On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, Jerry Friedman wrote: > --- Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote: > > > > > Someone's definition of "novel" is "long prose work with something wrong > > with it", > > That's a good one! And I take the liberty to agree with the author: > the voice is fine. As long as I'm posting bromides: Someone once said something like, "All books should be titled, 'How To Be More Like Me'". It applies to the earlier Vladiad (while 'How I Can Be Someone Else' might apply later.) > Spoiler warning for _Yendi_, I guess. > > > > For people like me, all the death that no one cares about > is disturbing. Especially the SiG's guards. Why revive > her but not them? Were their souls destroyed? General for the Vladiad/later Paarfiad. > I find it annoying that Vlad interrupts Morrolan *twice* when > Morrolan is about to give Vlad the clue that the SiG is a Yendi. I only recall once - during the introduction of tSiG. > Also, it's got plot holes. Something I always suspected, but ... > Why didn't it occur to Laris that he was putting himself in the SiG's > power? It's sort of mutual - and she dies before he does, for one thing. And of course it may have seemed like a good bargain at the time, or have been made out of necessity (perhaps due to a situation engineered by tSiG.) > Why does the SiG give Vlad a useful clue by sounding out Norathar on the > invasion of the East? Bad luck? Compression of events by Vlad (perhaps he found out about the conversation through his Castle Black network)? Perhaps his reasoning was more lucky than rational and he added bolstering elements afterwards to make himself look more logical? > I'd think she's be focusing on how to keep Norathar from becoming > Empress, since N. is sure to want revenge and will have excellent > resources for finding out who slandered her parents. A problem for another day (a nice war with the East might keep N busy, for example)? The slander plot was really hard to figure out (by Dragaeran standards anyway)? > One point of the SiG/Laris plot is to disgrace Morrolan and > Aliera. Well, that works--they intervene in a Jhereg matter. Not publicly. No death, no foul. > they even found out who the Sword is? Have they blown their > chances of becoming Warlord, which seems to be important to them? Can't really see them bothering at this point. Esp. as in any real war Sethra would likely run things. > (Speaking of which, I don't think we ever found out why StY > wasn't working on invading the East now instead of thinking > ahead to the next reign.) Can't see Z**4 approving, given her family situation and the pressure >from the J. And the East is really a sideshow at this point - no invasion would survive post-Interregnum sorcery. Unless there's some compensating breakthrough in witchcraft. > [complaints about cool action bits excised] > (And I'm hoping to see Menthar again.) [booksearch] That would be the Phoenix Guard who pummels Vlad, and presumably meets a MonteCristoian end... > > By the way, why "YENDI"? > > Because Vlad comes to terms with--indeed, wallows in--the Yendi > side of his character? Sorry, I meant, why does SKZB write "YENDI", using caps to underline? Many posters here write "_Yendi_". I intended a link to the overloading of punctuational operaters discussion.