Tremble in the Dark: A Gwen Farris Novel

[daniel1948]

[Korwin]

[daniel1948]

Learning is good. Suddenly acquiring a new super-power every time there's a new challenge is boring.

[Kat]

Dale doesn't do that at all!

New superpowers never just come, they're either acquired during training or a natural result or extension of what the chars can do at that point in time anyway, applied in a slightly different way. Like in the Alternate Places the Alede healing and Zack's immortality, or in the young Ancients Timon's on the spot creation of new builds (which he practiced!) or Tor's direct effect magic, or in the Keeley series her enslaving a minor demon over the phone, stuff like that. No comparison at all to Anita Blake's super sollection (I'm convinced that Buffy is the continuation of Anita Blake btw with Anita=Glory)

[Kat]

A quick question...
Many of the magical things strike me as a kind of cross between the young Ancient 'artifacts', the infected's superpowers AND that other Infected world's powers, Alternate/Other Places and Keeley's void and imprisoned gods from Alternate plus...well, all kinds of things really.
So what I really want to know is if there is any chance that some of the chars from other books will run into each other in that world since, due to many connections with those other worlds, the Gwen Farris world seems to be somewhere in the middle between those very different worlds somehow. Closer than, say, the Lament Universe would be to Dead End. If you put Gwen Farris' steampunk world in the middle you could see more connections between them. Just as an example.

[David]

It sounds likely to me. Even Dale said all his books were more closely connected than we realize in a recent post. Maybe one of the universes is actually the computer world in lament...

[RyanM]

Threadomancy!

Gwen's powers aren't really the problem, it's the lack of a cohesive, recurrent nemesis and an overly accommodating power structure. She can teleport, has mild precognitive capabilities, she has low power energy blasts, and eventually she'll learn how to rift, but until she can move that into a machine, it's a one off. Nothing she has is unique and she has weaknesses: she's not physically powerful, she's susceptible to mental attacks, and she can be beaten easily in a fight (as proven by Peter and I probably Darren/Billy too). She's also in the first stages of drug addiction from the pleasure device and has a volatile personality living in her head that sporadically asserts her will, so certainly not a perfect hero like Superman.

Honestly, I would like to see those in power resist and restrain her a bit more. She needs some chastisement, oversight, and a leash. I understand King Ferdinand is likely in love with her, but she has caused just as many problems as she's solved and needs to learn to think before acting; a real leader would restrain her in some manner so she can learn patience and critical thinking. After all, doing something to isn't always better than doing nothing.

As to Christophe and Lisa's incomplete whispered message, I think she was trying to save the world from him. I find it highly unlikely that nobles that use high magic levels as relationship criteria would have a child with low magical abilities. It would be like 2 7-foot people having a 5-foot child; possible, but extremely unlikely. I find it much more likely that Christophe has extreme abilities that are somehow dampened with a localized null magic field: maybe some jewelry, a curse, something implanted. Lisa loved him, but I think she also feared what he might become if the truth became known -- power corrupts and all that.