Dragaera

where Kiera was

Wed Sep 25 10:07:57 PDT 2002

KG (>>) and Casey Rousseau (>) wrote:

>> I like the way you speculate; have you given any thought
>> to where Kiera was when Stony died?  That one's been
>> bugging me for years, becuase you can't blame it on
>> unreliable narrators or even typoes.
>
> Hmm.  I was just rereading _Orca_ a week or so ago and did
> not notice any continuity blips.

I'll come out of hiding and contribute on this topic.

KG is right; there's a subtle inconsistency in /Orca/, which is hard to spot
because it takes place over two long and involved chapters. You can read a
description I wrote of the problem at:

http://google.com/groups?selm=allegro-1108991304310001%40209-142-59-140.stk.jps.net

I remember trying to get Mark A. Mandell to add this to Cracks and Shards, but
either I was able to convince him of the error, or the Interprocurum drove it
>from his mind. ;)

I also wrote to skzb about it a few years ago, and I can't find his reply to
quote him (I did search both computers for it), but I remember feeling like a
heel afterwards for pointing this out. His reply was something like, "The only
satisfaction I can give you is that I checked everything very carefully, and I
was very happy with the way the book turned out."

I was very happy with the way the book turned out too, as evidenced by the fact
that I read it so many times, enough to catch such a cunning oversight. /Orca/
is still one of my favorite books, and is certainly one of the best Vlad books.
I wonder if we'll discover in a later story that Kiera was covering some other
complicated plot she was involved with at the time? As I see it, /Orca/
ultimately demonstrates just how delightfully unreliable a narrator Kiera is,
and that theme can sort of permeates everything if you let it.