I'm finishing up a re-read of the entire Taltos series, sans Orca which I seem to have misplaced. It's interesting how many things in the story I missed the first time through. Just in case, spoiler warnings in effect - If you haven't read all of the books then I may mention some things you'd rather learn about on your own. | | | | | | |SPOILER SPACE!!! | | | | | | | | | | Forgive me for stating some obvious things. I kicked myself recently when I was at the bookstore and said "Hey, Sethra Lavode? This is the THIRD Viscount book? There are TWO Jhereg books out that I haven't read???" Suffice to say that for me, Dragon and Issola are still relatively fresh while I haven't read any of Viscount at all yet. Yeah, I'm behind the times. *heh* Going over the series from the beginning is like watching a magician do a trick after he's shown you how it's done. You wonder why you never noticed it before. It's clear that Steve had the Kiera <-> Sethra relationship planned from the beginning. There's a hint that Aliera is in on the gag too, though I don't have a copy of Orca at the moment to check whether Kiera admits to this or not. As I progressed through the books, "Spot the Kiera/Sethra clues" became a game similar to "Spot Devera". Vlad doesn't seem to harbor any particular fear or dread of the undead. He's on good terms with Sethra and The Necromancer and his dealings with undead Loraan were no different than when he'd been alive. He does get creeped out by them, though, as any sane living person might. In Dragon, for instance, he's Dreamwalking and he inexplicably encounters the Necromancer. When she takes his face in her hands, he has to make an effort to not think about what is touching him. That particular scene is rather interesting because the description of what is happening is suggestive of a romantic interlude, except that Vlad's revulsion to her touch and the Necromancer's general disposition regarding people in general work at odds to the text, and the text itself never overtly states that any such interlude is occuring. The whole thing was very effective at producing a quality of unreality that you'd associate with a dreamstate. Oh, and I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that "Sleep and dream of bearded women." was an underhanded hommage to Goldman's "The Princess Bride". (Wesley defeats Fezzig and tells him "Sleep, and dream of large women." Seems we can make all sorts of games out of a reading of a Taltos story...) Anyway, getting back to the undead - In one book, I want to say it was "Yendi", Kiera meets Vlad and offers him a hello kiss. Vlad says "I gave as good as I got", implying that the kiss was a bit more than just a peck on the check. She offers him another kiss as they part. Given the current revelations, I'd wonder just what might be going through Vlad's mind these days as he realizes now just who and what sort of person he was getting intimate with. Especially if adolescent Vlad had some of the sorts of, ahem, fantasies that a person like Kiera might inspire in a young Easterner pumped full of hormones... I'd previously missed the reference by the Empress suggesting that Kelly had got his ideas about revolution and social conscience from some Earth text associated with the original human colonists. I was also a bit surprised by just how many people seem to be aware of the origins of the world. Lady Teldra was certainly exceptional in many ways but one has to assume that if she was trained in how to entertain a Jenoine that others were prepared to do so as well. Training for life as an Issola seneschal must be interesting indeed. I'd also forgotten that Vlad had turned over his business interests outside of South Adrilankha to Kragar. It should be interesting to see how he's fared in the approximately four years that Vlad's been gone (by my reckoning). One hopes that he's still alive. One strong feeling I've come away with thanks to having re-read the series is that it's really not so much a series about a cool assassin as it is an exploration of the human condition. The first couple of stories are straight up adventure yarns, but after that they become more interesting as windows into why people live as they do. Even Dragon, which is ostensibly a "past-tense adventure story" is more about the meaning of cameraderie in war and how the experience of being a soldier is different from ordinary life than it is about the finding of Pathfinder. Pathfinder is almost an after-thought in the whole thing. In many ways, Brust seems to be playing a game of "how can I take this idea that interests me and weave an essay about it around Vlad?" Maybe it's just because I've gotten older in the meantime but the post-Tekla stories were more enjoyable for me the second time around than they were the first time when I was really more interested in stories in the vein of Jhereg and Yendi. Assuming that Vlad visits Cawti, it will be interesting to see her reaction vis-a-vis his having a Great Weapon. If Vlad is like the other owners of such weapons we've encountered, he'll have it with him of the time. Vlad has describe many times how uncomfortable Blackwand made him just being nearby. Being around it unsheathed was a frightening experience, moreso because Easterners are apparently more sensitive to the auras of Morganti weapons. Even if he finds some common ground with Cawti on an emotional level, I have to wonder whether she could ever get used to having one of the most powerful Morganti weapons in the world hanging around. Especially when she realizes it has a sentience of its own. The Serioli in "Dragon" made no distinction between Blackwand and Morrolan and Vlad, and Morrolan has informed us that Blackwand is his familiar, implying again a certain amount of sentience and personality. Could a knife ever become jealous, and would Cawti be willing to take the risk above and beyond the general unpleasantness of having it around the house and her child? Maybe it's not a coincidence that all of the people we know who own these weapons seem to be single. Cheers, Scott Schultz scott at cjhunter.com