If the Taltos cycle was viewed as a series of RPG sessions, I'd be starting to look a bit aghast at the game master. Let's face it, if Vlad was just a bit less likable, he'd be a munchkin and the GM would be one of the worst Monty Haul types around. Vlad is so accomplished a fighter and assassin that hardly anything gets past him. He has friends and "connections" among the most powerful people of the Empire. In addition to his political contacts, he semi-regularly has face-to-face contact with his patron deity. There are seventeen Great Weapons in the entire world and somehow, despite being an outsider twice over, he befriends three of the people who own those weapons and is even instrumental in acquiring one of them. As if that weren't enough, he's now the owner of what is arguably the most powerful of the seventeen. (Iceflame might technically have a greater raw power behind it, but even it held back rather than endanger its partner.) Now, there's a sort of poetic justice in the idea of a deity-killing knife ending up in the hands of an assassin. However, it seems clear that Godslayer/Lady Teldra is no ordinary Great Weapon (assuming you could think of any such as "ordinary"). We can assume that Vlad is now immune to almost any magical attack and he's shown time and again that he's well equipped to handle the purely physical. Where does he go from there? On the face of it,he's invulnerable; he's Superman. Or, to put it in RPG terms again, he's the 40th level assassin with the magic knife that projects an anti-magic aura and pretty much any other powers that he can talk the GM into giving him. About the only thing left is for him to ascend to deity-hood himself. Either that, or start being faced with strictly emotional issues from here on out as those generally can't be overcome with a knife. I'm just a bit concerned that's where we're heading, especially given Mr. Brust's recent entry in his blog about how he wasn't sure he liked where the current story is heading , but if it gets too horrid, etc... I appreciate character development as much as anyone, but IMO Vlad is at his most interesting when he's NOT wallowing in angst and indecision. I guess I'm wondering what you do with a Great Weapon once you've written it into the story. Any threat Vlad faces in the future has to be greater than a Great Weapon (and there are few such threats) or else the plot has to contrive to somehow separate Vlad from Lady Teldra. Considering that the sword is linked to the soul of its bearer, I'm not even sure if that's really possible. In any case, as a plot device it would work once, or maybe twice. After that it would just get repetitious. I suppose we'll just have to wait for the next story (assuming it's a present-day story) to see what happens. Scott Schultz scott at cjhunter.com