--- Brad <holden at salome.uchicago.edu> wrote: [...] > Vlad's real skill is working as a detective, > sniffing out conspiracies and the like. That is > where his future lies. Though how Steve is gonna > deal with this whole great weapon thing is beyond me. On a tangent (though one that takes us back towards another thread), it's interesting to see the parallels between Mario as depicted in _Five Hundred Years After_ (by Paarfi, through Steve) and Vlad. _Five Hundred Years_ is only briefly told from Mario's perspective (even indirectly), but I can very easily see how it could have been, and how it would have looked much like a Vlad story: * the initial offer (too big to pass up -- certainly a tendency of Vlad's we are familiar with from _Jhereg_ and _Taltos_); * the carefully planned first attempt that goes awry; * the sudden veer into emotional entanglement with Aliera (reminiscent of Vlad's meeting with Cawti, as in _Yendi_); * the development of a brilliant and dangerous scheme (motivated in part by vengeance and in part by love, as in _Teckla_ and _Phoenix_) from a chance- overheard remark (similar to Vlad's confrontation with Aliera in _Jhereg_ that leads to her faked death); * and the spectacular denouement (admittedly far more destructive than anything Vlad has done yet, but Vlad's own series is less than halfway through). Possible reasons for the correspondence, not mutually exclusive: (1) purely artistic (Steve is playing with recurring themes -- perhaps _Five Hundred Years_ can be read as a variation, much like _Athyra_ or _Orca_, told from a different point of view); (2) Vlad's character (consider Kiera's remark in _Orca_ that Vlad has a "superstitious dread" of Mario -- perhaps Vlad views Mario (who after all has an Eastern name) as a role model of sorts -- as we don't know *when* Vlad is telling his stories, I'm not sure whether we can rule out his having read Paarfi, and there is certainly a comment in _Orca_ that indicates he is familiar with Paarfi's work -- the "cut to pieces" line); (3) Mario as one of Vlad's reincarnations (probably ruled out by Steve's comments here and elsewhere regarding Mario -- both that he "is Mario" and that he is still alive at the time of _Jhereg_ although I think it is an interesting hypothesis from the purely textual evidence). -- Greg __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com