On 4/7/06, Alexx Kay <alexx at panix.com> wrote: > > > > Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune is out in paperback. Edited by Lynn Abbey. > > > > Cover blurb says: "Includes YEAR'S BEST FANTASY story > > "The Man from Shemhaza" by Steven Brust. > > > > I had to turn the book on the shelf in the store so that > > people could see the cover. There were not enough copies on the shelf... > > so I was not able to sneak a book over to the new book sections. > > > > It is a great story! > > Well, it might be a great *Thieve's World* story, but if you don't like > that sort of thing (which I don't)... > > I read the first few TW books many many years ago, but eventually stopped. > Reading SKZB's story reminded me of why I stopped. Mild spoiler follows: And there's also a somewhat more important spoiler in my reply, so be warned... > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > As near as I can tell, in all TW stories, any sympathetic character must > eventually either be betrayed to an ugly fate, or turn out to not actually > be sympathetic at all once their secrets are revealed. Steve's story did > not upset this precedent. > I have a feeling that the whole point of "The Man from Shemhaza" was Steve musing over how someone might be able to defeat a presumptively perfect lie-detection device, such as, say, the Orb of Dragaera. So the multiple nonsense-paradoxical-autocontradictory phrases of the song would presumably have some analog that, say, Vlad might have had running through his mind during his interrogation. And something similar perhaps was what Zerika was referring to when she strongly implied that someone skilled in the arts of Discretion would be able to lie outright while under the Orb. Not that I disagree with your assessment.