On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 01:54:13PM -0400, Alexx S Kay <alexx at theworld.com> wrote: > > > > 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. I think this is a fair criticism. We haven't really had any truly menacing characters in Dragaera. Personally, I would like some, though it might substantially change the tone of the series. Maybe Vlad needs a recurring antagonist? The Jenoine might be slated to fill this role, but I don't think they would do it necessarily well. > 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. I'm not at all sure how Brust is going to handle this, but I figure it'll be tricky no matter what. > > 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". Oh, I don't know. His adventures with Zerika undoubtedly gained him a few fighter-levels. If he dual-classes as a thief around, say, 5th level, he could rise fairly rapidly. Especially as he is familiar with Adrilankha, which will become the new capital. -- 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