Having read this, I had context of Arhu's backstory, but it pretty thoroughly puts into perspective on Arhu's "SCREW EVERYONE THEY WILL ONLY HURT YOU. ONLY YOU CAN HELP YOU." perspective on life, because, well. *gestures at everything*

I remember one of the times that DD declined to talk about it and this post finally explains why (entirely understandable), thanks for pointing that out. In my head for most of my teen/adult life, they'd always been a couple (or at least they sure seemed like someone should have told them to start dating already since everyone else could tell they were Meant To Be.

Currently dealing with the image of Bob the Builder except he's a dinosaur and is trying to take over a parallel universe and then possibly our own.

OMG 1997 WAS TWO DECADES AGO. I'm definitely having temporal shock right now.

But yeah, relative to everything we've read, and the forms we've read, these books are very old.

For what it's worth, one point to note, as far as DD's writing goes, is that she's said herself (I'm pretty sure, though don't remember where) that her writing has grown/strengthened over time. I think this was published after book 3 or 4, so in the scope of her writing (or at least writing in this universe) it's somewhere in the middle. Perhaps some choices she made in writing these books she wouldn't necessarily make if she were writing them now.

I actually haven't read this one in a while, so I don't recall all of the details around this death (other than it happening, which was firmly burned in my mind from my teenage years (or whenever I read this), but one take-away that I'm having re-reading it now is just how different the deaths felt. How significant Sue's death feels to me makes me notice how for granted I took everyone's death at the concert, even though of course each of those people had full lives, people that cared for them, aspirations, etc. It's easy to write off tragedy when it's not your own.

Also, it's a reminder that death is hardly constrained to a convenient schedule. It's deeply sobering, but that's certainly life.

Unfortunately, between you and the door you're nope-ing out of are about a hundred Wise Ones. So. There's that.

^This! DD usually has good forewords and also whatever you call those one page mini excerpt thingies that can set the stage like an amuse for a meal.

The note on Ailurian is good context though--you'll be talking conversationally to cats in no time ;)

I think timing wise to work out where in the flow of narrative the Feline Wizards books are, the best way is to look at all of the original publication dates, since DD always wrote in "comic book time" originally. After reading all of the Feline Wizards books and then looking at the main YW books, you can actually work out around when things are happening, but the publication dates are an easier shortcut.

I think that was meant to be Rhoshaun.

I think about this sometimes, and tend to come around to the Planetary's comment that it's hard to see effect of the world being cared for without evidence of the world being _not_ cared for in comparison. I personally suspect that there's some stricture about what changes are appropriate while still being within the bounds of the Oath. I think we've been given the sense through other books that the there's a strong requirement to respect Life as it is, and even though the LP brought a horrible doom on Wimst, Life worked its way around it, so now, in a way, life has accepted it.

I sorta think of it like crashing a car into a tree, leaving it there, and having the tree grow around the car over passing millennia. After that's happened, just "pulling out the car" is going to undeniably impact Life, and so making a choice about it needs to be done carefully--like maybe you only take very small pieces of the car so the tree can grow in the spaces that are vacated when you remove it. The ability of the Tauff to pass down life experiences, personalities, etc. in their genetic coding arose from millennia of suffering the Doom, and on some level it's a part of them. It's true that the cannibalism is distasteful to us as people, but it's also part of their way of life (and there are species on earth that can be cannibalistic as well, it's just that we don't go around thinking of them having conversations).