Jhereg

Steven Brust will drive you crazy.

Then you'll beg him to do it again and again.

Each book in the Jhereg series is told much as one would expect to hear a story from the narrator, sitting quietly by the fair in his comfortable armchair, brandy in hand, and a watchful jhereg curled around his throat. All his characters will quickly seem friends, people (or not) you respect and love, despite of and because of their brilliance and their flaws.

When I was handed the first book, Jhereg, I called the friend who gave it to me part of the way through the reading of it. "Is this the first book? I keep seeing references to events I haven't heard of. Were there books before this one?" She laughed, "He does that. This is the first book, trust me."

I show more hate him for it. I really do. Yet I own all of them, have sought him out for signings, and have a second copy of Jhereg to loan to friends.

Misery loves company after all.

If you love a thought provoking, mystery, science-fiction-that-is-fantasy, with swashbuckling, theft, magic, and dragon-like pets thrown in, pick up Jhereg. Then prepare to be hooked like the rest of us. show less

Reread Feb2012, review added.

I originally gave this 4 stars, although I've read it numerous times & really enjoyed it. I just never thought it had any redeeming features beyond sheer enjoyment. Now that I've read most of the rest of the series, I see on a re-read that the craftsmanship of this story demands another star.

This is not the first book in the chronology of the series, but it is the first published. Why should you read it first? Because the author couldn't have picked a better way to introduce the reader to an entirely new world & mythology. The story demands our likable anti-hero, Vlad Taltos, look deeply into another character. His search uncovers more than expected & gives us an understanding of the world that we never show more would have had otherwise. Not only is it entirely entertaining & fast moving, but I had no trouble at all remembering odd names & characters. Each comes alive in a way that sticks in the memory, with a depth that is incredible for the terse wording. Not just the main characters either, although there were most of a dozen of those alone. It's truly an amazing feat.

Now I REALLY want to go on to the next book, [b:Yendi|817357|Yendi (Vlad Taltos, #2)|Steven Brust|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1302450419s/817357.jpg|1058], but I have other commitments - damn! show less

Guess this is what you'd call an oldie but a goodie. I can't believe I hadn't heard of Steven Brust until a few weeks ago, but he was recommended to me by a gaming friend of mine, and then another good friend jumped into the Twitter conversation to second the recommendation. So, that's two shoutouts from a couple of people whose opinions I highly value, and that's when I knew I had to get my hands on this book, posthaste!

Jhereg is the beginning of a whole bunch of books set in Brust's Dragaera world. It is the first novel to be published in the Vlad Taltos series, even though its place is actually fourth or so in its timeline. It introduces us to Vladimir Taltos, an Easterner (human) working as a killer-for-hire in the House of Jhereg show more in a setting where his kind are barely tolerated by a race of long-lived, statuesque sorcerers called the Dragaerans (or, as my friend told me, just think of them as "elves"!) Being a Jhereg doesn't help either, since their faction is like the mafia of the Dragaeran world.

One day, a powerful Jhereg boss offers Vlad a lucrative contract to track down and assassinate a council member who stole millions of gold from the house. It is discovered, unfortunately, that this thief has fled to Castle Black, home of the Dragonlord Morrolan who is also Vlad's good friend. Now Vlad has to try and figure out a way to fulfill his contract without royally pissing off Morrolan, whose strict rule against the killing of anyone on his premises while they are under his protection is proving to be more than just a minor inconvenience.



At just 200-something pages, this was a very quick read. Despite the volume's relative thinness, however, there is a lot information crammed in here. You'll immediately get the sense of hugeness from the world of Dragaera, and I admit I spent much of the first half of this book feeling like I was missing something, because not everything about the setting is explained right away. There will be names of people, animals, factions, cultural traditions, events in history, etc. that are alluded to, but won't mean anything to you until you get further into the book (or even the series). Even now, I wish I had more room in this review to give examples of all the strange magical spells, weapons, creatures, lore and customs that are in this book, but there's just too damn much. The good news is, everything you need know in order to understand and follow the story will be there, and it will come in time.

I also really liked the writing style, the fast pace and the lightness of it. Normally when you get high fantasy featuring a world full of magic and so much history, along with noble sorcerers and lords and ladies and such and such, you'd expect the writing style and dialogue to be somewhat serious and austere. Not so much with this book, which includes instances of modern day habits or colloquialisms, and that played a part in making Jhereg easy to get into and reading it so much fun.

It's got a great story overall, involving a plot about an assassination, but which almost reads more like story about a heist. It has elements of mystery in it too, as Vlad likes to conduct investigations and figure out the solutions from the clues he finds. He as much as admits that he prefers the process of planning an assassination to the actual assassinating, and events in the story reflect that. It just struck me as interesting especially when compared to more recent fantasy novels about assassins, which tend to be darker and more action-oriented, and Jhereg was published before I was even born.

The series is still going on today, with book 14 expected to come out later this year. So glad I discovered these books, thanks to my friends. I've got a lot of books in my to-be-read pile, but since all the Vlad novels seem to be such quick reads, there might actually be hope of me finishing up to Tiassa before Hawk comes out. Maybe. show less

This was a delightful beginning to a series that I am sure to be addicted to very soon. In fact, I've already jumped into the second volume.

But on this. Jhereg is a first person narrative of an assassin and a particular job he undertook. A huge amount of money offered showed that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was.

Mischief and mayhem ensue. What I thought of as a combination of a crime caper and an epic fantasy turned out to be a quickly paced and often humorous adventure. Vlad Taltos has a familiar which happens to be a jhereg, a miniature dragon-like creature. And, no surprise with Brust characters, Loiosh is quite the smartass. Witty banter between familiar and master, along with a great cast of hirelings and show more allies makes this a book to keep the reader guessing, on the edge of his/her seat, and occasionally laughing.

The fight scenes were great, I wasn't surprised to later read that Brust took lessons in fencing, as he was able to describe the swordfights in quite a vivid manner. Add a touch of The Three Musketeers to that adventure/heist/fantasy description.

On to more Vlad adventures! show less

I read this as part of the group read this month and I have to say it was a real fun read. Yes, an uneven story as roni mentioned, but nevertheless fun :). Steven Brust refers lots of times to events which happened a long time ago, which made it a bit hard at times, because that made me yearn to know more about the events hinted at.

We meet Vlad Taltos an established assassin and "human" member of the Jhereg. The Jhereg are part of the Dragearan society who live on a world shared by these Dragearan's and humans which are referred to as "Easterners". However, Vlad is hired by the big boss of the Jhereg Council to kill another member who took of with the gold of the Jhereg. This Council member has to be killed quickly, before the news of show more the crime gets out to the community. However, the villain manages to find sanctuary in Castle Black which belongs to a Dragonlord - another group of the Dragaeran society. If Vlad should kill him there, that could trigger a major war between the houses of the Jhereg and the Dragon with has to be avoided at all cost. Vlad is facing a serious dilemma and will need all his strength and help of his friends to figure out how to get on top of all the ensuing complications. As I mentioned already earlier also the story is a bit uneven, it was a real fun read and contained a lot of humor. I also enjoyed the fact that the women in the story seemed to be very strong and resourceful. show less

When I originally read this when it came out 30 years ago, it was a 4-star book for me. Fantasy with dragons the way Hammett might have written it, with politics, violence, rival gangs, upper vs lower class tensions, and a main character, Vlad Taltos, who moves between the two levels. It remains a fun read and the start of a long series, but I can now see flaws of a first novel, namely a few too many info dumps about the long history of Dragaera, characters such as a wife that pop up almost out of nowhere a quarter of the way into the book, and some major revelations about Vlad's relationship with that history that mean a lot to Vlad, but nothing at all to the reader. These would have been much more impactful after several more volumes show more in the series, when both the world and Vlad were more established.

You could do a lot worse for a couple days reading. show less

I'm a bit of an idiot. For some reason (the weird name in the titled, weirdly spelled, plus the series' name, plus some one sentence descriptions I must have picked up at some point in time) I had always believed this series to be Science Fiction about a Planet of Psychic Vampires. I was sure of it, the same way that, despite not having read, say, "Crumpets With a Spot of Death: A Margie Doobs Mystery", I would be sure that it would be a cozy mystery with characters who eat dessert and own cats.

But I was wrong. Jhereg is not SciFi, nor is it set on a planet of Psychic Vampires. It's a high fantasy adventure romp, with enjoyable antiheroes (the main character's a proud assassin), similar to, say, The Lies of Locke Lamora, or the Riyria show more books, and is in other word right up my alley. (To be fair, the main character has "psionic" powers, so I was 15% right).

4 stars because (a) I'm not okay with everyone being so casual about So Many People being Assassins (or having been one), and (b) it seemed like the author didn't love it over, and invented hoops to make Assassination seem Not So Bad (e.g. frequent easy ressurection). Those bits felt uncomfortable and cludgy, but are really at the essence of the book, so it's a testament to how much I liked it anyway that it still got 4 stars. It's like giving A Wrinkle in Time 4 stars despite not liking children's books and being uncomfortable with extra-planetary settings.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). show less