Damien Sullivan writes:
>On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 12:48:40AM -0400, Steve Simmons wrote:
>> Actually, I'd counted her as a god, and she enters at the same time as
>> the others (Issola 226). You say she's "unclassifiable". From all the
>There's no evidence to classify her as anything we've seen before.
No, there isn't -- well, aside from Devera, the girl who shows up in
all Brust's books. :)
>If she's a god, she's way more powerful than the others, being able
>to take down a Jenoine by herself.
Or perhaps that was the weakest of the three Jenoine, and she caught
it by surprise -- we don't know.
>> of any of the gods). She is the granddaughter of Verra, has the ability
>Aliera is Verra's daughter, and isn't a god.
Quite. Mind, Aliera doesn't seem to have been -raised- by Verra,
while Devera seems to have been; she may have picked up more "godly"
skills somewhere in there (or just other skills).
We haven't seen her doing the "multiple hear me differently" or
bilocation things, which argues against her being a god, but not all
that much.
>> to move back and forth widely in time . . . or maybe Aliera gives birth
>> to her far in the past . . . after all, Brust says Keiron is her father.
>"I haven't been born yet."
Yeah, this pretty much means that she's got time travel, or at least
"manifest before I was born". Or Verra's realm is non-temporally
stable? It might have more to do with where she was (except that she
appeared in front of the LSoC [how do people know that was her,
anyway], of course).
>Never-to-be-explicated authorial whim seems more likely to me. Like Tom
>Bombadil. (And for that matter, about as cute.)
She seems much less periperhal than Bombadil, though -- unlike him,
she has strong connections to main characters, and fights in crucial
battles. While in many other books, she's authorial whim, it seems
pretty clear that she's "native" to Dragaera, or that version of her
is.
--
Joshua Kronengold (mneme at io.com) "I've been teaching |\ _,,,--,,_ ,)
--^--him...to live, to breathe, to walk, to sample the /,`.-'`' -, ;-;;'
/\\joy on each road, and the sorrow at each turning. |,4- ) )-,_ ) /\
/-\\\I'm sorry if I kept him out too late"--Vlad Taltos '---''(_/--' (_/-'