"When you have forty eight laws put in front of you, that's quite a significant challenge to try and distil that down," he says. "We already had an inkling that there was recurring themes ... we needed a nice, clean structure for the book." The difference between the most powerful laws and thea, the ciples is that the three most powerful laws ar. There's bits of them in other laws, and you have to get them right to be able to do some of the other laws.