An open letter to Steven K.Z. Brust, P.J.F. My lord: I wish to express my warmest thanks for the honor you do me in the Acknowledgments of _The Paths of the Dead_. It gives me great satisfaction to know that my compilations relating to your works, intended only for the amusement and information of myself and others of your readers, have proved useful to you in the work that provides you with continuing income and us with continuing pleasure. Much of the content of _Cracks and Shards_ is due to the research of others that they have sent to me and permitted me to share. The site is as much to the credit of the entire community of your readers, as it is to mine. Thursday morning I bought my copy, and heroically left it in my pack all that day at work, promising myself to read a few chapters each evening. More fool I! That night's chapters numbered twenty-seven, and I finished it less than half an hour ago as I write this paragraph offline on Friday evening. Rather than involve myself just now in the ongoing textual discussions, I choose to apply here a peculiar talent of mine, which I sometimes exercise under the byname of "Dr. Whom, consulting linguist, grammarian, orthoepist, and philological busybody". This gift, or curse, consists of a sharp eye for errors in spelling, grammar, and other characteristics of language use, which I cannot fail to notice while reading, will I or nill I. -- While reading _The Paths of the Dead_, then, I noticed occasional misspellings and similar typographical errors. (The fact that the resulting word can always be found in a reasonable dictionary, but in many cases is plainly the *wrong* word, suggests that someone has placed too little reliance on the alert mind of an educated reader and too much on what I prefer to call a spellchucker.) I marked these with small adhesive notes that are now flying from the edge of the volume like the signal flags of a rather sloppy fleet, and I list them below, my lord, in hopes that the information will be useful to you and to my fellow subscribers to this list. (I have also taken note of other apparent errors that are possibly questions of judgement or editing more than of spelling or punctuation. These I will submit off-list for your private consideration.) The first of these errors to strike my eye, alas, was on the Acknowledgments page itself, in the URL of my own _Cracks and Shards_ site. Whether by spellchucking, or misreading of handwriting, or careless assumptions about the nature of URLs, or some other form of error, the crucial component "mam" -- my initials, and my login ID -- has been warped into the word "main", producing a pointer to a nonexistent Web location. I am now considering whether to invest the monthly fee that my ISP would require in order to create such a URL as a redirection to the correct one. In the following list, each entry begins with a page number, followed by a paragraph number and usually a line number within the paragraph. The first paragraph on the page is numbered 1 even if it is a partial paragraph; chapter headings and titles are not counted. A number preceded by a minus sign is to be counted from the bottom of the page or the paragraph. The error and correction are separated by "=>", and the left side of the expression may include several words of context omitted on the right; e.g., Stephen K.Z. Brust => Steven In some cases I have added a comment. I have omitted diacritical marks, which are not involved in any of the errors and are not reliably transmitted through email. 15,3,7 Roannac -- Their daughter => Roanna 32,-1,-4 forebear => forbear -- A forebear is an ancestor; to forbear is to refrain (from an action). 59,2,3 we consider it out duty => our 199,-2,1 Trinagore => Tri'nagore -- It is spelled with an apostrophe in all other occurrences, including the Cast of Characters. 216,2,1 The Trey! 219,-14,1 (a bit below mid-page) The trey! -- These should be capitalized or not, consistently. Idle hypothesis: An editor failed to recognize the word (it means the three of any suit in cards) the first time and decided it must be a name. After seeing "The deuce!" lower on 216, he recognized "trey" on 219, but forgot to go back and undo his earlier miscorrection. -- (This will go into my Jokes and Allusions page. From this and "Porker Poker" I suspect that poker may need a whole subsection there, but I don't play the game. Anyone who spots more is invited to tell me about it... as is, of course, the author.) 232,1,-5 changed from Blackbird to Blackbir- driver => Blackbird- river -- Automatic hyphenation is responsible for many a sin. See http://world.std.com/~mam/filks/EditorsWaltz.html , verse 3. 253,8,-3 (the paragraph in midpage) concealed behind the name Zerika => Zivra -- This is not a typo, but an authorial or editorial error. (I take no position on *which* author might be responsible!) Zivra, not Zerika, was the concealing alias. 267,6,1 The plague 267,7,-1 The Plague 267,9 [...] the Plague -- Should probably be capitalized consistently. 369,3,2 fat off to her right => far off 370,2,-2 but there they are gone => there, they -- As Zerika uses it in her passage through Wonderland//////// The Paths of the Dead, "there" is an interjection, indicating a remark on something that has just happened, not an adverb of place. Cf. just below, 370,3,-3. 371,-1,-4 they ought to have a least built this place => at least 391,-2,1 waking => walking Respectfully submitted, Mark A. Mandel