Dragaera

Reading Order WAS Re: Iceflame was Tukko (Massive wods of Issola Spoilers)

Maximilian Wilson wilson.max at gmail.com
Fri Jun 2 18:32:29 PDT 2006

On 6/2/06, Jon Lincicum <lincicum at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Martin Wohlert wrote:
> > However, even after a re-read (or is it two?) I still think that the
> > the ending of _Issola_ is quite woolly...
> It does go by rather quickly, and /Issola/ of all the Vlad books, is, to
> date, the one that is most dependent on having read the other books (esp
> /Dragon/,  /TPG/ and /FHYA/) to fully appreciate.
>
> Perhaps /Dzur/ will eclipse it in this respect. I think Steve may have
> given up on the idea of writing the books in such a way that the order
> does not matter.
>

My introduction to Dragaera was a brief mention of it on a Usenet group a
year and a half or so ago, followed by a skim through a web page (not sure
whose), followed by a glance at Tor's sample chapter of Issola. That was the
hook; I found a copy of Issola and read it and loved it, and went looking
for the other books to figure out all the backstory. I kept hoping each
story would reveal how Vlad lost his finger; eventually I figured out that I
hadn't missed anything, Steve just never explained it. :) I don't know that
I "fully" appreciated /Issola/ the first time through, since I hadn't read
Orca. For instance, the Third Floor Relic quip made no impression on me
whatsoever. But I didn't "fully" appreciate Yendi the first time either, for
the same reason.

I think Steve did a marvellous job of making Issola a viable entry-point
into the series, and I hope /Dzur/ is just as good.

-Max

-- 
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.