Liaden Universe/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Ho Yay: given how Er Thom and Daav talk to each other, it's certainly implied to those with dirty minds.
    • Liaden culture seems to find nothing wrong with homosexual relationships. In the short story This House, a male Healer is asked to help the woman who is his male former lover's new lover and it is not implied that there was anything unusual or taboo about the previous male/male relationship.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Of anyone in the series, this seems to apply most to Uncle, one of the two (known) oldest human beings in the Liaden Universe. He and Dulsey outlived his original universe, and he has operated mostly behind the scenes for hundreds of years since, relying on his trove of Lost Technology to keep himself and Dulsey alive (and out of the hands of his enemies). Brilliant, devious, charismatic, and charming, he steps out of the shadows only rarely, but has emerged into the light more frequently in the last few Liaden novels.
  • Stoic Woobie: Many, many of them, given that most books and stories in the Liaden series tend to revolve around the rehabilitation of emotionally-damaged people whose culture frowns on any overt displays of vulnerability. Though it is worth noting that these characters can really only be called woobies at the beginning of their arcs; most of them quite get over it under the care of those who come to their rescue. Just a few examples:
    • Priscilla Mendoza
    • Aelianna Caylon
    • Ren Zel dea'Judan
    • Val Con yos'Phelium and Miri Roberts (He's an ex-First-In Scout Commander who has had the Department of the Interior walk through his head in hobnailed boots. She's an ex-merc who survived a planet blowing up around her and a nasty drug habit. Together, They Fight Crime!)
    • Nelirikk Explorer (you will believe a six-foot plus tattooed supersoldier can be a woobie) and Hazenthull Explorer. (Diglon Rifle might also qualify, but tended to seem a bit too wooden to be a woobie.)