# Not the Torah, but Torah-like *The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 11 Apr 2001* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Nicholas Gevers *11 Apr 2001, 01:08* Alga wrote: "Oh, honestly, what nonsense--this isn't the Torah! It's not my fault that Wolfe abandoned Mucor, murdered Jahlee, sent Nettle and Seawrack off on a Star Trek menage a trois with the saintly Silk, ditched Babbie, gave us no word of Oreb and in general tossed his whole story out the window--or off-planet as the case may be. Leaving both Blue and Green to go to hell together, Neighbors, inhumi and whatnot. Tra-la, let's be off." TBSS isn't the Torah, no; but as we've given PEACE, THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN, and THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS many years to resolve and settle themselves in our minds, perhaps we should give TBSS more than just a few months. As for this repeated criticism about TBSS's "hurried ending": it's not hurried at all. It's simply that GW has spent seven volumes building up characters and scenarios, and he rightly assumes that readers who have stuck with him this far know those characters and situations well enough by now to infer their final motivations and destinies. To invoke Kim Stanley Robinson again: GW is the king of the slingshot ending; his texts move on and work on beyond the page; read in the spirit of the enterprise. Thus, to repeat what I and others have pointed out: Mucor is now old enough to look after herself; just in case, Babbie remains on Blue to keep many eyes on her; Jahlee is a predator and jealously in love with Horn to boot, and is fully capable of a crime of passion on Lizard Island, just as is Horn himself, a mere human when all is said and done; Oreb accompanies Silk to the Whorl again, as you would expect; Nettle ditto, because the only remnant of her husband is in Silk, Old Viron is her old home anyway, and her children are all grown up on Blue and Green; Seawrack ditto, because she and Silk form an archetypal couple once Hyacinth is out of the way, and Horn (again) is still in Silk; and Blue and Green are left to their own devices because that is how God governs the Earth and its humans, giving them free will. --Nick Gevers. ---