Now the Fates are here on the beach, three shadows blacker than black, walking through the dunes and looking for their own. Just shadows, lamb-white hands beneath black robes spun of tears, glide among the celebrants on this night wherein the spirits of Thebes have found a home, if serendipitously.

It's all right. Things as they once were will never be again, but it's all right.

Gods and men honor those who have fought in battle.

Some nights, valor and cold purpose aren't enough.

Let fools believe what fools believe.

If cities have souls, Sanctuary's was troubled long before Tempus got here, and will be troubled long after he and his are gone.

Very little in science fiction can transcend the gimmickry of a technical conceit, yet without that conceit at its heart a book is not truly science fiction. Furthermore, so little emerging thought and technology is employed by sf writers today that the genre is lagging far behind reality both in the cosmology area and the technology area: sf is no longer a place to experiment, but is now very derivative.