[Dragaera] Alexx's Jhegaala thoughts

[Alexx Kay]

> On Sat, 26 Jul 2008, Alexx Kay wrote:
>
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> The timeline pre Vlad's breakup with Cawti has always confused me.  In
> _Jhereg_ everything's hunky dory; in _Teckla_ it's suddenly almost over.

>From Vlad's point of view, it no doubt did seem abrupt.  But real
relationship failures do happen that way, especially when a lack of
communication is one of the root causes.

>> If it was important that Tereza
>> not be allowed to talk, why would Orbahn have been left alive?
>
> He's got too much pull/too many allies/etc.?

There's definitely more to him than we're told.  Vlad's got an awfully
high opinion of him based on two conversations and some indirect
observations.

>> How did the Jhereg locate Vlad?  Three possibilities that I see:
[...]
>> witchcraft just doesn't seem to operate on such an immediate basis.
>> [And
>> how would the Jhereg even think of such a ritual?  That part's easy.
>> Any
>> assassin researching Vlad would have talked to Daymar under some
>> pretense
>> or other, and I find it entirely plausible that he would talk at length
>> about this "fascinating problem in interdisciplinary magic" that he once
>> had to solve.]
>
> I can't imagine they could find the witches to do this, esp.
> good-enough ones, esp. ones willing to take out Vlad, esp. in a few
> weeks.  Plus a Daymar-level psy op.  Plus I doubt Daymar would be
> locatable or would cooperate knowing Vlad is on the run.

Devil's Advocate:

Vlad is a highly skilled, if unorthodox, witch, but there's no reason
there shouldn't be more skilled ones than he for hire in a city the size
of Adrilankha.  And likely ones he'd never met, since he never seemed
active in the "witch community" (assuming there even was such a thing
there).  While the Jhereg do not *typically* hire witches, there doesn't
seem to be any reason why they *couldn't*, especially for a job as unusual
ad important as this one.

While Daymar wouldn't deliberately help them find Vlad, he might
unwittingly give them enough information to duplicate what he did.  And
there's no particular reason to think that what he did was inherently
difficult for a sorcerer or psionicist to perform, once they knew the
general outlines.  It was more complicated than Vlad could work out how to
do on his own, but Vlad is notably *not* skilled at either of those
disciplines.

>> Since the Coven/Guild clearly fears Vlad, they might well try to summon
>> that which Vlad himself fears, to counter him.  I find this possibility
>> the most satisfying of the three.
>
> I find this highly implausible, but.

It wouldn't have been my first choice either, but once you've eliminated
the impossible, people start quoting Sherlock Holmes :-)

Seriously though, I think all three suggestions are plausible, though each
also has problems.  While I like the third best, I don't claim it has a
much stronger basis than either of the others.

>> Vlad's jhereg are attacked "When they grabbed you, Boss. As soon as they
>> grabbed you-" (Ja 180).  How to pull off such precise timing?
>
> Recall from _Teckla_ I think that Vlad uses sympathy to use a coin as
> a signal.

Will have to check that on my next re-read.  Did he do that via witchcraft
or sorcery?  Lots of people in _Jhegaala_ have access to witchcraft, but
we have no evidence that any of them have access to sorcery.  (Though
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.)

>> Dahni calls Vlad "Lord Taltos" (Ja 129).  Who told him that name?  Vlad
>> appears to notice, but doesn't explicitly say so anywhere in the text.
>
> See other threads - he's working with the supposedly invisible assassin.
> Who managed to find Vlad I'm not sure how.

It is strongly implied that Dahni learned the name from the assassin.  But
(as in so many other places) the text never explicitly tells us, which
leaves me suspicious.

>> Vlad says "Dahni said that talking to me in the dark like that would
>> give
>> him an edge." (Ja 199).  What Dahni *actually* said was, "I saw you
>> heading out there.  I thought it might give me an edge." (Ja 153).
>> Dahni
>> makes no explicit mention of darkness, or of Vlad's poor night vision
>> (unless it was lost somewhere in the chain of recollections and
>> translations between the event and the text).  Why doesn't Vlad mention
>> Dahni's use of his real name at this juncture?
>
> Yes, I thought this was a thin reed for Vlad's later conclusions, but
> a lot of those were of the I-can-jump-across-that-ravine sort.

Something I never quite managed to verbalize in my earlier rant: If one
takes the events in this book at face value, Vlad takes all of his
actions, including those which deliberately result in his enemies' deaths,
from incredibly circumstantial evidence.  Now, I don't require my
protagonist to prove his conclusions in a court of law, but the degree of
Vlad's (apparent) recklessness made it harder than usual for me to
sympathize with him.

>> A digression here.  I found reading _Jhegaala_ for the first time
>> immensely frustrating.    Vlad deliberately withholds important
>> information from the reader on at least ten different occasions.
[...]
> But it's also a noir convention - Marlowe knows a lot that he only
> tells/explains to Anne Riordan (and the reader) at the end of _Farewell,
> My Lovely_.

And if Vlad *had* explained things at the end, I might well have been
satisfied.  Of the ten things I refer to above, half of them remain
unexplained by the end, and several others remained significantly vague
after their 'explanation'.

Alexx