_Shadow of Victory_ Comments

cnrd22 wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:Exactly. The place where the Mantie officer greets Firebrand in SoV ends quite abruptly, so we don't know what happens in the next instant. If RFC is going to follow the plan he mentioned in the podcast, Damien survives. If RFC decides he doesn't need Damien after all, Damien goes "uurk" and falls over dead.

The way DW talked about Damien in the podcast (he compared him with Victor), it's highly likely he will survive

Oh, I agree. On the other hand, given the target date for the last book, RFC will be working on it spring or summer 2017 (maybe earlier if he wants to give Baen a longer lead time for editing). It will have been over a year since that podcast was recorded. There's a lot of time for him to come up with another plot.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:

Sharidann wrote:copy-pasting Text-Ed from the Baen Snerker boards:



Points out to me that there was a misunderstanding...
Colin interpreted the fact that Harahap went to Gamma Center as "he got the whole package" but as Harahap had to get rushed to a mission, his sojourn on Mesa was too short for him to get the DNA-tailored Nanos

There is this explicit statement by Collin in chapter 23 on why Damien was in Gamma Center:

“Isabel was really rushed when she had him prepped, though. You know the suicide-protocol nannies have to be genetically coded and programmed before they can be injected. If she was going to get that done before she sent him out, the Gamma Center clinic was the best place to do it. But I don’t think you have to worry about anything he may have seen there. Among other things, she had Chernyshev personally escort him.”

He could only have known that from Isabel's report. Isabel would have only reported that if she had ordered it and the clinic reported that they did it. It is my working assumption that all internal inner onion communications are as accurate as the messenger can make them. External communications are assumed to be lies until proven innocent.

One thing to note there is a POV from firebrand where he is thinking about his new enhancements and how nice they are but also mentioning that he has to go back to green pines for the full package as some of it needed to be fully coded to his genetic code. That was before green pines went kablooy so while it is not 100% certain it looks like they thought he had them but he was not actually able to get back in time to receive them.

Also remember part of what happened at green pines made mince meat of a lot of their data/records that they are having to piece back together from fragments/debris/backups so they or may not even be able to confirm if firebrand actually had the treatment or not.

Yes, intentionally vague.

JohnRoth wrote:
Oh, I agree. On the other hand, given the target date for the last book, RFC will be working on it spring or summer 2017 (maybe earlier if he wants to give Baen a longer lead time for editing). It will have been over a year since that podcast was recorded. There's a lot of time for him to come up with another plot.

My impression (accentuated by the recent podcast but also from at least a year or two back and other podcasts and interviews with DW) is that DW has the last book clearly imagined and it is basically a combination of the "original ending" with the "ending of the taking down the SL" part of the originally planned follow up a generation later, leaving only the "dealing with the Alignment" part for the continuation as the series has now developed; that's one reason I predict a very important character will die in the finale (as Honor was supposed to die in the original finale) and Mike Henke seems the likeliest candidate to me both because of her very emotional message in the previous book when she decided to attack Mesa and due to the perfect set-up for Mesan "patriot" response to the so called "Manticoran atrocities" with which this volume ends.

Damien/Firebrand is perfectly positioned to be an agent of the good guys (Grand Alliance) in the follow up volumes so I think he will survive the last book at least

Though we shall see in a year or so...

cnrd22 wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:
Oh, I agree. On the other hand, given the target date for the last book, RFC will be working on it spring or summer 2017 (maybe earlier if he wants to give Baen a longer lead time for editing). It will have been over a year since that podcast was recorded. There's a lot of time for him to come up with another plot.

My impression (accentuated by the recent podcast but also from at least a year or two back and other podcasts and interviews with DW) is that DW has the last book clearly imagined and it is basically a combination of the "original ending" with the "ending of the taking down the SL" part of the originally planned follow up a generation later, leaving only the "dealing with the Alignment" part for the continuation as the series has now developed; that's one reason I predict a very important character will die in the finale (as Honor was supposed to die in the original finale) and Mike Henke seems the likeliest candidate to me both because of her very emotional message in the previous book when she decided to attack Mesa and due to the perfect set-up for Mesan "patriot" response to the so called "Manticoran atrocities" with which this volume ends.

Damien/Firebrand is perfectly positioned to be an agent of the good guys (Grand Alliance) in the follow up volumes so I think he will survive the last book at least

Though we shall see in a year or so...

Quite true. My impression of Damien is that's he's a mashup of Victor Cachet and Thandi Palain, with a few other things thrown into the mix. Now that Eric Flint is no longer associated with the series, that's a hole that needs to be filled.