Talk:Serpent's Reach

Majat Individuals?
Clarity, the colors aren't for individuals, they're for hives. Or am I remembering wrong? I always understood them to be Overgrown praying mantises living like ant colonies. Bo-Lingua 21:01, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Bo-Lingua, you are correct that the colors designated different hives. Each hive has its own "conciousness" centered around its queen, so in a sense each color/hive designates a separate "individual."  Viewed that way, Clarityfiend is right too, although I think that perhaps the word "individual" isn't really the best word to use in the context of a hive-mind species.  How about "four distinct hive-mind identities" or something along those lines instead?  Fairsing 02:14, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Confusion Beta Hydri II versus III
In the book as written, the blue Hive Queen came from the planet the heroine did. At the end, the heroine is on another world in the region. It is reasonable to presume that conflicting reports on the world of origin come from measures of where they were met, versus where they were born. -- Starshine — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:101:2004:4C02:0:0:0:102 (talk) 09:44, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
 * According to the XenBureau article at the beginning of Serpent’s Reach, the majat originally come from Alpha Hydri III (which is also where the heroine comes from), while the planet called Istra in the novel (where the heroine ends up) is Beta Hydri II. So those are two different stars, not just different planets. The Wikipedia article here says that “Angel With the Sword states that the Majat originated on Alpha Hydri II,” which doesn’t match either of the two planets referred to in Serpent’s Reach. --Elysdir (talk) 22:58, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

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Further chronology issue
The article currently says the events of the novel take place “518 years after first contact with the Majat.” But in Serpent’s Reach, Lian explicitly and repeatedly mentions that it’s been 700 years since he and the other original humans arrived, and that he’s 700 years old. (Pages 47–49 of the 1980 Daw paperback version.) (And the XenBureau entry on p. 5 indicates that the original humans were allowed in about 12 years after the disastrous first contact.) It’s certainly still reasonable to say that the later timeline is a retcon and that the dates given in Serpent’s Reach are incorrect, but if so, that’s not just a matter of one incorrect date in Serpent’s Reach; multiple references to time passing and character ages in the text must also be wrong. Presumably this would mean that Lian is about 550 years old instead of 700. --Elysdir (talk) 22:49, 7 October 2018 (UTC)