All, I got most of the way through the 2.9.2 rc1 process (including closing the artifact in sonatype and committing the artifacts to the dist.dev repo) when Tilman noticed the regression in the EpubParser. To make our github history and general accounting simpler, rather than redoing the rc1 artifact, I'm -1 on that artifact. I've made the change and will post the vote shortly for rc2. Apologies for my missteps.
Best, Tim