On Fri, 27 Jun 2003, Mark A Mandel wrote: > On Wed, 25 Jun 2003, Philip Hart wrote: > > #> >I think _Jhereg_ is not exactly canon - Vlad says some funny stuff about > #> >reviving beheaded people, for example > > I treated that as a slip by Brust [1], but if you're trying to keep > Brust the author [2] out of the picture, saying Vlad made a mistake in > Dragaeran history seems a good way to go. > > > [1] http://world.std.com/~mam/Cracks-and-Shards/deaths.html#Beheading Note that revivification was (nearly? entirely?) impossible before the Interregnum - one of the various conversations with Verra in _Phoenix_ I think. There are a variety of problems with _Jhereg_ - the opening of Chapter 9 with the four close brushes with death, Aliera's friendship with Kiera, Kiera's liplock with Vlad, ... > #have to go on, so deserves to be considered the default description of > #what happened until we have more obviously reliable information > Default does not imply 100% reliable. A good thing, else the "more obviously reliable" info would be 110%... > #The fact is that Paarfi is our best (well, almost only) source of info > #on these matters and one has to either accept it as an > #internally-consistent and plausible description of events or choose > #ignorance of this interesting period of history. > > Or internally inconsistent, if one finds internal inconsistencies. Has this list been obsessively searching for such inconsistencies for years, and has it found anything worse than the Lytra-wasn't-talking- to-Seodra screwup? And does it have a set of ready-made procedures for blaming the messenger?