Apr. 21st, 2008 @ 11:59 pm The House of Jhereg, Stephen Brust
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What's the basic premise of the books?

Vlad Taltos is a human assassin in a land mostly populated by Dragaerans. He has a familiar, a flying reptile, which is sometimes sassy. It was often recommended to me as a series that subverts those tropes.

I read one of the series ages ago, and it felt very much as if it was falling into the obvious trap: Vlad is one of the most badass people in the world. (Badass mainly in the sense of sword combat.) He can do things "even" more-badass-person couldn't. He is outclassed by even-more-badass person who is basically a demigod. Who is outclassed only by the most powerful beings in and out of the universe. Who are still inferior to Vlad in that he is gutsy...

However, this impression was wrong. I don't know if it was that I read that book without knowing the characters, or that it suffered more from the flaw as the series went along. But I read an omnibus of the first three novels, which was really good and definitely lived up to everything I'd said of it.

Where did you get it?

Livredor handed it to me as she came in the door, at the instigation of Rysmiel (as with most of my recent new books) -- thank you both.

What's good about it?

Especially the fist novel, it does a great job of fulfilling that archetype well. The world is fascinating, and littered with references to old events that make it feel like a part of an ongoing history rather than one complete chunk. It outlines Vlad's past from childhood, but many of the episodes are filled in later books.

The plot is well-thought out: when you discover/realise what prompted the antagonist, everything falls into place rather than leaving only a cool set-up with no justification. It is resolved by an ingenious and risky plan of the protagonists, rather than things just falling out lucky, almost like a mystery in reverse (you think "how can I solve this knot" and you could actually have worked out the solution before Vlad did).

The characters are nice. You know the laconic assassin sort, but Vlad is more than that, as it's slowly revealed. Loiosh is a great example of the sassy familiar (reminiscent of Maurice Saldini's rat) but not over the top, and with character. You become very fond of Morrolan in mainly passing mentions.

There's lots of gratuitous mentions of theological/historical backstory, that come out in later novels, which is definitely the thing to hook me into wanting to find out more.

What's not good?

Very little in the first book. As I say, the one I read before bothered me. The second and third books weren't quite as well done as the first -- the third was about Vlad and his wife, and the peasants of the city flirting with rebellion, and that's really really hard to do plausibly if you don't have _everything_ about the world sketched out.

Any interesting comments about linguistics?

(I think) the characters in the books speak the language. But the humans and Dragaerans both refer to themselves as humans, and the other as Dragaerans or easterners respectively. That makes *sense*, but is an interesting twist on the terms. (In most corpi, each language has a name for each species, either cribbed from that spcecies' own language's word for itself, or another language's, or a descriptive one; but a word for your own species might be translated into another language's name for your species, or their species, depending on context.)
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From:[info]rysmiel
Date: April 22nd, 2008 03:49 am (UTC)
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Very glad you both have enjoyed these. They have been favourites of mine since 1994, when a German acquaintance did me the great favour of loaning me his copies while I was in Heidelberg and had already read all the English-language books I had carried with me. I'm doing a slo-mo reread this past year and a half or so and will be getting to #10 in probably a copule of weeks' time, as #11 is due in July, out of a planned nineteen [ one for each beastie on the cycle, plus Taltos and The Final Contract ].

There are stronger and weaker ones along the way, definitely. And Teckla is IMO in many ways an awkward chunk of story to have snipped off and made into one book, as a bit much of what's in it does not really come to closure until Phoenix.

Vlad is a great character. and I think three books are enough to see how much of the genius of the series is in what he doesn't see and notice, he is one of the classic unreliable narrators; Cawti's politics are clearly visible in Yendi, but not to Vlad. And I also like that Brust appears, particulalry in Teckla, to be aware that killing people for money is not actually a nice thing to do, and that while Vlad's upbringing explains how he might end up getting into it, that he does also start to grow up about it in Teckla.
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From:[info]rysmiel
Date: April 22nd, 2008 07:06 pm (UTC)
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Further comment;

I think the first three are also enough to see the sneaky thematic things Brust is doing with the titles of each book. In Jhereg Vlad mostly derives benefit from other people's efforts; in Yendi he thinks like a Yendi, and so on.
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From:[info]vitriol_
Date: April 22nd, 2008 08:32 am (UTC)
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I've read the first two omnibuses (which is the first five books, IIRC) and found them fun but variable - there were a couple of the later ones I didn't find particually fun, which put me off seeking out any more of the books (though I'm sure I'll run into them at some point).

While Vlad is certainly badass, I'd say his main 'power' seems to be his ludicrously wide circle of friends - some of the best warriors, sorcerors and assassins in the world (not to mention several heirs to the throne) would risk their life to save his.
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From:[info]rysmiel
Date: April 22nd, 2008 07:08 pm (UTC)
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And I think part of why that works is that Jhereg sets up very well why this particular Easterner is of so much importance to all these great movers and shakers; which is one of my reasons for encouraging that the books be read in publication order, as reading the earlier books without knowing that can come across as a gaping plausibility gap.