Neviril spends the first two thirds of Simoun in mourning, and Aeru is a jock in the full sense of the word, a fighter jock, with the emotional intelligence of a cold tin of baked beans. The final third of the story juggles a lot—the war, some big sf revelations, the rest of the cast—but it also finds time to wring a little humour out of those two states changing.

Typical of the show: Neviril's next line remarks on the war's capacity to obscure these everyday things.

(It's probably a coincidence, but, as I believe I've remarked before, small-handedness is a traditional trait in skilled literary pilots.)