Initiate's Trial: Second Sneak Preview

Dave - har!! - nice guess, but…

originally posted by Neil

Above comments: "Sulfin Evend no doubt stayed with him there for as long as he could".

- Hmm, yes before he was named heretic :wink: F7 / others(?) predicted that he could not succeed given divided loyaties…he may have suffered persecution before he died?

Dakar…"might not have re-joined Arithon".

- my feeling is that this is not going to happen. Arithon does not need Dakar's protection now. Dakar seemed to have chosen to align his choices to Fellowship interests (possibly quite rightly?). Arithon and Elaira seem to have conflicting interests / opinions to F7 at the end of SF. An interesting tension?

As an aside, recenty rereading parts of COTM. Sethvir seems to have gone out of his way to "persude" someone to return a crown emerald to him. This did not read like freewill to me…Arithon refers to Sethvir's "pilthering" in SF.

One of my fears is that in the last 200 years, the free wraiths arrived, caused havoc, F7 et al. resolved but the public suffered and later took it out on the clans. This could leave clanblood solely in the priesthood and in the towns.

Janny, I would welcome a might not have re-joined Arithon review snippet from clan point of view to reassure me some are still alive :wink:

The honest to gosh problem with pulling excerpts from this volume is the almighty mess of spoilers that would result - and even sections that "look" innocuous are not really so, because they are pulled so disjointedly from the integrity of the Actual material - any fragment unveiled quite naturally tends to evoke a lot of spurious speculation, zinging off on totally crazed tangents. Because the true connections must remain hidden, such glimpses would, in the end, make you quite nuts! If not (erroneously!) leave you feeling stranded, not because you WERE, but because showing the central action would throw the game, and I can't do that… picking innocuous bits makes the rest seem Not There, when it's Very Much There! Too much there to show!

If you are worried that NO clans survive - don't. If you are worried there will be no character you recognize - don't! The series is NOT going to leave you stranded in that way. I wouldn't just "saw off" a whole segment of action or not finish off the tale with respect to central themes - you will know how the threads span volumes, and the characters who are central to the story's presence will stay at center stage.

I am not, but definitely doing the "next generation" Ok?

That does not mean the next arc will be predictable…but I have to be terribly bothersomely selective about what I choose to reveal of its development, or your brains will definitely boil.

originally posted by Kirsten Laurelle Wallace

I think we all like having our brains boiled…

Thanks for the reasssurance though. I was getting a little stressed about whether Arithon and Lysaer were still going to be the focal point of the series (silly, I know.)

originally posted by starstorm

quote:

That does not mean the next arc will be predictable



Oh, goodness… if anybody who's been reading the series still thinks that they can predict where you're going to take us, Janny, well… I will be polite and say that I highly doubt them :smiley:

I love it all the more that it isn't predictable!

~Anna

originally posted by Mark Stephen Kominski

And besides, whatever would Clanny, Greebo and I argue about if it was predictable? Our Chrons buddy Dekket, too, if he ever chooses to reveal himself here…

They likes having their brains boiled…be quite careful what you ask for…!

originally posted by Mark Stephen Kominski

Hmmm, boiled brains…isn't that haggas, or haggis, or something like that? Or maybe that's what they were serving in the 2nd Indian Jones movie, complete with fine monkey's head china?

Swallows fast - if I take a quick exit to Drive The Bus (euphemism, if you don't know this one, figure it out!) the manuscript will only become - delayed.

originally posted by Mark Stephen Kominski

*Images of Janny as the school bus driver in The Magic School Bus appear*

Sorry, having children breeds familiarity with such thoughts…by all means, please return to the manuscript! :wink:

*The chanting begins amongst the visitors to Paravia.com, softly at first, but growing louder…man-u-script, Man-u-Script, Man-U-Script, Man-U-SCRIPT, MAN-U-SCRIPT, MAN-…*

originally posted by Christopher Beckett

[THERE ARE STORMED FORTRESS SPOILERS HERE]
Oh,
I am thoroughly teased. The prospect of Sulfin Evend's issue being called to serve the land, and be a Caithdein against Lysaer's wishes is very interesting.

The notion of Evend's end, given his precarious moral position at the end of SF is too interesting.

I think SF was a good ending point for a number of characters, Sidir and Feithan should be left their retirement in Halwythwood, Feylind needs to be mourned, Glendien's daughter needs to grow up and in the meantime, Lysaer has to recover from the reverse and his near-consumption by the Curse at Alestron. What role will Sulfin Even play there? How will the Alliance and the religion of the Light hold up? With Aveor a slagged wasteland, will Lysaer relocate to Etarra?

The thing is, the most pressing issue (it seemd to me) at the end of SF was Elaira's need to discover about her crystal - what will happen there?

Given the sneak spoilers so far released, I have to assume the time frame (by this point of the book) has jumped forward at least 20-30 years, perhaps more. Perhaps things go quiet for a while, after Sulfin Evend's apparent arrainment for heresy? Maybe Elaira is forced back into close Koriani supervised service, while Selidie plots.

Also, I am a little confused by the notion of multiple clan blood lines in Etarra. For all the mixed breeding in the world, surely sensitive clan blood would naturally shun the area as the force lanes there should be left untrammeled by habitation? Or have I mis-interpreted that?

Anyway, my brain is fired up, starting to smoke a little and make a strange whirring noise.

Thank you Janny, I've never enjoyed a series more or been more consistently interested - dare I say it, genuinely CARED in what will happen next.

C

(Message edited by admin on November 23, 2008)

originally posted by Mark Stephen Kominski

I think the earlier consensus (see the Archived postings at the top of this thread) was something more like 200 years, Chris, but just speculating…

Yipes, I cannot BELIEVE it's been near to five months since I posted the above preview…authorial grumble that time just flies when a book's in progress…maybe dig for an Arithon glimpse. Ah, maybe, maybe…is there one without spoils? Nah. Weensie spoils? Waffle. Maybe. Not.

Have to thumb down some pages and murfle over it.

originally posted by Brittani

Some of us are gonna get ulcers or high blood pressure or something if you keep tempting us like this!

Come on just a little bitty something, even a few words…

Ah, blush - I'm going to do this for a readership of ONE?

grin. Waves to Brittani. Christmas is coming, but, six months is long enough to wait.

Back to thumbing possible pages.

(Perhaps they're just off reading the new mass market release of Stormed Fortress, eh?)

originally posted by Zorana Lewis

I'm around, just drowning under the mass of essays and university work being thrown in my general direction. That and trying to pursuade my printer that it doesn't want to print essays in bright, barbie pink.

The printer won.

My essay was handed in, in bright, barbie pink. Ah well. It'll make a change.

originally posted by Clansman

ONE, you say? Just because we happen to be lurking instead of filling cyberspace with our speculations (that almost always turn out to be horribly wrong)? Perhaps we just need a little (turkey bones aside) something to chew on? (I wonder how the phrase "chew the fat" arose to mean conversation?).

The last bit was worried on for quite a while.

I wonder where Arithon is now???

Barbie pink essay??? Automatic F(NS) in my book!:smiley:

originally posted by Zorana Lewis

lol. Well my argument will be that I'm feeling feminist as the essay was about women's rights in South Africa during the apartheid. :smiley:

originally posted by Clansman

Isn't pink a female stereotype, and therefore against the grain of feminism? Don't mind me, as I'm a lawyer and we pick apart statements for a living.

Quite an interesting topic, I must say. I don't know much about it, but my impression was that for certain people, namely the majority, there were no rights at all, let alone women's rights. Is this paper focussed on black women's, indian-descent women's, or white women's rights? Or all of them?

Sometimes I actually miss university, as learning new stuff has always interested me. Not the constant lack of money though (I really got sick of pasta).

originally posted by Zorana Lewis

Well I never said I had an intelligent argument to give - I usually study the History of Warfare, but this module is my MOMD so you are asking the wrong person about feminists. :smiley:

The actual title is "Describe and discuss the types of life choices possible for black women in the first half of the twentieth century."

And quite a lot of their lack of choices revolves around their legal status as 'minors' so I went into quite a lot of detail about that, so you could really call it more a paper on the rights of black women than their life choices. Ah well.

And yeah, I love university, apart from the financial side of it.