> At the same time, I'm not sure I can conceive of Sethra being > in any way > shape or form interested in secretly being Paarfi... Not that there's > anything not to like about Paarfi, understand, he just > doesn't strike me > as the type of person that Sethra would be willing to put with. > > Majikjon Prefaces, forwards, etc... are, I believe, normally commissioned by publishers rather than by authors. The "afterword" to _Sethra Lavode_ is ostensibly written by someone who has met Paarfi and admires him. (Pararectally, the description of Paarfi sounds a lot like a sardonic description of Brust himself.) It's a rather big stretch for me to imagine Sethra turning herself into a man and living Paarfi's apparently semi-decadent life, including seducing one of his groupies... Now, you can speculate that Paarfi is nothing more than a shill and that Sethra does the actual writing (Think _Without A Clue_, the film whose premise was that Watson was the actual detective and that "Holmes" was actually an actor hired as a front man. Rather like _Remington Steele_, now that I think about it.) but I think the textev at this point supports the existence of an actual person answering to the name "Paarfi of Roundwood".