Spoilery Steerswoman Thoughts

[alias_sqbr]

No really spoilers tuuurrrn baaacckkk nowwwwwww

So first the plots she keeps repeating:
A group who seem alien and other and threatening become people as you get to know them. In book 1 it was the wizards (they didn't become very sympathetic but they became less alien) In book 2 it was the Outskirters, and then the Face People. In book 3 it was the demons. In book 4 it was less of a thing, but to some extent it was the regular Inner Land townsfolk. In book 5 I'm thinking crew, and in book 6 ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCES :D :D (A girl can dream)

And I like this kind of plot a lot, but it's a teeny bit repetitive.

In every book a major sympathetic dude is Secretly Up To Something, probably wizard related. In book 1, Will was a wizard (sort of). In book 2 Fletcher worked for the wizards (I was torn between "secretly a wizard minion or doomed to be fridged?", turned out it was both). In book 3 Janus was on a genocidal rampage and probably ran off to join the wizards in the end. In book 4 Will was *gasp* WORKING FOR A WIZARD ALL ALONG OMG.

I feel like Rosemary Kirstein has some unresolved issues with male scientists. Which is ok because so do I :)

Now what we know. They are a colony on an alien planet which is naturaly uninhabitable and needs to be terrformed using radiation beams from satellites and the created ecosystem of redgrass and goats. The common people have no idea where they came from. The "wizards" are descendents of the "crew". They have advanced technology which they use to help the colony expand. They do not share that tech with the common people, who they see as beneath them. The guidestars and other tech have AI which the crew dismiss as non sentient. The local aliens are sentient but lack advanced tech. The colony is maybe 1500 years old.

Slado saw something in the stars which made him try and bring the whole system down.

Given the way the "crew" see themselves as other, and how ignorant the commoners are of their origins, maybe the common people are descended from embryos that the crew incubated, or defrosted colonists with amnesia. Presumably the wizards were supposed to treat the common folk better but became corrupted with power. And to begin with, there were only Outskirters, because there were only Outskirts (thus the First People). The Outskirter poet founder was Crew, since he knew about the guidestar. Was he in love with the AI running it or a woman related to it? The woman the AI was based on?? They don't seem like that kind of AI.

I think Slado saw approaching ships. That would also make the other wizard want to be nicer: convince the populace that the wizards were their friends. Because the visitors will have more tech than the crew, and will not like what the crew are doing. What is Slado's plan? Wipe out the colony entirely? Why?

Where do the crew live? It's a really obvious question and noone's asked it. They're this whole other civilisation hidden in the same system, probably the same planet. The guidestars seem to be the only space tech, and noone lives there, I doubt there's space stations. On the other side of the mountains? In book 3 and 4 it felt like the gaps about crew/wizards/magic Will and Fletcher left unexplained were contrived as much for plot reasons as because they had any reason to be ignorant or hide the truth, it was annoying.

Comments

[skygiants]

I actually really like how some of the plot twists repeat, because of the way Rowan reacts to them -- you can kind of gauge her growth through them. Like, she's able to forgive a betrayal from Will in book four that she ABSOLUTELY would not have been able to forgive in book one; that's pretty cool!

[pedanther]

My interpretation of the Outskirter poet is that his ghost lady was one of the Crew, whose duty took her on a different path than his: he down to the planet to become one of the First People, she to stay up among the stars to, I guess, help keep things running on the colony ship or whatever it was until space had been made for the rest of the people to live in; a ghost in the sense that he had nothing left of her except her voice, coming down from the sky.

"Approaching ships" is my leading theory for what Slado saw, too. I have a backup hypothesis, but I haven't been able to get it to work out properly yet.

Volume six has been reported to have the working title "The City in the Crags", which may or may not be an answer to the question of where the crew live.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, that's true. I think if it was done slightly differently it would have felt more like artistic symettry to me, but I do still like it. Maybe the books just need something more as well, hmm.

[alias_sqbr]

1) That definitely makes sense 2) Yeah if it 's something else I'll be very surprised! 3) Oooh