On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 10:34:00PM -0600, Matthew Hunter <matthew at infodancer.org> wrote: > Tue Dec 3 22:33:37 CST 2002: Mark. Wed Dec 4 04:25:10 CST 2002: Complete. Spoilers to follow. The author is invited to stop reading now, and start writing the next volume instead. The following are my stream-of-consciousness notes, produced while reading The Paths of the Dead: * Paarfi may bear a historical position in Dragarean society similarity to that borne by Dumas, who also wrote fictional material concerning mostly-historical personages. An examination of minor characters in his novels and Vlad's time may provide a Mary Sue. Glorious Mountain Press: Of course, the Tor logo. University Press: Obviously an analogue for the publishers of 500YA. I don't recall the publishers and can't find my copy at present, but the Vlad books were by "Ace". I can see only the faintest of connections there, but time will doubtless reveal. Z-and-Bolis warehouse flood at Univ Press: Doubtless googling will provide the real-world event that prompted this. The mention of threatened lawsuits is intriguing. Aliera: Insists that there was a connection between Mario and Adron, which is interesting; Paarfi implies that there is speculation Adron hired and then sheltered Jhereg assassins in the matter of the K'Lsomething who was temporarily Dragon Heir between books, and that the Dragon-Jhereg war was related to this. Interesting, to say the least. There's enough to muddle things considerably here even working by implication. There's an interesting word-of-mouth chain. Aliera -> Sethra -> someone -> Paarfi. Hrm. Eastern tribes of no claimed significant: Nemites, Letites, Straves?. Who are they? They are, of course, significant, because Paarfi said they weren't. Morrolan means Dark Star? Interesting. Kane and Habil: once misidentified as brother and sister, actually cousins? Sounds like Paarfi is admitting to a mistake, and we could discover their prior references somewhere. "It was published by University Press, before the disaster" as a means of establishing veracity for a book. Adron's disaster here presumably serves as an analog for the presumed real-world flood mentioned previously. The Sorceress Orlann. 'nuff said. There are some very interesting questions raised here. Either Vlad is even more of an idiot than he admits to, or perhaps more of a liar than he pretends, or something very interesting is yet to occur. The Sorceress In Green. Apparantly there's more mystery here than Vlad is aware of. Is Morrolan's house identification of her mistaken? Certainly not an unwelcome appearance. Zerika. Did anyone NOT know who she was from the first moment she appeared (in disguise)? And for that matter, "no one is anyone else" my ass. :) Two authors (of romances?) to identify: Madame Payor, who writes characters incapable of traveling Tremmel of Brock (Roc?), who writes stories centered around a location, to which all characters are somehow drawn No immediate mappings present themselves to me, but it is 5am. Well, David Gemmel sounds vaguely similar, but he doesn't write romances and isn't published by Roc. Discuss. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp