> > Warning: There Be Spoilers Ahead > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . [snip] > The divergence from Dumas that shocked me was Pel putting friendship above > ambition and switching sides to fight for Zerika. As a Dumas fan, this > totally blindsided me. OTOH, the gods make a comment at the end that do > leave Pel's true motives a bit up in the air. Blindsided me, too. I think one of the primary differences between Brust and Dumas is that Brust is less of a bastard :-) He is reluctant to put his characters though as much emotional conflict as Dumas was. And note that Brust was unable (or perhaps merely unwilling) to come up with any antagonist characters remotely as compelling as Milady and Mordaunt. Greycat and Grita stand in a loosely-parallel position, but neither of them has (IMNSHO) the palpable sense of power and evil that graced Dumas' villains. [snip] > To reset that > in the Vlad world, is there any textev about wether or not Zerika has a > current Discreet? A book dealing with the Duke of Galstan and the politics > of Zerika's court today would be great. No textev for or against, so it's certainly open. I'd certainly buy such a book :-) [And even if he doesn't want to follow any of the non-Dumas books particularly, Aramis is the one Musketeer whose death Dumas doesn't mention.] [snip discussion of character's deaths] Hasn't Steve mentioned that this story extends past Vlad's time? That would let him kill off characters late in the book, but still have them around for Vlad to interact with. It would even be consistent with Dumas; while Dumas discusses D'Artagnan's death, it happens many years after the primary action of the book has concluded. > My wild (and unsupported by textev) theory is that Piro will now end up as > the Demon of the Jhereg. It's hard to reconcile with some of the things > Vlad has said about the Demon, but not impossible, <skeptical frown> Checking my timeline, Vlad makes two references to the Demon's age, which each place him as at least 300 years older than Piro. There's also the claim that he took a seat on the Jhereg Council "just after" the Interregnum, which would have to be an awfully fast series of promotions from "entry-level highwayman". Alexx Alexx Kay Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers alexx at world.std.com http://world.std.com/~alexx "Admittedly, I do have several bones... whole war fields full of bones, in fact... to pick with organised religion of whatever stripe. This should be seen as a critique of purely temporal agencies who have, to my mind, erected more obstacles between humanity and whatever notion of spirituality or Godhead one subscribes to than they have opened doors. To me, the difference between Godhead and the Church is the difference between Elvis and Colonel Parker... although that conjures up images of God dying on the toilet, which is not what I meant at all." -- Alan Moore, in correspondence with Dave Sim about _From Hell_