RaDian:
It's obvious by reading them that books 8-10 are of a different writing style than book 7; perhaps added to extend the event from 7 to 10 days (and to put books someplace other than just Trammel). Book 7 is also likely to have meant to have been written last - and the whole Ophidian matter introduced by the person who wrote 8-10. Which IS an error by the Devs. What part are we disagreeing on, here, that you felt compelled to misrepresent what I stated?
Not sure what you believe I felt compelled to misrepresent... I'm simply disagreeing with you. I haven't tried to misrepresent your stance on this, simply saying there's no need to try to make up for deficient in-game execution of a plotline. Book 7 is not written in any different style from the rest of them. Chonologically, it fits, except for an external author having made a mistake in the timeline. I'm not sure what you think you're seeing in Book 7 that the rest of us aren't, but there's nothing different, save a plot hole.
Instead of constantly complaining about the lemons, try making some lemonade.
How about instead of constantly giving us lemons, the plotlines are QCed to make sure that things like this don't happen? I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, simply saying that having a couple of sets of eyes sit down with this stuff and doing some homework on them would prevent these things from happening.
For simple logical reasons, I just don't see his lantern staying "hidden" in Britain THROUGH the Ophidian Invasion, until the present, but perhaps placed by him more recently. Heck, maybe RICARDO was the "Avery" set free originally, before Ricardo was pardoned, and it was because after "freeing Ricardo" after the pardon, revealed the truth, that Ricardo was pretending to be Avery, casing the castle looking once again for the vault, and THAT resulted in Ricardo's re-arrest.
And perhaps the Kilrathi came and settled down in the Terathan Keep, hid their spaceship deep underground, found a passage to Ilshenar, and are posing as the Meer until such time as Chris Roberts can come and straighten the whole thing out for us. All of this theorizing just makes more potential plot holes to be filled, which is why the fiction should be checked up front. If we're now going to follow on with silly things like, "Well, of course, it wasn't really Avery who got set free," and "Well, Ricardo posed as him," and then follow that with all kinds of circular logic, we'll be here all day.
Maybe Ricardo's lantern didn't remain hidden throughout the Ophidian war, though, I suspect he'd have been very careful to keep it hidden. And even if it didn't remain hidden, then you open up the possibility that Ricardo didn't even write these books. I mean, okay, first, we don't know what's made Ricardo go loony -- though it did happen all of a sudden. Second, the only reason we even know about his lamp is because Avery told us about it because Ricardo told Avery while they were in prison together. Of course, this makes you wonder... the lamp was clearly hidden where it is before Ricardo and Avery were in prison together... you'd think that Ricardo would know he told Avery where it was, and if by your "theory" we say that Ricardo was the Avery originally set free, wouldn't Ricardo have moved his ultra-secret lantern to prevent someone from getting it from him? He didn't move it, thus we can be pretty certain he wasn't the "Avery" originally set free. But if it didn't remain hidden, and Ricardo hasn't moved it, then someone else could have used it, decided to pretend to be Ricardo in writing, made all these notes, and in the end, it'll turn out that Minax placed the clues to lead us all to words she know worked but couldn't use in Trammel herself... All kinds of theorizing, but it complicates the matters, and we'll end up spiraling out of control on this.
Of course we then hit the MMOQuest issue of "Well Ricardo had one lamp, and now everyone has Ricardo's lamp." This is where in-game fiction breaks to allow plot to continue for each individual person. Nothing can really be done about that, except something better in the future like, Avery discovered Ricardo's lamp was still where it was, reported it to Queen Dawn, who, needing help locating these tomes, gave it to her mage to duplicate and hand out to trusted servants -- enter: you. It doesn't take a lot in a fantasy world to make the fiction expand to fit the events transpiring in the game.
I will say this... at least this fiction is in-game, and not entirely web-based, as it was for some time in past years.
Even so, there's nothing to indicate, for storytelling purposes, from the text of the books that he didn't find word 7 long after book 10 was written; perhaps, while a prisoner of the SL minions. He then either replaced an older book 7 that said "I don't know word 7 yet, so I'm gonna start looking into that story of an Ophidian artifact", or maybe just an empty placeholder book, with one written from a post-Magincia point of view.
Except, of course, people don't number books 1 through 10, write books 1-6, then 8-10, and come back later to write book 7. Nor is there any indication in the text that any of your hypotheses are correct. I mean, if you consider he misplaced book 7, then he'd have written "I remain concerned that someone might have run off wi' me original notes on the seventh word, but so that I might keep it safe, here it is again..." Or if he'd have "gotten back around to it," he'd most likely have written, "Note to self: fill in word seven." Then "*scratched note to self out*" followed by "Word seven be...," and then, since he was so good at detailing everything else save the plot hole, he'd have written, "Sitting in jail made me reconsider finding this last word, and so I now finish me research."
You'll note, of course, that Book 10 is the book written with finality on the subject, ie: "However, I have decided not to pursue me research further."
Such things happen all the time, where people put in place-holders for incomplete data, then fill them in after the rest of the data set is complete, when they DO find out what they need. This happens for everything from reference works to RPG books, in real life. Examples range from revised versions of existing books coming out with substantially different chapter content (updated) & page numbers for existing content, while the other books in the reference series not being updated (or delayed in their update schedule), to something as odd as the "Rifts" paper & dice RPG's "World Book 12: Psyscape" coming out 2 years late due to publisher/author conflicts, after World Books 13-16, despite parts of those books referring back to it - with some of the higher-numbered books' "back" references to Book 12 content no longer making sense after an authorship change.
Speaking of citrus fruit, you're comparing apples to oranges. Yes, frequently people will leave holes to fill in later. But when they fill in those holes, they also fill in the additional details. Unless, of course, you're talking about the publishing industry... not sure why you bring that up here...
When an author re-releases a book with new stuff in it, it's because his original version was not edited to his satisfaction. If he does so and he screws up subplots in the remainder of his books, he's either going to re-tell those books, or he's
not a very good author.
If a publishing company publishes book 12 out of order, that's got zip to do with anything other than publishing delays.
If you're trying to convince me that Book 7 was held back because Sosarian Press and Publications was waiting to mass produce it, you'll have a hard time doing so.
You can't unscramble the egg, but you can always use it (in a cake, or fried, or the binder to bread a piece of meat for cooking), instead of throwing it away. Stop harping on the poor editing, and look for how it can work as-is. You're so full of negativity, it's no wonder those flying monkeys want out of your butt....
If you feel I've been negative about this, that's your opinion, and you're welcome to it, but since I've been discussing this in a calm manner, and simply refuting your points, you might want to keep your beliefs on my "negativity" to yourself.
In the end, I want Mythic to start QCing their fiction, and ensure a higher standard of quality. I'm not asking for the world here... and I don't think asking such is beyond reason. By discussing it with you here, it illuminates the issues with just waving a magic wand and trying to fill in the gaps for them. While you believe that taking the "Well this MUST be what happened" approach is the appropriate way to go, personally, I'm going to stick with my own in-game answer, which is to overlook the mistake.
*sits back and drinks a nice cool glass of lemonade with just a hint of orange and eats an apple*
In the end, remember this, Basara... simplistic solutions to issues will keep them from becoming more complex problems. Your solutions to this plothole all require complex supposition that no two people are going to agree on. QC would have saved us this problem altogether.
... this is my "shocked" face.
which was kewl.