QUESTION 1: Is Ragnarok finished, because Jonas said it had to do with the Loki’s three kids fighting against the Gods of War? (Jormungandr – Apollo, Cassie – the five Spartoi and the three children of Loki, the wolf Fenrir was shackled by Odin but eventually escaped and killed him).
I think perhaps you might want to go back and read what Jonas told Cassie again. Despite his somewhat…quirky…delivery, he does end up explaining things pretty well. Basically, Ragnarok includes three great battles: one against Thor/Apollo, one against Tyr/Ares and one against Odin/Zeus.
In each of those battles, a helper to the magical community is promised by legend: Jormugandr in the fight against Thor, Hel in the fight against Tyr, and Fenrir in the fight against Odin. Those three helpers are the three “children” of Loki, who was the god of chaos in the old Norse legends. Chaos, in this case, meaning free will, instead of the strict control the rule of the gods would impose. In any case, we’ve only had two battles, (one against Apollo himself, and one against the children of Ares, who were standing in for their sire). So no, Ragnarok is not over yet.
QUESTION 2: In chapter 7 of HTM, Jonas asks Cassie if she has had any visions about a wolf or a large dog. What was that about?
He was asking about Fenrir, one of the helpers the magical community was supposed to get in their fight against the gods. Jonas had had his suspicions for a while that they might be facing Ragnarok, but he didn’t want to dump something like that in Cassie’s lap if he was wrong. She was under enough pressure as it was, and telling her they had to defeat two more gods wasn’t likely to go down well. He was hoping for a sign, some vision from her perhaps, that he was on the right track first. But Cassie wasn’t having visions, so eventually he felt like he had to tell her anyway, and hope that sparked something.
Only, of course, Cassie HAD seen something, but in the tarot, not in a vision. That’s why he had to sit down when he heard about the Moon card showing up. That was the sign of the other assistant they were supposed to get—the one for the fight against Ares—and so he finally had something to back up his crazy theory.
QUESTION 3: The two ghosts at Pere Lachaise at the beginning of Embrace the Night: I’m guessing one is Jim Morrison, but who is the other? Rimbaud? Verlaine? Do tell! [I have to say that I particularly like the way you don’t shove your literary allusions down our throats to show us how clever you are but instead assume that we readers have also read a bit and let us think a little :-) ].
Oscar Wilde, one of my favorite non-conformists.
QUESTION 5: I’m wondering why (if I remember correctly) Pritkin is described as having an educated British accent (by that I take it you mean BBC RP) rather than a Welsh accent?
Pritkin isn’t described as having any particular sort of accent, other than “British”– which to Cassie, with almost no knowledge of the country, could mean almost anything. You have to remember, when I am writing Cassie, I am writing from the perspective of a young American woman who has done very little travelling (until recently, and fleeing for your life doesn’t leave a lot of time to absorb local culture.) For example, I had someone get furious with me once for a comment Cassie made in Curse the Dawn about it being un-British to drink tea out of mugs instead of teacups. I’ve lived in Britain, so of course I know that bit wasn’t true. But the point is that Cassie wouldn’t. Likewise, Cassie wouldn’t be able to identify differences between regional accents in the hugely varied language quilt of the British Isles.
I remember staying with a British friend years ago and watching a T.V. show featuring a popular comic. I can’t recall which one or even which part of the country he was from now, but I do remember laughing hysterically–and not because of his jokes. I found it funny that he was speaking English, yet I couldn’t understand a word he said. Not a word! He had a thick regional accent and was using a lot of words from his local dialect, which, as far as my untrained ears were concerned, meant that he may as well have been speaking a completely different language.
Now, apply that to Pritkin’s situation. What would a 6th century Welsh accent sound like? I’m not a linguist, but I’d guess it would be fairly different from today’s version, not to mention the difference in vocabulary. So when he came back from Hell after being gone from Earth for centuries, he probably had the same experience I did with the comic, and couldn’t understand anything that people were saying to him. Presumably, that’s when he learned English and picked up his current accent, whatever you would prefer that to be.
QUESTION 6: In Claimed by Shadow when Cassie ends up at convocation, Mircea says to Cassie ‘I know what you are’. I’m probably being really slow, but what’s his theory on what she is at this point?
Mircea tells Cassie in the next sentence that he knows she’s a sorceress (an antiquated name for a female magic worker). But is that really what he thinks? If so, why defend her to Anthony later on? Mircea took responsibility for her actions there, something he would hardly have done for an unknown witch.
So, what had Mircea seen? He’d seen Cassie’s clothing, which was very unusual for the time, and then he’d seen her vanish at the theater, right in front of his eyes. And Mircea’s eyes, unlike most human’s, are not easily fooled by illusions. So he knew she didn’t escape out the back using some kind of trick, and he also knew she didn’t step into a ley line, because there weren’t any running through the middle of the theatre. And in my universe, even mages don’t vanish into thin air. So what was she?
Mircea has a lively curiosity and he isn’t stupid. The reason he was intrigued by her was more than the geis. He thought there was a decent chance that he was looking at a Pythia from some future time, and of course, that’s going to get a person’s attention. Even a master vampire’s.
QUESTION 7: Does Cassie still have Mac’s lizard ward that she picked up from the battle when Billy set off the wards in the fight against Myra? I know that Sheba was used against the Consul when Cassie was escaping.
Yes, and you may see it again.:)
QUESTION 8: I’m re-reading the series and just got to the bit in Curse the Dawn when Cassie’s trying to rescue the Misfits and fighting the Circle and Pritkin drops in suddenly from the Ley line. How did he know he needed to hunt her down and drag her out of the mess she was in? We know that Cassie walks around with trackers on her from two separate groups that have fessed up, maybe more. My question is: does the tracker transmit location only, or is there more to it? Was she simply in one place too long for him to feel comfortable? Does Pritkin, in his role of Commander, maybe have trackers on war mages and therefore felt them converging and had an “uh-oh” moment? Was his Cassie-sense tingling?
The Corps has to have a way to communicate with its members, and what they say about technology is also true for spells—if it exists, it can be hacked. Considering the problems Pritkin and Cassie had been having with the Circle, it would make sense for Pritkin to have been trying to keep up with their movements. And with his inside knowledge of the Corps, it isn’t difficult to imagine that he might eventually have been able to figure out a way to spy on them. In effect, he was monitoring them on their equivalent of police ban radio.