[Dragaera] Re-reading Jhereg

[Steve Rapaport]

It's hard to believe, reading Jhereg again, just how much is in that!

Yes, I know Steve and Adrian et al had played the world out until it was
real, that's impressive too but not what I mean.

It's a huge, sprawling work in just 17 chapters, holding back nothing.
 Almost every plot point in the series up to Issola seems to have been
anticipated somewhere in this little book, though not always in agreement
with what later shows up.  There is far, far more in this book than the book
itself needs for its own plot; a lot of it seems to be there to provide
hooks for the later books.

A few examples of things like that, in retrospect:  (Remember, the book is
about unravelling Mellar's revenge)

* The presence of the Necromancer, Sorceress in Green, and Sethra the
Younger
* Wondering how Sethra knows things that only Kiera has been told
* Wondering about Kragar's past and actually asking him
* The Jenoine at Dzur Mountain, and Jenoine genetic games in general
* Tortaalik and Adron's Disaster
* All about Castle Black including its history and why Morrolan calls it
that
* Aliera, Kieron, Dolivar and Sethra
* Lady Teldra's special gifts
* Reincarnation interacts 'oddly' with genetics
* How to summon a Jhereg as familiar
* How an E'Kieron can create amorphia
* Differences in Eastern and Dragaeran fencing style
etc...

Some of these are crucial to the story, but most are not, or could have been
left out.  But they're all there.  If there's anything I miss in the later
books it's this incredible richness.  But now I'm wondering if the richness
was there to build the world, and now it's built, and it's now down to
politics, economics, and battles with Jenoine and gods.

The downside to this is that later books like *Iorich* seem almost flat in
comparison.  We get in, get the plot over with, and we're done.

-- 
\Steve