Enjoyable stand-alone fantasy. I liked the four brothers. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. It is nominally set in Fenario, the land of the Easterners in his Dragaeran novels. Whether or not it is the same Fenario, or just an alternate earth setting for this fairy tale type story isn't important. Its still a fun story to read, but don't expect it to add any information to what we know about Dragaera. ( )

Oddly compelling: Brokedown Palace is, like all compelling stories, many tales woven together into something bigger. If you eat words as I do then you'll appreciate Brokedown Palace for the odd yet somehow enticing flavor of the characters, the setting and the sudden abrupt about faces the author uses to get his readers thinking harder than they otherwise might.

Brokedown Palace is not the best fairy tale I've ever read, but it did keep me turning the pages until the very end.

So there's this magic tree, see, and this prince with a bunch of brothers living in a decrepit castle, and a talking horse, and dragons...

I'll start again. A well-written precursor to the more entertaining "Vlad" series of books, this establishes some of the geography and history of Brust's fantasy world. Lacking the humour of the "Vlad" books, this was still a pleasure to read for fans of Brust's writing. ( )

This was the first book by Steven Brust that I read, and it's still one of my favorites. I loved the disjointed, almost dreamy style of the narrative, and loved the characters and the way they interacted with each other, mostly based on how they regarded the old castle. I really enjoy stories where the characters come into conflict not because they are "bad" or "evil," but because they simply have different motivations, motivations that aren't necessarily in themselves wrong or misguided. ( )