Valeria Matuchek is a continuing character. She is a baby at the end of Operation Chaos and a teenager in Operation Luna and makes a cameo appearance as a graduate student in A Midsummer Tempest, although only in the "behind the scenes" space of the Old Phoenix. That gives her slightly more exposure than Holger Danske who stars in Three Hearts And Three Lions and cameos with Valeria in A Midsummer Tempest. We have seen two generations of Matucheks on the Earth where magic/"paraphysics" is both science and technology.
Regarding those "ten lost tribes of Israel," I think the Mormons claim that they became the Native Americans? I think also that, in Biblical terms, being lost from the sight of God means ceasing to exist? And that makes sense historically. A tribe that has failed to maintain its identity, has dispersed and intermarried, has thereby ceased to continue its independent existence. It has not gone to some place so that scholars can deduce where it has gone. Instead, it has gone out, like a switched off light.
I remember that humour was a feature of A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975) and that Puritans were often the butt of the humour. However, I am at present rereading some harrowing scenes of oppression, flight and pursuit although this line struck me as comical:
"A man, ugly, unkempt, and smelling of manure, slouched in the outer doorway." (p. 61)
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