Hi all, thanks for the welcome message Reen. I discovered this list a few days ago, when I noticed the yahoo group was very quiet, even though TPOTD was out. I've been reading the archives so I won't ask too many questions that have been asked before. How I discovered Steve's books, well that's a little embarrassing, as I ignored them for a couple of years...... I had discovered Emma Bull and every time I went looking for any more of her books* I kept seeing these adjacent ones with unpronouncable single word titles that I (embarrassed cough) didn't like the look of......... Steve was in good company though, I was also ignoring these other books, with terrible covers, by someone called Bujold. I've learned better since. So, the first Brust book I read was Brokedown Palace because I knew what that title meant, followed by Taltos (probably because it was the one retitled The Paths of the Dead). By which time, quel horreur, all those other books I'd rejected were already off the shelves. Fortunately the first omnibus came out not long after and from Phoenix I could snap up the whole series as soon as each one came along. I'm also lucky enough to have picked up the whole Liavek series from my local SF bookshop. What I really like about the Dragaera books is how rereadable they are, there is always a new perspective, something else to notice. The Paarfi books, I find get funnier every time I re read (one friend phoned me up twenty pages into TPG to ask "Is it ...... supposed .......to be funny." On my affirmative reply she happily read to the end.) Last year, on another list, I nominated Issola as something like "The biggest tease, being not the book you expected but the book you didn't know you wanted, answering questions you didn't know you had and opening up a whole load of new ones", which pretty much sums up the appeal of these books for me. Enough about Steve, here's more about me. I'm a mendicant scholar living in the frozen north of the UK, in exile from the warm south which, of course, is just as brass monkeys at the moment. I'm a book addict, I live with three unruly cats and keep cacti (don't laugh, they have a greenhouse and I even heat it sometimes.) Looking forward to sharing speculations Ven *Back when the first I'd know of a book being in print, in existance even, was it's appearence in a bookshop. ===== Ven __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com