Tokoro’s Reviews > Ice Crown > Status Update

Well, an open ending and denouement. But shall we trust what Imfry will do with his admission and now duty? Is this a happy ending, or suggestive of something else going on? With this ending, it actually makes the book/story seem like just another chronicle of planets as studied by The Service, that could go on.

More interesting description of the installation's influence, just in a changed way now. I like these passages set in caves and secret tunnels; reminds me of Earthsea's second volume in Tombs of Atuan, very atmospheric with an intense sense of place. Some classic fantasy tropes evident here.

Interesting that the installation affects memory and a sense of orienting awareness, too. Are Imfry and the princess suffering similar or different effects? Questions still to be answered and discovered by Roane.

Ah, convergences. She speaks of her off-planet Service's non-interference interloping research. I'm sure this is a plot convenience, but the way it's done or spoken about is near. Interesting that I'm reading this concept of non- interference search for old planet-controlling tech when I'm reading Star Trek and a discussion about the Confederation's Prime Directive for starship captains to comply to in missions.

"People did have odd tastes, as who should know better than she, who had been exposed to a variety of worlds and customs---but to find a man dealt unreservedly with direhounds!
...
'Ill luck can come from too early thanksgiving.' She had never been superstitious before, but now, as uneasy as she was inwardly, she could understand primitive natives who feared to invoke wrong powers, tempt retaliation from ill luck."

Ok interesting world-building developments with Roane's vision-dream and further ponderings of the Psychocrat installation they found regarding it's use and effect on worlds and cultures. We finally are getting to learn more about the workings of the context for their party's search and mission in this technology.

Hmm, influence being had and held by 3 sources, consecutively: Reddick's Mind-globe, the Ice Crown, and the machines experimenting on Clio and keeping them primitive. Quotes to come.

"'I assure you...what has passed since then is born of the Crown alone.To rule and to reign is very different from living as an heiress to such glories. I think we shall find the Princess is no longer as you have always known her.'

Roane comparing her adventures on the planet with the princess to the dream-like state drugs give to experience alternate lives, as if virtual reality. Lord Imbert's hesitations and restrictions and news of the King for protection seem sketchy and ill-influenced. Her mental comparison of the training's info of Revenue to the princess's more detailed + superior.

'Ill luck is to real a thing to most kings and lords.'

More references which remind me of Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and his tributes to Gondor ancestors; and the customs and favors along the stops of the journey for the Hobbits and Fellowship. I like these literary elements included.

" 'I see this is a vow bridge...We travel with clean hands and no malice at heart....But it is a good omen that we ride by one Niklas' favor!'

Customs.

"'Of what use is any ruler to her people unless she understands their ways? Oh, I know that there is in some countries the odd belief that there is no common meeting point between king and subject. But that is not so with my House and never has been.'

'For the good of him who built the way, for the good of those who walk the way, for the good of the journey, and the good, surely, of its final ending.'"