On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Michael Mattoni wrote: > Spoilers for all books ahead... lots of snippage ahead: > >This is the basis for one of my too-oft-repeated snarks about Issola - > >Vlad is becoming too powerful to be interesting in non-comic-book > >scenarios. > > I have to respectfully disagree. <disclaimer: Issola is my favorite Vlad > book and logic may not be in full force> Note: I enjoyed Issola (except I suppose the battle with the gods) too. Lots of snippage. > > Further,given the high standards of characterization that Steve has, I > would suspect that something big would have to happen to Vlad in order to > for him to reconcile with Cawti. Perhaps Lady Teldra's influence is a > literary device that gets the ball rolling. I don't need a reconciliation. As far as I can tell, Vlad is now married to Teldra much more intimately than he was ever to Cawti, which would set us on course more for a big painful let's-just-be-friends scene. > > Anyway, the bottom line is that I have faith that, regardless of how > powerful Vlad might be, Steve will make his adventures interesting. I too have faith. But I'm concerned about the possibility of constructing a consistent world with enough superbeings to stretch Vlad while not allowing them to make earlier stuff nonsensical, as has already happened with Morrolan (killed/soul stolen/whatever too many times) and various things I've snarked about, or requiring deus ex machinas (Adron saving the day in _Issola_), or depending on the bad guys being stupid (the Jenoine). We know there are others with GWs - how come they haven't affected history for thousands of years? Why haven't the supervillians from future struggles already struck? Anyway, we won't find out for many years so there's no point in fretting.