Bryan Newell wrote: >3. Paarfi's POV - He's a historian, therefore I trust he's done his >research, regardless of what his contemporary critics think. > >I've heard people say the Introduction to Dzurlord is unreliable. Why? Has >Brust distanced himself from it? Unless Brust himself says it isn't >reliable, I will continue accepting it a "canon" (and, moreover, very >reliable, as it's written from the God POV). > >There is a huge debate, both in Dragaera itself and in our world, on how >reliable Paarfi is. My family/friends think Paarfi is the LEAST reliable >(should be #6), but regardless of his "problems" as a historian, it doesn't >seem likely to me that he would be wrong about the subject matter I'm >interested in--Geography and the Cycle. > > > Dzurlord isn't considered part of the Cycle of novels that Steve has suggested he might end up writing (that is, 17 named after the creatures of the cycle, plus Taltos and The Final Contract). This suggests that there will be a Dzur at some point in the future, and also that Dzurlord isn't meant to be considered quite as canonical as, say, Jhereg. When asked if Dzurlord is canon, he replied: ] Well, not having established the canon, I don't think it's fair for ] me to say. I never said that bits and pieces of Jarhead and Yentil ] were not canonical. ] Myself, I tend to prefer to see artillery used to support infantry ] action, but it really depends on the technology of the field piece ] in question. David Silberstein correctly pointed out that this is "only slightly better than "Tee hee" in terms of its information content." So make of that what you will. I personally have used bits of the Dzurlord intro to support arguments before, but Steve might at some point decide that what's in Dzurlord is unnecessarily restrictive, and thus toss it aside. Who knows? As for Paarfi and his credibility, I think the biggest problem is determining what his agenda is. Despite his claims to be "an historian," the way he's described (by implication, so my line of reasoning can be justifiably ignored due to its pararectal nature) suggests that he's just a historical fiction writer, and a popular one at that. From all the allusions to Paarfi in the Vladiad, it seems that nobody takes him seriously as an authority on history. His style seems to be what makes him most distinctive, as Kiera comments to Vlad "Been reading Paarfi again?" when he makes a grandiloquent offer of being chopped to pieces for her at some point. In any case, if we consider Paarfi as historically unreliable, I think it is likely that he would re-arrange geography a bit if it serves his plot. Maybe he didn't have to, but it's something to keep in mind when considering reliability. Also note that we've never seen maps in Paarfi's works, but we have in Yendi and Brokedown Palace. I don't know if this means anything; maybe Paarfi assumes everyone knows the places he's talking about and therefore doesn't need to include any maps with his manuscripts. At the same time, the amount of effort he puts in descriptions of places seems to belie this assumption... Anyway, these are my non-canonical thoughts. *grin* Jose -- Jose Marquez \ Cthulhu 2004 jhereg69 at earthlink.net \ Why vote for http://home.earthlink.net/~jhereg69 \ the lesser evil?