I thought it might help to look not at whether or not you like the characters, but what they’re actually doing within the story.
Something else to consider, we’re only seeing snapshots of their lives, and generally only when they’re being problems for (our darling) Bren.65……4 (Ah, ShuShu strikes again) And since no time is a good time for Bren to be distracted, it’s not completely their fault that they’re being a problem. Yeah, mom and Barb are annoying, but boy are they realistic!
Anyway, from that handful of clues, we assume certain things about them based on our own experiences with people, but in actual fact, how many of us would like to be judged only on a select handful of hours spent with a person we think we should understand but don’t really understand at all? I know I wouldn’t! 😀
Does this make Mom and Barb suddenly likable? Heck no. But do her credit, Barb has changed. She’s released her valley girl obsession with her looks and jewelry and let the wind and sun take their toll—to be with Toby. When she’s around Bren, old habits set in and we see her at her worst, but the implication is, she’s very different when it’s just her and Toby.
The thing I find interesting in her case is how old habits affect behavior. Not to pull an “and then I wrote” but I deal with this fairly extensively with the Rhomandi brothers in the Ring books. Sibs especially create a dynamic when they’re young that they often find very difficult to adjust to the adults they eventually become. (Yes, I come from a large family! And in some ways, I’ll always be the baby sister.)
In many ways, that’s happening with Barb. She has a dynamic she established—with Bren’s help, I might add—before Bren ever left the island. He has developed into a very different man from the one who took her nightclubbing on a regular basis, because (forgive me, Bren) it was a quick and easy way to get laid. She was a tension reliever for someone who simply had no real interest in developing close personal relationships. He was, and remains, dedicated to his job.
Even his relationship with Jago has a convenient distance to it. It’s…comfortable. His concern for her safety will never truly override his concern for what’s best for his job.
Back to Barb…she was invested in Bren. She obviously found a family in Bren’s that she wanted to be part of…remember, she’s the one who attended Mama in hospital. Once she’s in New-Bren’s vicinity, however, it’s like (from her VP) she’s around a pod-Bren. She reverts to the behaviors that worked before trying to reestablish anything remotely like the dynamic they had before, searching for a Bren she understands. When he doesn’t respond as she expects, she gets more frantic and just escalates the behavior.
And to do her credit, now that she’s experienced Bren in the Atevi realm, she’s actually changing. Not very fast, but she is learning. In Machigi’s realm, except for the one wrong move that gets her flattened, she actually does pretty well. And how many of us wouldn’t revert to a bit of an extreme expression of relief under the circumstances.
There’s a tendency to assume that all humans should know that which Bren has spent a lifetime internalizing when the entire political/sociological setup has precluded them from that knowledge and in fact engendered boogieman associations with the Atevi.
As for my books, I do hope you enjoy them. I think it’s fair to say that that which ties CJ and myself is not a ‘traditional’ Domestic Partnership (if there is such a thing), but a creative one. I’m the only one CJ will turn loose with her prose and vice versa.
She got me started writing because (a) of the bridging scenes I had to write for the Ivrel Graphic and (b) of the feedback I was giving her on her own books while they were in progress. She insists I said I wanted to write when we first met to discuss the graphic, but I think that’s a bit of editing on her part. Remember that sib thing? My sister wrote. I drew. My sister went into Biology, I went into Physics. That was the way of the world, and I never considered treading on sis-Lynn’s territory…until C.J. Cherryh suggested I try it! Now…I can’t imagine doing anything else! 😀
Standard HTML tags work in these blog-comments to make text bold or italic. To show how they go, I’ll write them first with curly-parentheses instead of the pointy smaller-than and bigger-than signs, and then do it again with the correct pointy signs. {b}bold{/b} and {i}italic{/i}, subsituting the right pointy parentheses, give bold and italic. Having spaces between the two related start-and-stop tags makes no difference, but don’t use spaces within the parentheses. As the letters are the initials for what you want to do to the text, they may be easier to remember than {em} and {/em} – now you only have to remember that a slash before the letter means ‘stop doing this’.
Maybe this should go somewhere else: CJ, please move or edit this comment if you have a better place for it.
Ever since I read Deceiver I’ve been wanting to say how much I loved the interlude when Bren, in the calm before the action escalates, sits at his desk and thinks about what he would like to do to improve the estate. It was so very recognizable, his temporary escape from the aggressive pressures all around, using a lull in the busy days to just half-dream, half-plan possible improvements to his surroundings, that would benefit the entire estate, even if he didn’t know whether they would ever be practical or affordable.
And now his beautiful window is broken, the front and rear entrance to the house and garden damaged; and Ilisidi has said that Bren’s house shall be restored, and made Tabini agree to that. That will probably mean a financial contribution from Ilisidi’s coffers, and maybe Tabini’s as well, creating more scope for Bren’s hoped-for addition – if they’re going to be working on the garden entrance anyway, why not add the extra rooms he’d planned on the garden side at the same time?
Considering the Tasigeini porcelains, the restoring likely includes the window, even though it was a weak point in the house defences. Bren’s house will have a lot more need to be defensible with the Marid so close and stirred up, so I’ve been thinking that they might enclose the restored leaded-glass window between bulletproof glass panes inside and out: that would protect the new window and create a better defensible situation.
I’ve also wondered about the leaded-glass picture window, that’s said to be unique: is this perhaps not a usual Atevi skill-variant (though plain leaded-glass panes are known, as far as I remember from Malguri)?
It may be something that dates to before the war of the landing, when there were friendly relations between the Gan and Edi and the humans, and perhaps a human artist had some input in its creation? If so, it might be a very symbolic sort of thing to re-create that human-atevi interaction, and get a human stained-glass-artist’s help in all goodwill to re-create that significant artistic symbol of positive interaction, in the house of the man who represents that whole idea.
Thinking about ways of improving or beautifying one’s surroundings is rather a favourite sort of daydream of mine, and that window and Bren’s plans for the estate really touched me.
Ah, Hanneke—I put these things in and wonder if anyone will appreciate them, but yes, Bren’s love of Najida, his ‘home’ apart from his constantly shifting Bujavid situation—is important to him. I love your suggestions about the window.
I can assure you Ilisidi is personally concerned in the damages to Najida, and has her own plans. ..
Oh yes, we appreciate! What I got out of the whole description of the window is that Atevi art in general is much more representational than photographic… much the way Chinese brush paintings use a few simple strokes that becomes a flying bird, rather than a traditional western painting that requires 4 colors, 12 different brushes, and 5 days to create a bird. The stained glass in Najida is more ‘accurate’ than a typical Atevi stylized tree, so it sort of strikes a chord in Bren’s human psyche.
The whole representational art thing got me thinking a while back and actually helped me come up with a new idea for a line of pottery vases. Now I just need to do one in Porcelain! Or maybe its just a more country-cousin atevi style, seeing as its out of boring old clay. lol!
We need a “like” button for comments! Totally agree about that scene…and all Bren’s “moments” with his estate. I’ve always thought that’s where his personal “centering” comes from. Sort of like us and our garden, tho he’d never be allowed to get his hands dirty, I think sometimes he’d like to. 😀
Bravo, Hanneke! You put it so aptly. And what a great idea, the window as a symbol.
Maybe Atevi will learn to like 😀 more human things than just pizza and Sundrink!
I’m still getting comments from the old page and came over here to say something about it and found the WONDERFUL link to the artist’s page which makes me very excited to know when Intruder is coming out! And I’m loving the art work!
And then I read all your comments and I get excited about the story all over again and really, really, really need to do a reread! Since I just finished another book maybe this is a good time to start!
Thank you all for your insights.
PS maybe I’ll upload a picture of my dog as an avatar just to contrast with all the cats, although I see Jcrow9 has her dog!
Except I can’t figure out how to do it!
I wish I could help, Sleo, except that my avatar comes from a different process. If you sign up for a gravatar first, THEN get a membership, it works, and I could blitz your membership and let you sign up again, but that would lose your comments. If you first got a gravatar, then uploaded your pix, then resigned up to Wave with a slightly different screen name, then it would work, and then I could blitz your ‘sleo’ account, assigning all posts to ‘sleo2’ which would work, but I think Captain Kirk figured out how to do it without going through all that!
OMG, it sounds like way too much trouble, grin. I guess I’ll make do with my little purple thingie! I did do that thing with gravatar when I first signed up here, but didn’t pay attention to the avatar issue.
Sleo, it’s been a while but if I recall correctly it’s not that difficult. Use the link in the left margin to ‘get an avatar’, and make sure you sign up with Gravator using the exact same E-mail address and password as you’ve used in this site. You upload an image and select it, signifying that it’s to be used in future when you’re logging in to a site on the basis of that E-mail address. The image you upload to Gravatar will take a few days to propagate over the internet, but in about two days it started showing up here when you make a comment. It recognises the loginname/password and address you use, and replaces the standard generated picture with the newly uploaded one.
If you want to change your avatar-image after that, just upload the new picture to your Gravatar account and mark it there as the one you want to use, and in a day or so the new image will start to show up.
To test if this is correct, I’ve just changed my Gravatar image from my present gray-white-and-cream Pippin to my previous little old gent, the black-and-white Julius. So if in a day or so that image appears, this works. I’ll change back in July, so if you read this comment at a later date the graywhite puss doesn’t mean it won’t work.
If you want to use different avatars on different sites it gets a bit more complicated. You can add more E-mail addresses to your Gravatar account, and select a different picture to go with each address; then you’ld have to use the appropriate E-mail address for registering with the other site to get the other picture.
When I try to sign up with Gravatar using my exact same email and password, they tell me the username is already in use.
Hmmn. Well, sleo, try making a new user name and see if you can get a gravatar for it. Try sLeo or some such, get your gravatar image, then join here, and I’ll see if I can walk your posts over to your new identity and image.
Will try both this and Hanneke’s solutions.
Can you use this email and password to log in on Gravatar, instead of trying to sign up? Maybe you already mada a Gravatar account a while back, but didn’t upload an image at that time? In that case you could log in with this mail and password and upload an image to that account now.
If that doesn’t work we’ll have to wait for Capt’n Kirk to re-post how he achieved this.
Hay, that’s fast! I’m seeing Julius instead of Pippin already! When I got the original Gravatar it took at least a day, that I remember. At least it’s immediately sure the simple method works.
@berylkit: yes, from the moment we started hearing his inner voice I was quite worried about what sort of person Cajeiri would grow into, as he was so very self-centred in the beginning.
But I guess that’s part of being a young child, and I very much like seeing him grow up and develop a wider view. Especially in this last book he has been maturing so very fast, and once his sense of the manchi-flows started to kick in it seems to have triggered a sort of landslide in his perceptions, views and goals.
Yes, I considered his immediate view of his sibling-to-be as a rival very worrying (he could tear the family and the whole Aishiditat apart, if that’s how he handles him/her), but I found it very reassuring that by the end of Betrayer he sees that the little brother or sister is not him/herself by definition a rival and a problem to him, but that the potential for trouble comes from the possible associations that will start to form around the second heir.
In this, I think Cajeiri’s association with the human children on board ship, as well as seeing a positive brother-bond between his idol Bren and Toby, and also the friendships/associations between Bren and Gin, and Bren and Jase, can give him more scope to build a good future bond with his sibling. He sees within his own aishid that the sibling-bond can be very strong and supportive, if the manchi lines up; but in the somewhat more flexible human examples he also sees that some difference in personalities, views, goals, and other ties does not mean that a good and strong sibling bond/friendship cannot exist.
This might prepare him to wish for, and work towards, building such a strong sibling-bond himself (with himself as the leader within that pair, of course {at least in his view, and considering the age-difference, that’s not unreasonable}); but also, to be prepared to grant his sibling some leeway, once that child becomes older and wishes to develop his/her own interests, which could mean the difference between the younger sibling having to rebel or being happy working in tandem, like Geigi and Ilisidi.
That too is a succesful partnership of two strong aijiin, with each respecting the other but with one clear leader; as it would have to be between Cajeiri and his sibling, for the good of the Aishiditat. And Bren had been the catalyst who made this association possible, and has stabilized Ilisidi’s path in these struggles always towards the good of the Aishiditat as a whole (her moral compass, she calls him).
It might well be that Tabini sees these examples surrounding the boy, and realizes that they would be a template for a much more stable and succesfull future for the Aishiditat than the power-struggle that surrounds him (and surrounded his predecessors); and that is one of the reasons he’s willing to have the boy remain where he can keep learning from them.
I really think Cajeiri is learning, and learning very fast, to become more responsible, and look at other people’s viewpoints. I see him learning to take care of his aishid, as a first step towards learning to care for the Aishiditat; i.e. in selecting a hiding place where they all three could take cover and communicating this, during the tense interview in his grandmother’s sitting room, instead of just diving for cover without regard to anyone else as he did on Geigi’s porch.
His learning to sense, respond to, and then try to direct the flows of manchi is both a watershed in his development, and an essential element of growing into an aiji. It was quite dramatic to see that starting to happen in Betrayer, and has made me much more confident that Cajeiri might end up as a very good aijiin indeed.
Still, there’s a great deal of developments that will have to be worked out right for it to come to that, not just the bond with his sibling, but also the building of manchi between the people and aijin of the provinces and Cajeiri, not least of which is the East. Ilisidi is at present the only link, and Tabini has been said not to be an acceptable heir for the lordship of Malguri (because he is too strongly identified with the west, and not having been fostered at Malguri isn’t felt as being part of the East as well). This probably means Cajeiri will have to spend more time in the East, so those lords can get to know him and get a feel for him.
He’s made a good impression on the Edi, and through them the Gan; he’s got a good start on a strongly supportive friendship with the young heir of Dur towards the north coast (I see him as a potential future Geigi-type role to Cajeiri); and he’s got uncle Tatiseigi for the link with the Padi valley central regions.
Now if Bren and Ilisidi can bring off their plans for Machigi and the Marid, and Cajeiri can make a good impression on Machigi, he’ll have a very good base to work from for almost the whole west of the Aishiditat, and a beginning of some more solid ties between East and West… and then I saw the new cover art, and the combination of Cajeiri, a new pet monkey with mischievous Eushu’s face, and a priceless vase… oh dear!
I created an avatar using sleo1 as my username. Do I now have to make a new account here?
Oh! No! There it is! Whoppee! I did it! All’s well that ends well, as they say, lol. The doggie is Frankie, bTW, my Silky Terrier. He’s so neurotic.