Hello everyone, I've been on this list for a few days, observing the autochthones (as Jack Vance might put it), and I thought I'd throw some possibly unfounded speculation into the electronic winds. However, a brief intro seems to be in order for new players, and here's my SKZB, PJF story: I was first persuaded to read Mr. Brust by the late great Roger Zelazny's blurb on 'Jhereg", which read something along the lines of "Watch Steven Brust. He moves fast, he surprises you.". It's a rare blurb that applies equally well to martial artists (or, more probably, fencers) and writers, and I was intrigued enough to take a peek. This was ~4 years ago, and I haven't needed any other inducements to buy SKZB since then. If I were to choose, I'd rank "The Phoenix Guards" and "Five Hundred Years After" as my favourites. It's quite clear that he had great fun writing those, and I had great fun reading them. Was there ever an allusion to Paarfi's compensation model - was he paid by the word, a la Dumas? :-) On to the unfounded speculation...spoilers for Issola below: (This is a partial hijack of the "Flying dragon" thread, which could just possibly have devolved to "do Balrogs have wings?", so I don't feel too guilty :-) From Issola: " were throwing all sorts of things at it that didn't get through, and there was that God overhead, dominating everything, making flashes of light that made the daylight seem brighter than bright." I think this was the contrarian god "Ordwynac", first seen (I think) in "The Paths of the Dead". As I recall, it manifested as a flame. From what I've seen, there's a good deal of internal dissension among the gods, and they're not particularly prescient, despite (or perhaps because of?) the timeless nature of their world. The gods seem especially blind to the destinies of the Great Weapons, which makes sense given what little we know of their purpose. The GWs seem to be strange attractors of sorts, and the Serioli (their creators) seem to have a good understanding of their destinies; Dragaera seems rather deterministic in some ways. A rather science fictional notion about the origins of the gods: I think their ability to appear in >=2 places at once is due to a massive overdose of amorphia at the Beginning. It seems an inherently chaotic and reality bending sort of thing, and what better origin than the Great Sea of Chaos? Some poisons, in great enough doses, don't kill :-) I wonder if Aliera could be persuaded to test this theory... Oh, but there's also the divine blood thing; I wonder if amorphia and haemoglobin interact strangely. The Jenoine, with their natural immunities, may not be able to duplicate this ability. Okay, that's enough speculation for now! Derek