[Dragaera] Alexx's Jhegaala thoughts

[Philip Hart]

On Sat, 26 Jul 2008, Alexx Kay wrote:

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First off, first-rate post, not that we would have expected 
anything else - thanks.

>
> This story commences very soon after Phoenix.  Vlad says "A few weeks
> ago, I'd been married. A few weeks before that, happily married" (Ja 23).
> This is clearly an understatement, as by the end of  _Phoenix_ his
> marriage had already been unhappy for at least eleven weeks.

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.


> The reasons for the difference in where you threaten a Dragaeran and an
> Easterner with a knife

[Great stuff snipped.]  However one might also consider that Dragaerans
know (?) for sure that they will have a chance of their souls returning.
Presumably for Easterners the afterlife is murky.


[Stuff I need to reread the book before commenting on snipped]

> across her during his year of recovery.  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.?


> How did the Jhereg locate Vlad?  Three possibilities that I see:
> * Removing his Gold Phoenix stone, even for a few moments, was enough to
> get a fix on him.  This would imply that Gold Phoenix stone has a much
> smaller radius of effect than Black (which protects Vlad even when resting
> on his pillow).  On my next reread, I must watch for evidence about this,
> one way or the other.  I don't care for this answer, as it makes Vlad seem
> to be an idiot for leaving such an opening.

I've commented about this a lot in earlier threads.  I don't get it.


> 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.


> 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.


> 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.


> 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.


> 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.


> 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.

See my comments elsewhere.  He's done this in other Texts, and with
Loiosh too.  I speculated there's some parallel with Loiosh, the
readers, Vlad and his sense of superiority (recall Buffy with her
inferiority complex about her superiority complex), and SKZB here,
also relevant for the degree of violence Vlad undergoes in the book.
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_.


> be good, and so they acted." (Ja 294).  While this is probably true as
> far as it goes, it is, to say the least, woefully inadequate as a motive
> for mass murder.

Yeah.


[Interesting speculation snipped.  Will come back to it when I've
reread _Jhegaala_.]  Well, one comment - Jhegaala's story might be
in some ways as mutable as the animal....