So I've been pretty hazy on Vlad's age (because I haven't been paying super close attention really), but Loiosh says at the end that he's been working with Vlad for five years. Vlad was 16 when he got Loiosh, which means at the time of Jhereg he's 22 at best, which made me realize one thing.
He should be at the club.
Fuck AI, look at the wonderful things you can make with only weed and GIMP.
Spoilery remarks under the cut.
Jhereg being the first book published means there's lots of things going on here that may have started out as throwaway lines but ended up having more meaning as things developed. In the first few chapters, Vlad talks a lot about the various assassinations he's done (42, by the end of the book). Maybe we'll eventually find something out about one of the two "fully justified" Morganti jobs he's done. Maybe not.
Gotta love Vlad's first meeting with the Demon, after knowing everything we now know about them both. I wonder whether the Demon got some demon vibes off of Vlad when they met. Wouldn't that be interesting, if he suspected...
Morrolan confirms in this book he's been studying pre-Empire sorcery for about a hundred years at this point. Presumably the blood he was dosed with back in the Paths of the Dead is what Verra was referring to back in The Lord of Castle Black. Someone pointed out he wasn't of the right bloodline to get the most potential out of pre-Empire sorcery, and Verra was like 'yeah, we'll see'. So unless something else weird happens with his blood...
There was a little moment after Vlad fills in Morrolan, Aliera, and Sethra about his situation - Morrolan has left, and Vlad leaves Aliera and Sethra to come up with ideas about how to solve the problem of Mellar. It felt like a brief parallel to the scene where Khaavren leaves Aliera and Sethra to investigate the murder Gyorg Lavode in Five Hundred Years After. Those two are a good team (even if they didn't come up with anything helpful this time).
The really big thing for this book is the revelation about Vlad's soul. I didn't mention it in my Dragon post, but there was a part where Vlad dreamt that he was arguing in front of the gods that he deserved to be admitted to the Paths of the Dead as a Dragon. It is an interesting moment, knowing the reality of his soul's history. Dolivar was a Jhereg when he betrayed Kieron, but maybe that soul has Feelings about that that bled through into Vlad's dreams. Weirder stuff has happened to this boy.
It does really make one question the whole rule about Easterners's souls not going to the Paths of the Dead. At what point did Dolivar's soul stop being a Dragaeran and start being an Easterner? Did Dolivar's soul really hang out for a few hundred thousand years until Vlad was born, or did he get reincarnated a couple times? How many more rules of the Paths of the Dead (or Dragaera in general) are more loosey-goosey than the gods would have our protagonists think.
