There is the general spoiler page for general questions.
I’m making this set of pages for more specific questions.
The rule is: do not ask or comment about a book until it has been at least a month in issue. I think that will make everybody happy re spoilers.
Was doing a particularly mean Sudoku the other day …found myself wishing I had an Atevi around to help .
OK, this really isn’t a question… I just felt a need to say I greatly enjoyed reading Deceiver, which I finished late last night, and that I’m now itching to get my hands and eyes on #12!!!
Thank you thank you thank you CJ for writing these books!
Any words on when it might arrive in shops? April/May 2011?
Maybe sooner. They’re doing the cover now. This is usually 6 months before release, but that’s no absolute guide.
Thanks!
I’m holding my thumbs… 😀
@Busifer….how did you get Deceiver? I have it on order at Barnes and Noble….. release date may 4……which is approaching! 😆
Books from DAW usually ships about a week or two earlier in Sweden – don’t ask me why because I have no idea. My pre-ordered copy arrived at the shop on Monday but I wasn’t able to pick it up until late on Tuesday…
@Busifer – now I’m jealous! Or is it envious? Either way, I’m twitching to get mine. It’s a real pity sometimes that I read so fast, because it makes the wait between books that much longer!
CJ, you are officially forbidden to get old.
Lol! I’m trying.
Hey, I moved a few hundred pounds of basalt rock yesterday.
Email from B&N on Friday that Deceiver is packed and ready to ship. I can start tracking on Monday.
IT’S COMING!!! 🙂 😀 😆
OK, so I wonder – as a certified map
idiotgeek I just HAVE to! – if there ever will be some kind of high-resolution map of the atevi planet available, somewhere somehow sometime?Hmm. The abilities of computers. What would be interesting would be to use the model to show the peculiar characteristic of atevi ‘borders’. Hit the capital of one clan or province, and the color lights up clear to the far side of River “x”. Hit the neighboring capital, and you get the other color clear across what humans would consider a boundary, to the other side of the river. which is the reason the maps I’ve done for the books tend to use overlapping circles—but in fact it’s more complicated than that, following geographic features like valleys and rivers, going around mountains, etc, for historic reasons. I view that there’s some ‘new’ land probably along an oceanic ridge clear to the far side of the planet, and the Southern Isle below the Marid is about as large as Mospheira, which is about half the size of Australia, as I view it. Geologically speaking, the Continent is assembled out of at least 3 big pieces, former independent landmasses having rammed together from the south and east, hence the modest mountain range separating the Marid from the rest of the continent, and the really impressive range separating the East from the rest of the continent. There is no really convenient land off the East coast to encourage much beyond coast-hugging fishermen, but there is off the Marid coast, and of course there was Mospheira and Crescent Island before the humans landed, off the west.
So, yes, I have sort of an idea of geologic history as well as political history, and if I were more adept with computers I might manage such a map. 😉
I find maps make it easier to understand what’s going on, both politically and historically and economically… and as pure story, and while reading Deceiver I really longed for one. A no-nonsense printable map would do.
But of course I understand you have other priorities.
I would pay for it, though. As perhaps others would, too.
Book collateral? 😉
I would love a map and would be willing to pay for it. Is there a map maker you would trust to work from your notes? 😉
Don’t know of any. I’m a fair artist but a lousy graphics person and Jane is up to her ears trying to get her own work out. Maybe when things settle a bit.
P.S. Do you want to set a date we can start discussing Deceiver? I was thinking June 1 which would pretty much cover all releases. I don’t feel it is quite fair for those of us who received it early to start discussing early. 😉
June 1 sounds good.
Considering all the recent food discussions I can quite see where you came up with Atevi alkaloid preferences and Bren’s continual concerns with poison.
So, CJ, I was just wondering if little Cajeri is ever going to grow taller than Bren. I mean he’s been 6’2″ or so for what 3-4 books now?
I really, really, want to do a reread through the Foreigner series before reading Deceiver, but I have become addicted to my eReaders – iPhone, Kindle DX, and my newest toy that I’m typing on right now, iPad. I’d love to re-buy them all in any electronic format but have not been able to find many of them in electronic format. Am I just missing where they might be or are they truly not available?
THis blog is great! And I have a question that is really, really bugging me, map freak that I am. The map of the west coast in “Inheritor”, showing Mogari Nai and the town of Dalaigi, bears no resemblance whatever to the map of the west coast in “Conspirator”. Dalaigi is in a different place. There are still two bays, but they have different names and shapes. Geigi’s estate in “Inheritor” is stated as being on Onondisi (sp?) Bay with a view of the famous cliffs; Geigi’s estate in “Conspirator” is Kajiminda, on a different bay near Bren’s estate of Najida. All the nearby towns are different. It’s like a parallel universe having a different coastline — did Phoenix come back to an alternate atevi world? Or is the scale so vastly different that Mogari-Nai is really north up the coast a bit? And where is Dalaigi, really?
Short answer…this is why I now use a notebook, and have people online I can ask. 😉
But! Let us say that when you use the + button on the map, the more precise local names appear, and when you use the – key the broader names appear. Geigi’s bay is Onondisi; Bren is on Najida Bay, and Mogari-Nai is on another bay further north—it’s a ragged coastline. Dalaigi and Separti are both townships, but I confess one must be named for the district.
Sigh.
See, now I’ll have you to ask the next time I work out a map!
Oh, please let me help with maps! I love them, especially when characters are wandering about the countryside — really need to have a picture in my head of where they are at all times. Is there an online copy of your maps I could play with? Fun, fun, fun!
I’ll be excited to see what you come up with, Bearmum!
Ragi-at-heart has done one for Cyteen. (Alliance Union thread). When doing atevi maps you need more concentric and overlapping circles than borders, which they don’t have in the sense we do. Spheres of influence. There are maps in many books, and I believe they include all the ones I have in notebooks. Draw away!
Here if you wanted to look at it.
SPOILERS (allowed now, after June 1? if not please delete!)
Loved Deceiver, and this whole story arc, but what a cliffhanger! Hard to wait for the next installment…
You’ve really opened up a much wider storyscape, with the impact of politics on ordinary people, and adding the view from the provinces to Bren’s initial fairly limited central-Shejidan & higher-political-echelons view. This has a lot of potential, I think.
And it’s starting to bring some of the still-hanging issues from Deliverer back into the story. With the potential link to the East Ilisidi may start the re-cementing of that manchi without even having time to spend at Malguri herself.
I really loved seeing Cajeiri develop, he’s growing up so fast! And seeing the youngsters start to become an aishid, growing and developing in themselves and in their team-roles, is very interesting.
Barb’s heedlessnes and Toby becoming more of a real person makes for an interesting addition to the mix as well.
The politics became so intriguing I reread Conspirator again when I finished Deceiver, and tried extra hard to keep track of who-what-where. There are such a lot of names, I was glad of the Excerpt from Bren Cameron’s notes at the end of Conspirator.
I know we shouldn’t ask or speculate here on how things will go, as it’s confusing when you’re way ahead of us in your writing, but this is just a small background-info question.
I noticed a discrepancy between the schematic family tree of Saigimi and the text in the paragraph ‘A brief history of the Marid Rebellions’: which is correct?
Is Cosadi a son of Sarini & Diereso (left out of the tree)? and the children of Tori have the opposite gender in the tree and the text.
SPOILERS!
Yes, cliffhanger! AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaahhhhhhh! I’m chewing my nails trying to figure out how to get Bren and aishid out of the Marid, though you can leave Barb there (I don’t care how content Toby is with her). Though I think it’s funny to consider Bren might add Machigi to his collection of atevi converts.
And enter a sib for Cajeiri? The whole horizon just opened up; hope you don’t mind writing another 21 or so of these! Some huge, but felicitous, number anyway…
I got the impression that Barb might be realising that being a lord/lady on the mainland isn’t always pleasant. That she really doesn’t have any chance at a place among Bren and his aishid, and they cannot be taken separately anymore. And that she might finally be letting go of the idea that she could go after him and gain something for herself by that. This trouble she’s gotten herself into might end up defusing that landmine in Bren’s relations with Toby, especially if she’ll have to swallow that her disposition is not a primary concern in resolving this very difficult situation.
I’m really wondering what is going on in the heads/feelings of Lucaso and Vejico, myself; and if he’s going to follow Bren’s orders and go to Geigi (indicating he might be salvagable), or if he’s going to try to follow his sister instead.
She’s been dazzled by Bren’s visit to Mospheira, where he would roll in with a lot of money and a ‘let’s go somewhere nice’ approach. That was great, for her. She would NOT understand when he would get info that would send him straight into business mode, but she was impressed by his connections with the State Department. Then he stopped being so much fun.
This is the first time she’s really seen him in fully-business-atevi-side mode, and Tano, the most gentle and certainly the most polite and gentlemanly of Bren’s aishid, delivered her a serious wakeup call.
Yes, Cajeiri is growing up before our eyes. Dare we hope the series goes long enough for us to see Cajeiri-aiji? As he has had more human contact than any Ateva since the Landing, that should be a very interesting reign. Of course, given Atevi longevity that could be a long time in the future and Bren would be an old, old man. (Or something drastic happens to Tabeni, but not soon as Cajeiri is not yet ready.)
The cliff-hanger isn’t (quite) as bad as I had feared as Bren went south and the pages remaining dwindled. Still, he is going to have to pull several rabbits (or Atevi equivalent) out of his hat to get out of this.
I know when I got to the end I had to check to make sure I did not have faulty copy and it had missed out the last chapter 😉