I recently read Jo Walton's _Tooth and Claw_, which is "What if dragons had such a biology that their females acted the way the women in Victorian novels act?" For instance, females have no claws. Also, while virgin they have gold scales--but if a lustful male comes too close, the female turns pink and is permanently ruined, unless he marries her. The reason I'm mentioning it is that there are comments from the narrator that reminded me *very* much of Paarfi. Maybe Walton has been reading Brust, or maybe they've both read Dumas, or something. However, I didn't think T&C was all that good. The Victorian dragons were fun, but I saw very little of the sly irony of Trollope (Walton's main model) or Austen. And somehow it seemed that Walton was deliberately making things less exciting. She didn't milk a deathbed scene the way the Victorians did, and she glossed over the fights, though she handled fighting so effectively in _The King's Peace_ and _The King's Name_. (I speak as a military non-expert.) The villain is nowhere near as despicable as a Dickens villain. So my rating is "okay, but not great". If you haven't read Walton, start with _The King's Peace_. But if you need a pompous-narrator fix... Jerry Friedman __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250