On Books 8: A reading order for the Liaden novels

Elements of the Chanur series (see previous post) have stuck with me in my search for books I can read for fun in spite of having a full-time job that often leaves me low on energy. I find space opera relaxing; especially space opera about families, or space merchants who treat their crew like family and are kind and welcoming to strangers in need; about culture clashes, gracefully resolved; where it’s not always certain who the villain is, or that there is one, but when one is identified, they can be brought to justice.

To anyone else looking for a similar reading experience, I recommend the Liaden series by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. It’s one of the Geek’s favorite series, and I have just read all of it in the space of about two months, except for the one book that just came out, and most of the short stories, which are kind of hard to find. Anyway. It’s space opera about merchant families from a variety of human cultures (sadly, not as many aliens this time, though there is a friendly empire of giant turtles and some psychic koalas). For a pulpy space opera series, it's got surprisingly deep messages about family, relationships, and responsibility. And economics. All the protagonist factions are based in a philosophy of peaceful sustainability—the goal of business is not to please shareholders, but to train the next generation to keep things running peacefully. So it’s easy to pick out the antagonists, who are usually abusive relatives or power-hungry secret agencies. [Updated 2022/12/20] Or unscrupulous businesspeople trying to turn commerce into capitalism.
 

The Geek and I have been working out the order that makes most sense to read the novels in. Here's what we've got right now.

• Balance of Trade: Teenage Terran trader Jethri Gobelyn leaves the family ship run by his unpleasant mother, becomes the apprentice of a Liaden master trader, and learns how to be Liaden while dealing with prejudice from both sides.
• Trade Secret: Jethri sets out to find stolen property and ends up discovering his father's legacy.
• Fair Trade: Jethri is put in charge of his own trade ship, and gets involved in the politics of using his father's work to protect interstellar trade in the face of encroaching space dust and would-be capitalism. For the purposes of this reading order, this book introduces the psychic koalas. [updated 2022/12/20]
  

Any further Jethri books will go here; after them is a gap of about three hundred years.

• Local Custom: This is the beginning of the main series about Korval, a family of Liaden aristocrats who specialize in piloting. Terran linguistics professor Anne Davis is awkwardly reunited with the father of her son, who turns out to be a Korval, and must figure out how and whether she fits into the family.
• Scout's Progress: Liaden math professor Aelliana Caylon escapes an abusive family situation with help from Daav yos'Phelium, an ace pilot who just happens to be the new leader of Korval.
• Mouse and Dragon: Daav and Aelliana get married and have space courier adventures. Not a lot happens in this one, but it's sweet and peaceful and it sets up some important characters for later (including the psychic koalas; this is the first book in publication order that includes them). Major character death at the end when everything suddenly goes pear-shaped.
• Conflict of Honors: Twenty-ish years later, Anne's son Shan is the captain of a Korval trade ship. He hires exiled psychic priestess Priscilla and helps her get her self-confidence back.
• Agent of Change: Daav and Aelliana's son Val Con is a spy for a shadowy Liaden government agency, the Department of the Interior. After Terran mercenary Miri Robertson refuses to kill him, he seriously rethinks his life and starts working with her against the Department. (The giant turtles first appear in this one, and there's a short story about how Val Con met them.)

Summaries after this point contain spoilers for previous books. Everything has started to happen all at once.

• Carpe Diem: Val Con and Miri hide out on a pre-spaceflight planet and begin to make a life there. The Department, and the turtles, hunt for them.
• Plan B: The Department begins implementing the final stages of its plot to destroy Korval. Korval responds by evacuating their home planet and scattering across the galaxy.
• I Dare: Shan and Val Con's cousin Pat Rin refuses an offer from the Department to become Korval's puppet leader, and starts building a new base of operations on the otherwise lawless planet Surebleak. Val Con and Miri come to the aid of Miri's Liaden relatives, whose planet is under attack by the pirate armies of the Yxtrang. Korval regroups and strikes back at the Department.
• Fledgeling: While living undercover on the planet Delgado, Daav married a scholar and had a daughter, Theo Waitley. Now a teenager, she follows her mother offworld on a research trip and discovers that she is qualified for pilot training. This and the next book are a flashback setting up the circumstances of Theo's arrival on Liad at the end of I Dare.
• Saltation: Theo trains as a pilot and gets her first job as a space merchant. Then things get complicated--complicated enough for her to take her father's old advice and ask for help from Korval.
• Ghost Ship: Exiled from Liad for defending it from the Department of the Interior, Korval relocates to Pat Rin's base on a partially cleaned-up Surebleak. Theo takes a merchant contract that leads her into the path of Bechimo, an ancient sapient trade ship that has decided she's its captain.
• Dragon Ship: Korval settles in on Surebleak and learns to deal with both local dissidents and the remnants of the Department who have followed them there. Theo and Bechimo get to know each other and start assembling a crew.
• Necessity's Child: The events of this book overlap with Dragon Ship. Syl Vor, son of Shan's sister Nova, deals with the trauma of Plan B and becomes acquainted with both the people of Surebleak and a nomadic underclass known as the kompani. A former Department agent is rescued by the kompani and gradually regains his sense of self. Note: The kompani appear to be based on Romani culture. I cannot make a judgment call on whether the representation is good.
  
• Dragon in Exile: The Department regroups. Korval forms an alliance with the kompani to try to rehabilitate a few more Department agents to use as weapons against the Department, .
• Alliance of Equals: Shan's daughter Padi deals with the trauma of Plan B and the emergence of her own psychic abilities while working as her father's apprentice.

Let's take a deep breath and step back...oh, about two thousand years, to when the ancestors of all these people we know and love lived in a different universe, at perpetual war with a transhuman enemy intent on destroying all organic life. These next two books don't work very well on their own, but they will clear up every single loose end in the history of Korval, including the cliffhanger ending of Dragon Ship, and prepare you for the introduction of two characters in The Gathering Edge.

• Crystal Soldier: Clone soldier Jela rescues a sapient tree from a dying planet, and teams up with ex-spy and smuggler Cantra yos'Phelium to find a way for humanity to defend itself.
• Crystal Dragon: Joined by the dramliz, a group of psychic reality warpers who have defected from the Enemy, Cantra, Jela, and the tree set out to infiltrate a university planet and steal the equations that might save everyone. Warning: This book begins with detailed descriptions of how the Enemy creates and trains dramliz, including rape and torture scenes. This is the darkest the series has ever gotten, and I sincerely hope the Enemy doesn't somehow escape the old universe and bring that awfulness into my cozy family space opera.
  

And on that sunny note (not entirely facetious--Crystal Dragon has a happy ending), let's get back to the main story.

• The Gathering Edge: Theo and her crew take on refugees from the old universe who have arrived centuries behind schedule, and continue to deal with the fallout of Korval's exile.
  

Update 2020/11/12

If you don't yet have a spreadsheet of character names and relationships, now is the time to create one, because the plotline juggling is about to get a lot more intense. 

• Neogenesis: Basically all the stories in this one are about personhood, starring Bechimo, an ancient homicidal space station AI, a couple of new AIs and the secret organization that created them, some ex-Department operatives, and the psychic ghost of Aelliana.
• Accepting the Lance: The rehabilitated Department operatives set out to take down the Department once and for all. The Department plans its own revenge, which includes more ancient AIs and an extremely 2016 attack on Surebleak's developing democracy. Meanwhile, Bechimo and Clan Korval have to prove to the Terran trade authority that they're not a threat to the rest of the galaxy, and the kompani are offered a chance to return to their people's generation ship. 
• Trader's Leap: Shan's daughter Padi learns how to be a trader and how to make her psychic powers helpful. Meanwhile, Shan and Priscilla seek out new trade routes and settle an old debt with the last of the ancient dramliz. [Updated 2022/12/20]
  

I'll keep updating this as more books come out. Until then, enjoy.