(urth) The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned by Rudesind

[António Pedro Marques]

Ryan Dunn wrote (07-07-2010 16:12):

> All of that said, I think Tzadkiel's appearance in UotNS (a volume Gene
> vehemently felt did NOT need to be written to help us understand the
> tetralogy)

Here I just have to say that I quite never did grasp that idea. If it means 
that the BNS can be considered complete without UNS, obviously it can. But 
there is no way that UNS doesn't introduce ideas that just couldn't be 
gotten from the BNS alone.

> as a shapeshifter, is most positively a clue to a character
> (characters) in the first four volumes.
>
> What greater target for this than Inire? Who else? The other mask clues
> are revealed, but I think they serve as clues for the bigger mysteries,
> the ones Wolfe does not pander to us to answer, but uses clue-context
> (Agia/Agilus and the ribbons, chance encounters with Hildegrin, old
> Autarch making sneaky appearances, etc.).

I'll have to ask yet again - clues to *what*, please? IF some of the 
characters that appear throughout the book are Inire in disguise, then what? 
What happens? What doors open? What new understanding of the story is 
enabled? What's the net worth of such a knowledge? What is it that we don't 
grasp about the book that we'd begin to grasp that way? No one has answered 
this so far.

It's as if we posited that Watson's second wife was in fact Mary Morstan's 
cousin. What would that contribute to the story?