On Sat, 25 Jan 2003 17:49:22 -0800, you 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 didn't get it until halfway through, either, but then, I went into knowing exactly one thing, it was a Steve Brust novel. That's it. It could be I was enjoying it so much I didn't try to figure out what was up until it was slapping me in the face. -- lazarus "Therefore, my Harry, Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days." -- King Henry IV, Part ii Act 4, Scene 5