Younger Days Come Back

I am big on sequels provided that they are done well which Poul Anderson's always are. His series are never merely repetitive. Elderly Nicholas van Rijn is succeeded, as continuing character, by the much younger David Falkayn who, after he has completed first his apprenticeship, then his journeymanship and factorship, becomes not only a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League but also the leader of van Rijn's first trade pioneer crew/trader team which eventually works more closely with van Rijn himself. The series has not returned to its starting point but spiralled upward to a greater complexity. We reflect on how far we have come from:

Adzel (trader team member)'s first appearance in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson";

van Rijn's first appearance either in Trader To The Stars or in "Margin of Profit," depending on the order in which we read the Technic History;

Falkayn's first appearance in "The Three-Cornered Wheel";

two mentions of the planet Cynthia before the Cynthian, Chee Lan, appears as a trader team member;

the trader team's first appearance in "The Trouble Twisters," with van Rijn cameoing to appoint Falkayn;

the first trader team-van Rijn team-up in Satan's World.

Time has passed between Satan's World and Mirkheim - or between "Lodestar" and Mirkheim, again depending on reading order. The trader team members have scattered and van Rijn must reassemble them but for a different kind of mission:

"'And so we fare forth again, we three and our ship, like our young days come back,' Adzel sighed, 'except that this time our mission is not into the hopeful yonder.'"

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 1-291 AT I, p. 46.

"...like our younger days come back..." but with a difference. Nothing remains the same. This novel is our last sight of this cast of characters but by no means the end of the Technic History.