New Vlad Taltos by Steven Brust in hand. Me in book-reading mode. See you when I surface.

***

Hm. As a total aside, I see by the Amazon page that Dzur was not meant to be released until Aug. 8th. Releasing a book earlier than its street date was, when I was in the bookstore biz, considered high treachery, and could earn the offending store a fine or worse. "Worse" is defined as the book's publisher company teaching the store (or the chain) a lesson by not sending them any more books with street dates for them to violate, that is, no books that are likely to be bestsellers.

I only ever heard of this latter punishment being used once, against a store that dared put a Star Wars title out before the rest of the world did, the month before Episode I came out. Lucasfilms flipped out. But it's a threat used often.

Things may have changed since then, I don't know. But I hope so, for Borders' sake.