The Book of 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

This is an omnibus collection of the first three books -- by publication date, not by internal chronology -- in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series. Vlad is a human living in a society controlled by the vaguely elf-like Dragaerans. Opportunities in that society are limited for people like him, but he's managed to do well for himself as an assassin and a crime lord. (Well, I'm not sure "crime lord" is how he would think of it. But that's basically what he is.)

This was actually a re-read for me. I first read these about ten years ago, enjoyed them, and had every intention of continuing on with the series, but for some reason I never did. Well, I've decided to go back to it now, and I figured a refresher on the first three books was in show more order. Although it may not have been strictly necessary, as they're largely designed to all stand alone.

The three short novels included here are:

Jhereg: In this one, Vlad is hired to kill a very important target on a very strict time schedule, but the person has holed up somewhere where he can't be taken out without dire consequences. The plot is rather slight, and I'm not sure the gimmick used to resolve things is set up quite as well as it could be. But it's entertaining enough. And it does a good job of introducing the series. Both the character and the world are decently interesting, and right from the beginning it feel like they both have a full-fledged history behind them. Brust also uses some common fantasy tropes in ways that don't feel at all cliched, and makes a character who could be very flat and/or unlikable quite sympathetic and human.

Yendi: This is a prequel to the first book, and features a mob war that turns out to have connections to something bigger, as well as the story of how Vlad met his wife. Again, it's an entertaining enough read, although the plot (convoluted as it is) didn't hold my attention quite as well as I might have hoped. I think that might be an artifact of it being a re-read for me, though, meaning that even if I didn't remember any of the details, it still felt a little too familiar. Although maybe it's more because it is a prequel, so you kind of know how things are going to come out for Vlad in the end. I also found the love story part of things a little annoying; it's one of those cases where it feels like the characters fall for each other solely because the author pointed at them and ordered them to. Which is especially disappointing because the characters have enough in common that it would have been easy to believe in their relationship if they'd, y'know, been allowed to have an actual conversation before falling in love. Despite all that, it's not bad, but I think it's the weakest of the three.

Teckla: And this one goes back and picks up shortly after the first book left off. This time, Vlad's wife has gotten involved with a group of revolutionaries, and Vlad is not happy about it. This was definitely my favorite of the three. There's a lot of political discussions, which I'm sure is not for everybody, but I was impressed with the nuanced way Brust handles it all. Plus, it's nice to see a fantasy series that doesn't act like only the aristocrats exist or matter, but rather is willing to acknowledge that there's a lot of exploited underclasses making all those aristocratic doings possible. And the complexity of the political situation is reflected in the complexity of Vlad's character, as he's forced to question his own identity and actions a little, in a way that feels very realistic. There are no instantly life-changing personal epiphanies here, just a lot of thoughts and doubts that get stirred up but not resolved. All of which is perhaps a bit of a surprise in the third book of a series which, up to this point, could probably be fairly described as simple escapist fun. But I think it works. show less

9/10

These 3 novels (Jhereg, Yendi, and Teckla), repackaged as one book, are in the order the author wrote them, but not in the order than Vlad lived them. For a linear thinker like me, that's a challenge. And I can feel the weight of all there is yet to learn about Dragaera.

Vlad is a wonderful storyteller and I enjoy his sardonic tone. There is more complexity to these stories than one may think.

Jhereg and Teckla were both excellent, Yendi less so but still wonderful because of how Vlad and Cawti met and their "courtship".

I was not a fan of the first two novels in this compendium, but then they get bogged down in plotting and a ton of characters with weird names that are easy to lose track of. In all of the novels, the hero, Vlad Taltos, pulls off some byzantine scheme to win the day. In the third novel, Brust does something different and it is more of a character study, with the amoral assassin coming to grips with who he is against the backdrop of a socialist uprising in the fantasy world. I am intrigued enough to want to pursue this world in the subsequent novels.

Fun. Trilogy of novels featuring Vlad Talos, a human living in a world of 'dragonkin' nominally humanoid, but substantially longer lived. They're organised into families which have distinct traits, but most of the time appear more or less human, politics, greed and honour being their normal vices.

This is the published order of the tales, which is a little odd, because the 2nd is a prequel to the first, and some of the later stories are set even earlier. There is magic around but it seldom does much other than allow silent communication between people who know each other well, and teleportation - which is frequently blocked and so of little use. The politics between the various gangs and families are the driving motivations and Vlad show more mostly just tries to stay out of the way, except that his work brings him up against some people with very convoluted plots. The 3rd book is less straightforward as it involves a lot of Vlad moralising over whether this was the best career he could have chosen, and whether is wife (also an assassin, and a firm presence in the first, and introduced in the prequel), will approve of his actions.

I'll probably read some more of these if I find them because they're fast paced enough with a reasonable balance between tough choices, action and thinking about what happens. show less

This is actually an omnibus--a collection of the first three Vlad Taltos novels. I'd read one--can't remember which one at the moment--years ago, on the recommendation of someone who'd told me it was a vampire series. Which confused the heck out of me, and I didn't really know what to think about the book. I liked the voice, but it really messes with your enjoyment of a book when you're expecting one thing and get another; when you're waiting for something to happen that never does. Say you're told that a book is a murder mystery: you're reading along, enjoying the story, but part of you is holding back, waiting for the murder, so the real story can begin. It was like that.

So I decided I really ought to start the series from the show more beginning, and bought the omnibus. It's been sitting in my TBR pile for quite a while, because I still had that vague dissatisfied feeling in my mind from the first one I'd read.

***** Jhereg by Steven Brust. Fantasy.

Wow. Why haven't I been reading these all along? It's one of those reactions. A book that just fits so well that it could have been written specifically for me. I love the voice, the style, the characters. Vlad Taltos is a human, living among people whose lifespans are 50 - 100 times his. But he holds his own because of his wits and the skills he's developed as an assassin. As a character, he's somewhat of a cross between Tavi and Harry Dresden, which pretty much guarantees I'll love him.

In Jhereg, he's hired to kill an embezzler. If Vlad doesn't kill him, the house of Jhereg will be destroyed. But if he does, he himself will be killed. It's even more complex when the embezzler takes refuge in a place where killing him would set off a war.

Like I said, it's as if it were written specifically for me. I love mental puzzles, and intrigue, and hidden motives... and characters who succeed by being smart and well-trained rather than just having lots of powers. The dry wit and sarcasm clinch the deal.

***** Yendi by Steven Brust. Fantasy.

This takes place before Jhereg, and is the story in which Vlad Taltos meets his wife Cawti, who's been hired to kill him as part of a war for territory. As in Jhereg, everything is not as it seems, and there are plots and hidden motives, and intrigue up the wazoo.

I also noticed yet another way in which this series was written specifically for me--in the negative reviews on Amazon, the thing most people who didn't like the book complained about was the lack of description and scenery. Bingo. Nine times out of ten, I couldn't care less about description, and if an author gives me too much of it, I just skim it.

***** Teckla by Steven Brust. Fantasy.

And the bar is raised. Not only is there intrigue and wit and clever solutions--now there's emotional depth, as Vlad's wife's involvement in a revolutionary group threatens both their lives and their relationship, and has Vlad questioning his profession.

There were no easy answers, no out-of-character changes in attitude. No infallible or super-wise characters, either.

My email signature quote yesterday was this:

Steven Brust's First Theory: "All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool."

I know I mentioned it before, when I'd been reading a book from his Phoenix Guards series, but I definitely agree with Steven Brust about what's cool. show less

This is an imaginary world in a more or less medieval setting, with magic and 14 ancient clans. Our hero has come from a peasant background and has risen by succeeding as a contract assassin. In the three stories in this compendium he’s a criminal boss running prostitution, gambling and organized crime in a specific part of the city. In the first two stories this is portrayed as fairly glamorous, fighting against anti heroes who bring general mayhem across society, but in the final story his wife’s embrace of a revolutionary movement of the massive underclass forces him to face up to the evil in his criminal business. Mostly well characterized and convincingly written.