Subject: Duncan: The Cutting Edge (minor spoilers)

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: 22 Sep 92 06:38:08 GMT

Dave Duncan's "The Cutting Edge" is first book in his "Handful of Men"
tetralogy, the sequel to "A Man of His Word".  The turn of the millenium
is approaching and Things are Falling Apart.  The center cannot hold.  

This book is spent primarily in setting up the problem -- the Impire
is under attack from all sides, the Protocol which prevents massively
destructive Mage Wars is in collapse, and someone or something nasty
lurks in the background -- and in reintroducing the cast, now some
fifteen years older.  It's time well spent, and this tetralogy should
be almost as good as the previous one, though the first one had an
attraction this one necessarily lacks, since the reader got to learn
the secrets of magic as the protagonist did.

In one sense, the catastrophe is Rap's fault -- nine out of ten
fantasy sequels are the result of letting a villain go in the 
first series -- but since a massive collapse seems destined to
occur every millenium, he can't be held completely to blame.

Part of the book follows the doings of a talented Pixie, but
I strongly suspect that the information we are given in this part --
especially that some people have an affinity for magic that causes
them to seek out Words -- will turn out to apply to Rap's son.

Minor spoiler time.  The upshot of Inos's attempt to kill her
Words was that one did die, and the other three were greatly
weakened.  Rap now has one strong word and three 'ghost' words,
so while he is qualitatively a sorcerer, he is an exceedingly
weak one.  I wonder if one solution to the mess he's currently
in might not be to obtain a fifth word again.  Since three of
his words are widely shared, this might give him the qualitative
edge that having five words brings, without quite as much pain.
(And he can always kill one of his words if it comes to that.)

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked]

   It was mentioned on CNN that the new prime number discovered
   recently is four times bigger then the previous record.
				-- John Blasik