The Ladies with Dogs represent one of the most intriguing new elements to the Mythos, don't you think? "I am your mother." Mother Earth? One of the things that makes Gateways one of the finest in a fine series is that we have a close-up look at one of the Ladies. Anya Mundy: Anya is a Russian form of Anna, but also is the Sanskrit word for "inexhaustible". And Mundy could be like the genitive form mundi of Latin mundus, the world. There are a lot of fascinating little points about Anya. For example, her Jainist-like diet, eating nothing but what plants could live without (that is, seeds and fruits). The plants in her home, which seem not only sentient but mobile (like the jasmine vine that kept touching Jack, and also, how they began to attack the chew-wasps). And then there's Oyv-- a most memorable canine character! But I also wonder about The Ladies; when Jack pressed Anya to explain what she meant about being his "mother", she said, "There's no need for you to know yet, I hope you never have to know", which indicates the truth must be pretty mind-bending, if not scary. When asked how many of them there were she said something like, "as many as necessary". That they are connected to each other in ways hard to comprehend is shown by the fact that Anya's death left a hole in the others-- literally, as shown by Herta in Crisscross and the young girl in Infernal. It may turn out that they are indeed "Mother Earth" but I suspect the truth to be something more interesting even than that. Of course, all of Jack's experiences beginning in Conspiracies onward will necessitate a serious rewriting of Nightworld, and one of the things I will be most interested to see is how The Ladies and the third cosmic player they represent will be worked into the story. I have enjoyed this element of the Mythos very much indeed and it is one of the myriad things which make one admire the seemingly inexhaustible invention Mr Wilson has shown in this remarkable series.