From the introduction: You had a life, you're sure of it. Back in that grey haze before the palace, before you met the Prince. It doesn't make logical sense that anything would have happened before that… but something just doesn't feel right. If there were no pre-life, why do you hate the cook so much? What's that bizarre memory you have, disjointed in time, of a big dog running through fields of grass? And when did you learn to do math so well? There is absolutely no reason a court poet should understand logarithms.