Space Opera Fans discussion

The (rest of June and) July 2024 Limited Pick is Master Walk by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Please use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at any time.

Note: this is a novella(?) and is also included in the anthology Double Vision.

Official description:
Meet William Drew Faro the 4th -- a human from Khareton's TriGrace Academy -- and Trikura Dai -- a rock-chewing space-faring Chenri who is definitely not of this world! Now imagine a star-spanning civilization where information is bought, sold, and bartered, where scary dimensional folds allow hyperlfight between stars, and where a young terran student information broker has been given the OK to "go farshloggin" -- to take up the path that will permit him "walk Osara" with the Chenri, the canniest information brokers of them all. He's willing. He faces pirates, politics, police, and plots. All he has to do is survive... In Master Walk, award-winning science fiction authors Sharon Lee and Steve Miller bring a new YA universe to life. Introducing The Advocacy, a rough-and-tumble civilization that has a mix of sentient races and a lot to learn!

This story is not part of the Liaden Universe however I caught two things that I think were mentioned in passing in one or another of the LU stories. I’ll see if I can verify them. The two things were the TriGrace Academy (think that’s in a story in a chapbook or constellation) and the aequitas (not sure whether that was a Shan story or a Jethri story).

Trigrace Academy was mentioned in the short story Roving Gambler which is in A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 3

Found aequitas too, in Trader's Leap. Shan brings a set of them to his meeting with Denobli.

I just finished Master Walk. I liked the characters and liked the story overall.

I remember the aequitas being mentioned in Trader's Leap; in Master Walk, we actually get a lesson on how they work. In this story our main characters, one of which is non-human, have apparently gone walkabout in the galaxy with the end goal of becoming Masters of Information; there are complications.

I wonder if Lee and Miller ever wrote anything else with these characters. Some of the bad-guy motives for what happened aren't entirely clear to me.

I don’t recall any other stories in that universe. Not sure whether the authors couldn’t find a publisher or the characters stopped speaking to them.