This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
I removed:
- Meaningful Name - Jame is short for Jamethiel, although very few people in the book seem to pick up on this.
because it doesn't seem to agree with what Meaningful Name is supposed to be about, according to that linked page - that seems to be more about names that are meant to be meaningful to the reader.
Madrugada That spoiler about under Kill It with Fire makes sooooooooooo much sense. Does that take fire, to, or did all the ones in Karkinaroth freed when the place collapsed?
Morven: The death banners? There were none in Karkinaroth; or do you mean the Kencyr priests trapped inside the temple, or do you indeed mean the death banners inside the Master's House, which also collapsed (albeit a year or so earlier, and thanks to Jame setting it on fire)?
Madrugada: The ones in the Master's House.
Morven: (warning, spoilers abound in the following; be warned) The ones in the Master's House weren't actually in Karkinaroth; the Palace there became linked to the Master's House. A corridor leading there appeared in the Palace. The collapse of the palace (due to the Kencyr priests dying inside the Temple and the power inside thus running amok) quite likely severed the connection, but was I think unlikely to affect the Master's House directly.
On the other hand, Jame setting fire to the place and leaving it a burned-out shell on the night Gerridon first tried to make her his bride and replacement soul-gathering sorceress is quite likely to have indeed burned those banners inside the house (or at least some proportion of them). It appears that Jamethiel could reap the souls inside the death banners for Gerridon as well (see the short story "House of Woven Shadows" collected in Blood and Ivory: A Tapestry) and that it was quite likely that the death banners were already being depleted due to Gerridon's running short of souls to harvest.
That running short being the reason for the changers' revolt, of course; they were pretty sure Gerridon would turn on them and eat their souls too.
What complicates the question is the way the Master's House exists in both past and present simultaneously; Gerridon retreats to the House's past where time passes more slowly, we're told, and especially after Jame burns it he lives there almost exclusively.
One does wonder what he's up to, now Jamethiel is gone and souls are no longer being reaped to feed his immortality. One does suspect that Jamethiel's daughter Jame and his own son Kindrie are involved somehow; I doubt we've seen the last of him.
If you're interested in this stuff, the Kencyr Wiki at http://kencyr.wikia.com/
could do with someone else except me writing there!
- Morven: by the way, the above proves what an absolute nerd I am about this series.
Madrugada: I haven't gotten past the first two books. I made the mistake of getting caught up in the flow of ''Dark Of The Moon' and read it far too fast, so when I was done, I was completely bewildered and felt like it was a waste of time — nothing had really made sense. That was years ago, and I never gave it another try until recently, (when I found one of your examples here, in fact.) This time I put it in the bathroom, so I only read a page or so at a time, and doing that, I could follow it and keep up with all the characters and their relationships. Now I'm going to look for the rest of them. (And spoilers don't bother me at all.)
Morven: Ah, good (about the spoilers). I'm the same way; I read books for the journey, and spoilers rarely bother me. Any book that is ruined by spoilers isn't one that can be reread, and I like to re-read.
Pat Hodgell fairly explodes with ideas, and that does make the books complex; there's a lot of world in there.
Book 3, Seeker's Mask, is the hardest read the first time. Pat was in a very dark place in her life when she wrote it, and thus Jame is in a pretty dark place as well. Dark of the Moon was also written in a state of deep depression (Word of God on this one) but I think Seeker's Mask was the worse time, and it shows. Strong Jame will be reduced and will be despairing, and it's a little hard to take at times. There is light at the end of that tunnel, though, and it's reached by the end of that book. To Ride a Rathorn was written from a much happier point of view, and again it shows.
Incidentally, if you're going to buy the next two books, I'd urge you to buy the e-book available from Baen, or wait for the reprinting that Baen are going to be releasing this summer. Sales from her current publisher will encourage Baen to keep her and renew her contract, and with Pat's history with publishers, she needs all the help she can get. Furthermore, Meisha Merlin (the last publisher) folded having essentially never paid her a cent of what they owed her in royalties, especially for TRAR, so it's nice to buy one that she actually gets paid for. (I actually bought both the e-book and the paper copies, but I'm a nutty fan; I wouldn't necessarily recommend that insanity!)
Damien: After SM a lot of readers assume all the God-Voice incidents have been faked by the Arrin-Ken. But I rather suspect that Jame's second one, at the end of God Stalk, was genuine (whatever that means.) (a) it was prophetic and (b) it signed itself. Torrigion, Argentiel, Regonereth. I don't think an Arrin-Ken would. I also wonder if Immalai saw that memory in her mind — you'd think getting dubbed Tyr-ridan by God would leave more of an impression. But then Jame seems to avoid thinking about it.
Morven: I agree. Something was different about that one. And yes, Jame tries hard to not think of things, quite often — wanting to tumble through life without planning ahead. Partly perhaps because they're not exactly pleasant things to think about. But there's also the fact that her soul-image has been messed with and might not be her true soul-image at all — I do wonder if she has been intentionally psychically crippled by someone (Gerridon? or another?) and things in her mind deliberately disconnected. Thinking about it, Jame and Rawneth possibly have a lot in common as well, from flip-sides of the same reality; both walk through dream-images and soul-images like they're nothing, not like the healers do, but uninvited, passing through. One does wonder what Rawneth has cooked up with her Darkling associations ...
Madrugada: I thought it was made pretty clear in Seeker's Mask what Jame's true soul image is — the rathorn-armored human sleeping in the furs on the hearth. That's the one that Kindrie had to repair to heal her cheek. What's interesting is that that's also the one that Graykin protects — how did he discover it?
Morven: That's her real self-image, to be sure, but the landscape is not her true home, and it should be. Or so I (think I) understand.
Madrugada: Hmmm. could be. I guess that I was assuming that the landscape was what she believed her soul image was — Kindrie was trying to heal her by removing the stitching on the cheeks of the banners until he came to the realization that her soul-image had to be something else — so he was trying to repair the damage to her by repairing the damage to the house. If the soul-image is usually a person rather than possibly being anything, wouldn't he have looked for a person rather than working on the banners, considering how powerful a Healer he is?
Morven: I think so. Normally the landscape is the person, and Kindrie tried to heal that. But the Great Hall in the Master's House, although it appears to be her soul-image, is not part of it at all; healing it did no good. The her-in-rathorn-armor is really her, but that's a stunted soul-image to have, and not normal; it's worrying, too, that it appears to be trapped or at least living inside something evil, perhaps the soulscape of Gerridon or of the Fallen in general. As I understand it, the soul-images of the Kencyr join into soulscapes for their Houses and those into the collective soulscape of the Kencyrath; Jame appears to be isolated from it, adrift. Perhaps that's why she can move around there so much. And why she doesn't have the feeling of being one with her House and her people like she should. I think the rathorn armor is her forming a barrier between her soul and its evil surroundings; scar tissue, in a sense.
