Sakura wrote:
"If you're going to half-open a contact, you shouldn't bother throwing a spell to change the appearance of your setting, especially when it's what you're thinking about doing."
I'd like to discuss this a bit more, so we can decide whether it's a guess that Sakura is presenting as fact, or whether Michael's approach was really as ineffective as Sakura's made it out to be.

We know that people can pass through a Trump; clearly light and sound do as well. Does smell? Can magic? That last one seems problematic, because of the different rules of magic that apply in different shadows. So if a magic based illusion is trying to affect the viewer's mind, that probably doesn't work across a Trump contact. But if the magic is just generating light and sound (and smell) in the source shadow, then how would someone on the other side of a Trump tell it was a spell? Shouldn't the only indicator be the accuracy of the images and sounds it's producing? And in any case, magic is just the specific technique in this instance - it could be a holodeck, or movie set, or blue screen, take your pick. Especially if the person on the other side of the Trump contact only has passive tools to work with, and can't - for example - extend a Pattern sense or a Logrus vision through to the other side to actively probe things.

I guess I'm feeling that this wasn't a half baked attempt by Michael - he's had time to prepare it, he's got Jormungandr to administer and adjust it dynamically, I feel he's good at just this sort of thing; he knows and if it was going to be obvious that he was trying to hide something, he wouldn't have bothered. I can see that there might be some subtle giveaways that a really good adept, or maybe someone really familiar with Michael's style, might pick up, but I'd hope it would be proof against pretty much all of his generation except Sakura, Lysandra and maybe - just maybe - Cornelia.

Secondly is the question of about how much is conveyed during a Trump contact? The books tell us that Caine was able to "eavesdrop" and read even surface thoughts via the Trumps, but that's down in books 4 & 5 of the first series; I don't think there were ever any indications in the first two books that the Trumps allowed that type of communication, although they certainly facilitate mind to mind contact in Eric and Corwin's battle. Yes, Michael was a little rushed in this instance and perhaps a touch careless; and again, Sakura (and Lysandra) are his full siblings and closer to him in that regard.

Basically I'm saying that - on reflection - I'm okay with how this was delivered in Michael's current thread, but if it had been anyone of his generation other than Lysandra or Sakura, I'd have been majorly torqued.