Dear Mr Stroud.
Q1.In another question you say that elementals are hugely powerful. If they are why didn't the elemental sphere in the AoS explode with greater effect? Was it just a weak one or what?

Q2. What are the elementals as spirits? It says in the AoS (mrs underwood) that afrits are fire and I've read somewhere that marids are water but what are earth and air?

Thanks for answering these questions.

P.S I think your books are great.

Greetings,

Sorry to take so long replying.

Elementals: I think elementals vary in power from fairly weakish ones to entities of great force. The ones in the sphere weren't hugely potent, and their explosion was more them trying to get away from each other than any expansion of raw power. Some authorities see them as inhabiting a kind of parallel hierarchy to the normal imp-foliot-djinni-afrit-marid one, because their strength tends to emphasise one of the four elements to the exclusion of the others. Bart, a typical djinni (though he wouldn't style himself such), calls himself a being of fire and air: he has, in other words, more than one element in him. The four elements are visible in Ptolemy's Gate when Kitty passes across to the OP: most ordinary spirits have some combination of all four - and fire and air predominate. But elementals each have only one element; possibly as a consequence they have rather
uninspiring one-track personalities.

Thanks for the questions...

Jonathan