Amber and Iron, by Margaret Weis. Ohhh, Margaret, what have you done to this poor, poor setting. It makes me sigh in a melancholy manner. Actually, the setting is still great, rather, I'm really not too keen at all on this particular story I suppose, and its mangled use of that setting and landmark-characters. I'll note that now that I've actually seen an Aussie shephard in action in real life, I actually quite believe the seeming extraordinary behavior of the one in this book - that dog has facial expressions like nothing else, and is intelligent to an eerie degree.