SPOILERS: Continuity Errors — A Challenge

I am actually a bit surprised that the people commenting on typos and other errata in the EARC haven't picked up on two major continuity errors. One of them has already been fixed; one of them hasn't . . . and won't be. The second one, which won't be fixed, was injected accidentally but I liked the scene so much that I decided I would do a little revisionist history and let it stand.

So, I now issue a formal challenge. I am not saying that these are the only continuity errors in the book. (Note: I am not saying that they aren't the only continuity errors, either.) I am simply saying that these two should have already drawn fire and I challenge my faithful readers to be the first to report these two.

There will be a prize for the first correct answer.

Is one of the errors the one where someone describes Tourville as the only person ever to beat Duchess Harrington?

During the ending of Cauldron of Ghosts, we're visiting the Mesa boardroom, when a messenger bursts in and reports they have hyper footprints of "at least a dozen ships-of-the-wall". I suppose it's technically accurate, but that's definitely a lot lower than the numbers reported in SoV. The strong implication in Cauldron was that it was just Tenth Fleet, but in SoV we know it's both Second and Tenth Fleets.

Duckk wrote:During the ending of Cauldron of Ghosts, we're visiting the Mesa boardroom, when a messenger bursts in and reports they have hyper footprints of "at least a dozen ships-of-the-wall". I suppose it's technically accurate, but that's definitely a lot lower than the numbers reported in SoV. The strong implication in Cauldron was that it was just Tenth Fleet, but in SoV we know it's both Second and Tenth Fleets.

And exactly how did they join up? Admiral Henke left Meyers on a direct route to Mesa, and there was not only no indication that she'd been joined by anyone else, but there was also no time for her to be joined by anyone else.

runsforcelery wrote:I am actually a bit surprised that the people commenting on typos and other errata in the EARC haven't picked up on two major continuity errors. One of them has already been fixed; one of them hasn't . . . and won't be. The second one, which won't be fixed, was injected accidentally but I liked the scene so much that I decided I would do a little revisionist history and let it stand.

So, I now issue a formal challenge. I am not saying that these are the only continuity errors in the book. (Note: I am not saying that they aren't the only continuity errors, either.) I am simply saying that these two should have already drawn fire and I challenge my faithful readers to be the first to report these two.

There will be a prize for the first correct answer.

Okay couldn't resist. I'm working off of the bundle and not the eARC though I'm assuming at this point they are one and the same I just don't have the whole book yet .

I'm assuming the big one is the scene on the surface of Manticore where Terekov actually makes it to the surface and a party and his wife instead of being stuck on ship the whole time. IN the past books it was commented several times that he never even had time to kiss his wife. I believe Mike had the most colorful one about impellers and backsides . I guess it will only be 3/4 of an impeller now since it looks like he needed an extra day to get to Talbott .

Yes I thought it did flow better and a bit more tender though given the point where he's dragged out it definitely screams the admiralty channeling their inner MWW, I wonder why that is...

RoguePhoenix wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:I am actually a bit surprised that the people commenting on typos and other errata in the EARC haven't picked up on two major continuity errors. One of them has already been fixed; one of them hasn't . . . and won't be. The second one, which won't be fixed, was injected accidentally but I liked the scene so much that I decided I would do a little revisionist history and let it stand.

So, I now issue a formal challenge. I am not saying that these are the only continuity errors in the book. (Note: I am not saying that they aren't the only continuity errors, either.) I am simply saying that these two should have already drawn fire and I challenge my faithful readers to be the first to report these two.



There will be a prize for the first correct answer.

Okay couldn't resist. I'm working off of the bundle and not the eARC though I'm assuming at this point they are one and the same I just don't have the whole book yet .

I'm assuming the big one is the scene on the surface of Manticore where Terekov actually makes it to the surface and a party and his wife instead of being stuck on ship the whole time. IN the past books it was commented several times that he never even had time to kiss his wife. I believe Mike had the most colorful one about impellers and backsides . I guess it will only be 3/4 of an impeller now since it looks like he needed an extra day to get to Talbott .

Yes I thought it did flow better and a bit more tender though given the point where he's dragged out it definitely screams the admiralty channeling their inner MWW, I wonder why that is...

That's the second one, yes.

caias wrote:Is one of the errors the one where someone describes Tourville as the only person ever to beat Duchess Harrington?

Nope.

JohnRoth wrote:

Duckk wrote:During the ending of Cauldron of Ghosts, we're visiting the Mesa boardroom, when a messenger bursts in and reports they have hyper footprints of "at least a dozen ships-of-the-wall". I suppose it's technically accurate, but that's definitely a lot lower than the numbers reported in SoV. The strong implication in Cauldron was that it was just Tenth Fleet, but in SoV we know it's both Second and Tenth Fleets.

And exactly how did they join up? Admiral Henke left Meyers on a direct route to Mesa, and there was not only no indication that she'd been joined by anyone else, but there was also no time for her to be joined by anyone else.

In the previous book, she never actually leaves. She sends the message to Elizabeth and she is planning to leave and gives her staff the schedule. In this book, the schedule is shifted because she finds out from Khumalo and Medusa that she can have a substantial ground force reinforcement if she waits a few weeks for it. And the reason they came up with a ground force that size, frankly, is because i needed something to delay her departure in order to accommodate the schedule Eric came up with for Cauldron. I was supposed to have his part of that book three months before I turned in Shadow of Freedom; I actually got it (for a lot of reasons) after SOF had already been typeset. It turned out that it was physically impossible to get the people he wanted at Point B to Point B in the time window which would otherwise have been available.

I'm guessing the error is somewhere in the "Final Flourish" of Operation Houdini. Cauldron of Ghosts said that Jules Charteris was in the conference to meet his wife and they had been incommunicado since she left for her "seminar". In Shadow of Victory it's stated that he was talking to an Alignment agent pretending to be Lisa.

CoG also strongly indicated that what we saw there were the final evacuees of Houdini and everyone else important had gotten off the planet before Janice Marinescu and her team, who were the last to leave. In SoV we actually see her getting her rewards and learn that while all the necessary people had been "disappeared" some of them were still on Mesa. I don't think this is actually an error since CoG is sufficiently ambiguous about it.

JohnRoth wrote:

Duckk wrote:During the ending of Cauldron of Ghosts, we're visiting the Mesa boardroom, when a messenger bursts in and reports they have hyper footprints of "at least a dozen ships-of-the-wall". I suppose it's technically accurate, but that's definitely a lot lower than the numbers reported in SoV. The strong implication in Cauldron was that it was just Tenth Fleet, but in SoV we know it's both Second and Tenth Fleets.

And exactly how did they join up? Admiral Henke left Meyers on a direct route to Mesa, and there was not only no indication that she'd been joined by anyone else, but there was also no time for her to be joined by anyone else.

Actually she *didn't*. Where that part of the story left off she was *intending* to do so. But before she left, according to SoV a dispatch boat arrived informing her of Tourville's arrival at Montana, and she changed plans, deciding to rendezvous with him at that red dwarfs 6 light years from Mesa before proceeding on to Mesa itself.

That said, I do remember some places (and, I think, more than just 2) where it seemed things had gone off track compared to earlier parts of the story. I just wasn't all that interested at the time in commenting on them. Most series - especially if they're composed of more than 2 or 3 books, tend to have minor inconsistencies here and there. It's hard for even the author to remember every little detail, and it can severely impact schedules if you're constantly going back and re-reading previous works just to ensure every historical detail is perfect.

While there have been a few folks commenting on typos, I don't think that's been the thrust of most of the commentary on the book so far. Personally, since it's an eARC, I wouldn't comment on typos at this stage. And once the book is actually published, we've usually gone on to other topics, so commenting on typos *then* isn't really all that interesting, unless it's something that should have been really, really obvious to any proofreader that might be familiar with the series.