I think Dusty meant to send this to the whole list: -----Original Message----- From: J A 'Dusty' Sayers [mailto:dusty at sayersnet.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 3:15 PM To: Robert Wood Subject: Re: Where did you begin? > Which skzb book did you start with? OK; first, I've been reading this list for a couple of months, but never felt like commenting yet. I've enjoyed it, though, so, howdy, folks. The first SKZB book I read was Phoenix, around 1991 or 1992. A friend of mine's little brother found a copy, and thought it had a cool cover, so he bought it. My friend read it, and then I did. After that, we went and read all the other existing Vlad books in publication order, because we assumed that cronology and publication would be more or less identical. Heh. Shortly thereafter, Phoenix Guards came out (or at least that's when we found it), and I've been reading the Vlad and Khaavren books in publication order ever since. I only recently read Brokedown Palace, as well as Freedom and Necessity, To Reign in Hell, and Agyar, which I really liked, although I rarely read books of that type. One thing that made it interesting to me was that at the time my father was dying of the same disease that is killing a (relatively minor) character in Agyar, so I knew sort of how it and its treatment worked. Now, I have a question: I have been planning to hook some of my friends on Dragaera, and am trying to decide in what order to loan them the books. Before Dragon came out, I probably would have offered the Vlad books in chronological order, and then let them try Khaavren and BP, but having re-read them all recently, I'm not sure any more. Jhereg makes an excellent introduction to the series, despite being near the middle chronologically, and Dragon, of course, cannot be placed precisely between two other books (coming, as it does, before and after Yendi, dang it), so I'm leaning more towards publication order. Any suggestions? I figure I can't really go wrong, since one of the beauties of SKZB's work is that each books plays off the others so well that they're interesting in any order, but I'm still curious to see what others recommend. Thanks! -- J A Dusty Sayers 'It is a damn poor mind indeed that cannot think of at least two ways to spell a word.' --Andrew Jackson