Published in 2003 by Tor Books, this second part of the sequel to Five Hundred Years After uses the authorial voice of Paarfi of Roundwood. The book has many parallels to Dumas' Vicomte De Bragelonne.
The joke about food, family, and philosophy in Chapter 60 is in The Joys of Yiddish, by Leo Rosten, and undoubtedly other places .
Aerich's views on the relationship between ends and means in Chapter 53 are highly reminiscent of the last section of Trotsky's essay "Their Morals and Ours" .