spoilers for _TEoDM_ again, spoilers for the Pirodessey or the end of the Paarfiad or ... 1. Random comments - Clari makes an offering of "wheat and tears" - I wonder if that should be "tares", as in My prime of youth is but a frost of cares, My feast of joy is but a dish of pain, My crop of corn is but a field of tares, And all my good is but vain hope of gain; The day is past, and yet I saw no sun, And now I live, and now my life is done. 2. The editing in this volume seems to me to have been the best by far. I only caught a "the the". Well, that and the lack of several sentences in Paarfi's Afterward conversation on pg 345. 3. Well, perhaps Sekely is Szekely, which might be more Hungarian? 4. On pg 71, Paarfi says the "ball-room" had nearly been a temple - I thought the temple had been intended for a ballroom but then a library. 5. Can't decide how I feel about Aerich's death - coming alone was in character, but getting bounced off a wall was a bit, well, unheroic. 6. I argued a while ago that it was inconceivable to me that Aerich would chase a Teckla, so I believe Paarfi's version entirely. 7. I didn't understand why the Necromancer couldn't function with a God on the world. Plus she managed ok in a similar situation at the end of _Issola_. 8. Morrolan can't have much to strive for after killing a god. And why doesn't he go into battle with the J with one of those vorpal-blade enchantment enhancements? 9. There was some confusion in the description in para 4 on pg 289 - it seems as if Paarfi thinks Trinagore's death and the defeat of the Jenoine are the same event, instead of coincidental. The Warlock's call and Morrolan's teleport are unrelated. 10. Piro never did much for me - when the soldiers tried to take him, in the fight in which Grassfog died, I was rooting for them. During the description of the meal early in the book, it struck me that Piro refuses to follow society's dictates in questions of marriage while happily exploiting the Teckla, who end up eating the nobles' scraps. Unpiroic. 11. Grassfog's amulet is a bit of plot device. Actually the plot seemed too present at points. On the other hand, the book had a strong impetus - I read it in (almost one) sitting. A pleasurable first read, certainly. 12. Nice to see Khaavren resigning his position - this is a precho I think of a comment in the Vladiad about K turning in his cloak yet again. 13. Morrolan seems to be dead in Paarfi's time - anyway that's the vibe I got. Actually I'd guess only K, Piro, and Ibronka live that long. 14. I liked the touch of melancholy at the end of the book - Piro leaving K's house, K unhappy. 15. I'm a bit unhappy that nothing came of Roaana's dream in _TPotD_ - unless perhaps she was trading her fate for Ibronka's. Grita/Ibronka, Sethra, Teldra, R - many of the characters were little developed, it seems to me - all but the musketeers and Zerika, really, and of them only K gets much of an arc. Well, we do get an excellent portrayal of Aerich, static but then he's at an acme where d/dt is zero. 16. I imagine there's much more in the Afterword than I got on first reading. Has anyone read Ford's latest collection, Heat of Fusion? It seems to overlap greatly with From the End of the Twentieth Century, which I own. 17. When's the next 19th of the Vladiad arriving?