The Not a Book Club Club discussion

Please keep all discussion and speculation to the events of Part 1: Chapters 1-7

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Please do not discuss events from later sections. Referring back to events from a previous section/book is fine.

Mostly worldbuilding and siege planning in this part of the book. I enjoy the interplay between Cheris and Jedao. I have two major questions, so far:

What, exactly, did Cheris do so wrong in the first chapter? Her entire company is being 'doctrinated' and she would have been too but she gets picked for this new mission. Is all she did wrong cutting out that one group of soldiers from the formation, leading to their deaths?

What's up with the calendar stuff? I'm not expecting a full explanation of it. Its far future sci-fi, it doesn't need to be a realistic 'science'. But a little info on why its so important to weapons and control of space would be nice.

Geoff wrote: "What, exactly, did Cheris do so wrong in the first chapter?."

The opposition had introduced enough calendrical rot that her team's formation failed. Rather than lose and die she adjusted her team's formation to work with the calendrical rot. If she'd been properly devoted to the Hexarchate's calendar or less a mathematical genius, that shouldn't have been possible.

By having her team work with a heretical calendar, she essentially made them heretics.

The Hexarchate's technology is based around nodes like the Fortress of Scattered Needles which change the physics of space in a sphere around them light years in diameter, but only if the conscious minds within that sphere share a common set of beliefs and rituals.

It dooms the Hexarchate to endless war: to force its own subjects into an ideological purity, and to protect against encroaching people with different beliefs at the edge of the Hexarchate's sphere of influence.

Okay, she made them heretics, I can see how that would be bad, and require the redoctrination.

I still wonder about that whole sequence. I'm still not clear on why she went the heretical route especially with the repercussions she and the company faced afterwards. It has been several weeks since I finished but it seems to me that many in the company may not survive the redoctrination......or am I misremembering?

I don't think she did anything wrong. I think it was a setup, they knew she would go that route or at least hoped that she would so they could use her.

I'm still confused by the whole Calendar thing.

Basically I look at it like: calendars = math; math = religion; A certain type of math is considered holy (because apparently it gives one of the leaders immortality somehow, or something close to it?) and going against that is heresy.

None of it makes sense to me though. Lindsay's explanation of it doesn't make much sense either.

Like I get what she did "wrong" but I don't really get how the "science/math" works.

I'm still mostly enjoying it so far despite my confusion. I'm just trying not to dwell on those details.

Rob, I got all caught up in the Calendar/math too. Once I finally got beyond trying to figure out what they were doing and how and just took it as their faith and/or social structure I did much better.

Yeah. That's the approach I'm taking too. It simplifies things. Maybe too much, but so be it.