On Sat, Jan 25, 2003 at 05:49:22PM -0800, Steven Brust <skzb at dreamcafe.com> wrote: > At 04:44 PM 1/25/2003 -0800, David Goldfarb wrote: > >My roommate has been moonlighting as a night-shift security guard. This > >gives him lots of time to read. I introduced him to Brust; he loves the > >Vlad and Khaavren books. The other night he was running late, and noticed > >_Agyar_ on my shelf. > >Now, it's his habit to take off the dust jackets on hardcovers so as not > >to risk damaging them. So, he read _Agyar_ without being spoiled by the > >blurb. He reports that he got about halfway through the book before > >the penny dropped -- he'd had clues before then, but it took the hero > >taking > >a shotgun blast before he was sure what was going on. > Interesting. But...I can't figure out how that dust jacket blurb could > have given anything away that wasn't evident by about page 6. I haven't read the hardcover blurb, but I've had the nature of the character elude some readers for substantial periods of time (about halfway through is common). At least one person got to the end of the book and asked, "So what was UP with the guy, anyway? He's weird." The particular point is handled in a rather subtle way -- you should be proud. It's never something actively hidden from the reader, just never stated outright and left to the reader to draw the implication. Now, if the HC blurb spoils something ELSE, then all that is rendered irrelevent. In any case, I picked up on that particular point within the first few pages, but I wasn't *sure* until a little later on. -- 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