Mike writes, regarding 'Deep Wizardry': > S > P > O > I > L > E > R > S > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > copping out on the ending. I understand the problems involved in killing > off a young adolescent girl, let alone your series protagonist, in a YA > story. But I think it's cheating to get as much mileage as that story did > over the necessity of such a sacrifice and the process of the protagonist > reconciling to it, and then pull a rabbit out of a hat at the end to save > her. The shark's decision didn't IMHO fit his character, and it that it > worked didn't seem to fit what we'd been previously told about the situation. I think I disagree with you an enormous amount. While I haven't re-read this book in a while, and as a consequence I don't remember the girl's name (though I remember Kit's), I believe that Diane copped out not a whit on the ending. Through the entire book, as in the first, a young woman has to face the possibility -- though in this case, the probability -- that she is going to die. In 'So You Want to Be a Wizard', she has to deal with a close friend's death and its aftermath; in 'Deep Wizardry', she has to deal with her own impending death, and most importantly stay -balanced- about it, or else the Master-Shark (or whatever his title was) was going to end her pain right then and there. Side note -- I've always taken great delight in sharks; now I have a reason why. However, the Master-Shark's action seems to me to be eminently in-character for him. Consider that, in all of the reenactments of the ceremony they are doing, there has only ever been written in the shark's place 'the Master-Shark'. It has long been my preference to believe that the shark they met was -the- Master-Shark -- the original, the first. As it was put in the book, sharks do not die of age, of senescence; they are killed, by disease, by other predators, by something they ate. The Master-Shark was the supreme 'ender-of-pain' of his kind; I think that he was -tired-, and meeting Our Heroine just pointed it out to him. That sort of tiredness is an emotional pain, and he knew it in himself; as a consequence, to end his own pain, he persuaded ... is it Juanita? I don't remember ... to will her magic over to him, so that he might take her place as sacrifice -- and end his own pain. As well, Juanita (or whatever) was at that point -ready- for her own death; she was not, in any way, prepared for the Master-Shark's. His sacrifice wounded her as much or more than the one in the first book; Juanita in her own way loved and admired the Master-Shark, and he, her. This is one of the very few books that has ever made me cry; it is a very wrenching moment. But I was inordinately pleased to see him in Timeheart ... Felix Eisen aka Thomas Crain