Jan 2023 READER From Every Storm by Lee and Miller

[Teresa, Plan B is in Effect]

The January 2023 Reader Pick is From Every Storm: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 35 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Please use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at any time.

Official description:
A chapbook compilation of three Liaden Universe® stories, one of them never before published. The storms of the title spring not so much from the desert or the deep blue sea but from the minds and hearts of humanity, where greed wars with truth and justice, and where sometimes the supposed end of storm is a mere hurricane eye portending greater potential for damage ahead.

First up is ″Standing Orders,″ a finalist for 2022’s WSFA’s Small Press Award for Short Fiction, originally published in Derelict, a 2021 ZNB anthology. What happens at the end of a war that no one really won, where victory came at the price of acting more like the enemy than the High Command ever should?

Next is the previously unissued ″Songs of the Fathers″ a story dealing with Shan yos’Galan’s sometime trade partner Lomar Fasholt and her family as they struggle to follow her Mother’s religion as it morphs from loving to acquisitive, from flexible to aggressively rule-bound. Lomar’s a good mother and wife but her self-exiled family’s suffered greatly through this storm of changes. Will they find hope amidst the tumult?

Finally, there’s ″From Every Storm a Rainbow,″ the 2021 holiday story from Baen, wherein Sinit Caylon comes face to face with the perfidy of her absent brother while the accountant’s guild is trying to help Clan Mizel come about after years of of her mother’s abdication of responsibilities to Ran Eld. Sinit thinks the storm must be about over until it become obvious that between them her mother and brother may have fatally endangered the clan’s brightest future.

[Teresa, Plan B is in Effect]

I have read this book and will discuss the stories in January. While this chapbook is intended for readers already familiar with the Liaden Universe, I think those who haven’t read any of the other books would still enjoy the stories.

[Audrey]

I just finished. Great way to end 2022! I am reminded yet again why I enjoy Lee and Miller's books so much. I kept thinking that I remembered the name Lomar Fasholt from somewhere ("Songs of the Fathers") and was reminded in the afterword that she appeared in "Conflict of Honors". I especially liked "From Every Storm a Rainbow."

[Teresa, Plan B is in Effect]

First story is set right after the ancient war against the machine intelligences. Very little has been mentioned directly about that war in the other books in the Liaden Universe. Going by memory, there’s a short story where Jeeves was built, that mentioned that Jeeves had originally been a machine intelligence in that war, plus a few bits such as the Dragon’s Tooth (Plan B I think) and when Daav was injured so badly. I think this first story gives more info about that war than the rest put together, but it’s entirely possible that I’ve forgotten something.

Second is set around the time when Korval was exiled from Liad but is about a minor character from a previous book, one who had interacted with both Er Thom and Shan before, from a culture that was extremely matriarchal.

The third story was the only one I’d read previously. It was posted on Baen website a year or two ago. This is one I’ll likely reread after each time I reread Mouse and Dragon. It shows what happened to Sinit and her clan after the events of Mouse and Dragon.

[Teresa, Plan B is in Effect]

Oh, for those with limited budgets: that third story is still up on Baen here:
https://www.baen.com/every_storm_a_ra...

[Sarah]

I enjoyed all three stories, but particularly the one about Lomar Fasholt. I had wondered what had happened and whether she was able to escape the increasingly restrictive society of her home world.