Exactly right Blues. I have been in a few sort of awkward situations with my beloved Val which would not have bothered me in the slightest on my own. I can fight or I can back off. But with your lady there you are left with just the one option so you tend to be more careful because of that.

Spoken like a man of sense, Peter.

Is that uniquely American?

And I think Gia is a source of strength for Jack, as she keeps him from getting careless. Fuck up and leave Gia and Vicky alone with Nightworld coming? No, indeed!

Very insightful, Mike.

And I agree. I've thought Gia was annoying at times, but it's true that she gives Jack a necessary balance. She also has come to understand him and why he does what he does much more in the latest RJ books.

like the potential spoiler alert Libby

I was actually just thinking that I'd hate to stumble across a spoiler here. I actually came across a spoiler in Wikipedia... everyone can take that as a warning!

As for Gia in general and no offence to our intrepid author, it seems such an American literary thing that there MUST be a love interest and that love interest MUST be a source of weakness for the hero

As I see it, you find that so much in fiction because you find it so often in real life.

(But I don't consider it a weakness.)

Ken V.

Is that uniquely American?

I've been a fan of Alexandre Dumas for over four decades (I once read his stuff in the original, though these days I couldn't read a Kaybeck traffic sign without a LaRousse). Hell, just in The Three Musketeers there are at least five examples of women bringing the heroes almost to grief because of the romantic side. (Haven't reread it in a couple of decades, probably forgetting a few other incidents, so I'm low-balling it -- those five you'll find in the 70s pair of movies covering the book, anyway -- the ones with Michael York, who in those days I was told I resembled, but my hair was never that neat and my nose was never that straight).

I see I may have been to hasty in describing it as uniquely American and a sources of weakness.

But we often see the underlaying plot line.... loner-boy is unbeatable, boy meets girl, girl is kidnapped, boy has to rescue girl, etc etc. sure, there is usually a happy ending but can anyone deny that the formula is tiresome?

As a RJ fan, I know the story is more complex. As a man that knows what it's like to be ungrounded, I know that life is more complex. Maybe I'm just jaded by the mandatory love-interest that Hollywood tosses to us, over and over.

Or maybe the thought of someone using my loved-ones in a leverage game against me is just too unsettling

I see I may have been to hasty in describing it as uniquely American and a sources of weakness.

But we often see the underlaying plot line.... loner-boy is unbeatable, boy meets girl, girl is kidnapped, boy has to rescue girl, etc etc. sure, there is usually a happy ending but can anyone deny that the formula is tiresome?

As a RJ fan, I know the story is more complex. As a man that knows what it's like to be ungrounded, I know that life is more complex. Maybe I'm just jaded by the mandatory love-interest that Hollywood tosses to us, over and over.

Or maybe the thought of someone using my loved-ones in a leverage game against me is just too unsettling

The thought of someone using my loved-ones in a leverage game against me would make me go just a little bit more postal than Jack did in All the Rage. There aren't that many of them (and sorry, but none of them are close relatives -- folks can threaten my blood-kin all they want, it won't get a rise out of me). There are only two living people on this planet that I would live or die for, they and maybe four others that I would die for [the maybe is because you don't really know until TSHTF, and circumstances concerning the first two would take priority]).

Yeah, I've spent some fair amount of time ungrounded. The few who ground me are sacred.