[LMB] [SPAM?] Topics

[paal at gis.net]

----- Original Message Follows -----
> It occurred to me why the topic of animals in the Chalionverse failed.
> They were simply not that interesting. You have cats and dogs, horses
> and mules and donkeys, roosters and foxes, etc. The only difference
> was their role in divining where a soul went and to whom, and that has
> been thoroughly explored. 

The animals are a minor part of the books, as regards amount of time
they're present and their continuing direct importance to the stories. 
They're in some ways rather like furniture--things that people sit in,
trip over, the furniture in fantasy stories may take a sudden brief
active role (sit in the Siege Perilous and fry if you don't meet the
requirements for survival), but it's furniture and rarely any continuing
character in a story, or controversial feature.  It's not Mary Sue wish
fulfillment magic horses or dragons or familiars generally to bond with
(one book has some of that, though, come to think of it--but that wasn't
"animals" in general, that one the limited exceptions of one suppressed
culture, in one book).

Other factors are that there have been how many, three, books, compared
to how many set in the Nexus, and the current series in progress, is a
different fantasy universe, in a very different style, that the third
book will be coming out on, and a fourth in some stage of
writing/production.  Since the past two to three years have featured the
world of the continuing story of Fawn and [can't think of his name] now,
versus the three books set in the universe that Chalion is in all
focusing on different places and with two of the books having a slight
overlap in the characters and settings, it's a lot easier for readers to
think about the current series, or the Nexus which had a bunch of mostly
very closely related books.