[Dragaera] Hawk thoughts

[Andrew Mason via Dragaera]

Greetings! I've been lurking for some time, but haven't felt able to post
until now because I hadn't read all the relevant books, but I think I have
now managed to catch up.

Here are a few thoughts about _Hawk_:

1. I was disappointed, but not really surprised, to find that Paarfi was
not in this book. I _was_ surprised to find that Vlad Norathar’s porcelain
hawk from _Iorich_ was not in it; when I read that passage I had supposed
it was a set-up for _Hawk_.


2. Vlad can’t have been killed _immediately_ after the end of the story,
since he has time to dictate it. But the odds on his survival seem to be
diminishing. One wonders how close we are to the end of the saga: there are
five books to go, but some of them at least are likely to be flashbacks.
Indeed, I think we have been given a hint about where _Vallista_ fits in;
and there are plenty of events earlier in Vlad’s career that we would like
to know more about.   So it may be that we are now quite close to the final
conflict.


3. Vlad refers to Cawti as his ex-wife, which I don’t think he has ever
explicitly done before. This raises questions about how divorce works in
Dragaera. I do wonder if they have marriages by habit and repute, and, as
the converse of that, divorces by habit and repute – i.e. once two people
stop living together and giving themselves out as married, they are no
longer married. This would of course mean that on some occasions it might
be uncertain whether they were in fact married or not.


 4. On a related note, who is Deragar’s mother?


5. Vlad seems to have met the Warlock between _Iorich_ and now. Talking of
which, has he actually used the word ‘warlock’ before? Paarfi uses it in a
way which suggests it might be simply an equivalent of ‘witch’, but Vlad’s
use seems to imply that it is not so. Is it perhaps the equivalent for
witches of ‘wizard’ for sorcerers?


6. Will we see Asyavn again?


7. There seem to be a couple of retcons; we get an explanation of
invisibility which makes it clear why it is not as universally helpful as
one might think; and it’s suggested that Vlad, when wearing his amulet,
cannot get the time from the Orb unless he is very close to it.