Just a quickie post here noting that I've finally started reading Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series. It's been on my reading list for a while, but my library doesn't carry it and I only recently picked it up when I needed to fill out a minimum-shipping amount for an unrelated purchase. I ended up getting "The Book of Jhereg", which collects the first three novels in a single volume.
Before getting into the plot, some non-spoilery comments: one of the many things I'm enjoying about this series is that it is highly episodic. A big part of the reason I don't read fantasy any more is because I'm frankly done with embarking on Volume One Of A Twelve-Part Series That Isn't Finished Yet. For these books, each is its own nicely self-contained arc that wraps up by the end. The main character continues between the books, and you gradually get to learn more about the world, but the actual story resets on each new volume. The closest analogy I can think of is something like Discworld or the Robert Asprin Myth books, although those are more satirical.
The books are also not written in chronological order. The first novel, Jhereg, chronologically occurs after the second Yendi and before the third Teckla. In his introduction, Brust says that he feels the least qualified of anyone to answer the question of what order to read the books in since he went to great efforts to make each book stand on its own; but he notes that most fans seem to recommend reading them in the publication order.
MINI SPOILERS
I found myself thinking of the character Silk from David Eddings' Belgariad while reading this book. Vlad is pretty amoral: an assassin by trade, now a minor crime boss who oversees illegal gambling, extortion, racketeering and other nefarious activities. But he does live by a certain code. In this world (if it has a name I've forgotten it), humans are also called "Easterners" and are a lower class. Society is dominated by Dragaerans, who live for thousands of years and have superior abilities. The Dragaerans are divided into a dozen or so clans/factions/races, each named after a (fantasy) animal and embodying a trait associated with that animal. Dragons are honorable, Teckla are cowardly, Dzur are fierce, and so on. Anyways, Vlad has been accepted into the house Jhereg, which is basically the Mafia of this world. He's in that in-between place where humans don't trust him because he's with the Dragaerans, the Jhereg don't respect him because he's a human, and other Dragaerans don't like him because he's with house Jhereg AND a human. Thanks to his cunning, resourcefulness, tenacity and a lot of luck, Vlad has managed to advance in this world and build up a little fiefdom for himself; but we learn that he's mainly motivated by a deeply-buried hatred of Dragaerans and a desire to improve the lots of humans. He refuses to ever "work" (i.e. assassinate) on humans, and so has a semi-sanctioned way to ply his trade on people he dislikes.
So far I'm enjoying the worldbuilding in this series. It's different enough to be interesting, but doesn't have the overwhelming drink-from-the-firehouse feel of a lot of modern fantasy. We've gotten to learn about a couple of gods, a couple of historical incidents, a few animals, and so on. There's more... hm, maybe close-up worldbuilding than far-away worldbuilding, if that makes sense. Vlad will make offhand comments about some previous adventure he went on, such as entering the Paths of the Dead and finding Spellbreaker, or getting to know Aliera. Some of those may be future books, or they might not be, but it adds to the texture of the character rather than the world, and further strengthens the episodic feel of the series.
The magic system is interesting, too. So far we've heard about two forms of magic. By far the biggest one is Sorcery. This draws on mystical power from The Orb, a magical artifact held by The Empress (or Emperor). Any Dragaeran in the empire can draw upon the power of The Orb, regardless of where they are or what they're doing. The greatest utility in sorcery seems to be teleportation, but it can also be used for telepathy and standard zapping and shield spells. Interestingly, if a human joins one of the houses of the Empire (as Vlad's dad did when buying a noble title in House Jhereg), they gain access to the Orb and can learn to become sorcerers as well; so far the book hasn't explained how or why this works. (Sorcery seems to actually be kind of a mix between what I normally think of as sorcery and arcane magic: you need access to the power by birth or granting, but also need study and practice to master it.)
Far less well-known is Witchcraft, an indigenous practice of the Easterners / Humans. This is a completely separate system and we haven't seen as much of it, but it seems to be based on living matter more than pure energy. A witch can collect pieces of a person's hair and use witchcraft to track them, for example. This is an occasional ace up Vlad's sleeves, as most Dragaerans don't even consider witchcraft when preparing their defenses.
MEGA SPOILERS
I really enjoyed the first two novels, Jhereg and Yendi, as being pretty light and fun reads. They're well-written and have nice twisty plotting, feeling more like a noir mystery (maybe something like The Glass Key) than a typical fantasy adventure. I mentally classified them along the same lines as something like Kage Baker's Company books or Charles Stross's Merchant Princes.
I was also a little surprised, since I think I had first heard of Brust in the context of leftist fantasy writers, and I really couldn't detect any traces of leftism in these books. My only previous experience with Brust had been the excellent historical fiction political thriller spy novel Freedom & Necessity that he co-wrote; that book had frickin' Engels in it and was largely about the Chartist movement, so the politics were easier to discern there. I wasn't upset to find the books apolitical, just curious.
That all abruptly changed with the third book Teckla, though. This was a hard book to get through - the writing is still really good and clear and nicely paced, but emotionally it's way more challenging. Like the earlier books the plot concerns an assassination, but this time the main problem is the slow-motion disintegration of Vlad's marriage with Cawti. We first met them in Jhereg as a happily-married couple, and in Yendi saw their whirlwind passionate romance, and it's extra-painful to watch things turn cold and brittle between them. There are arguments, loaded silences, effortful conversations, sitting or lying together with no affection. We only see Vlad's point of view, but it's filled with self-loathing, and as a reader I tended to sympathize with Cawti.
The germ of this turmoil is politics. Cawti has become involved with a group of Easterners who are seeking to improve their lot in life: challenging the Dragaeran-dominated system that keeps social and economic power in the hands of the elites, and condemns the Easterners to living in dangerous slums. Vlad seems outraged that Cawti got involved without letting him know, but his main self-proclaimed motivation is keeping her safe. A human named Franz associated with this group was assassinated after Vlad refused to take the job of killing him, and it seems likely that other members of the organization will be targeted as well. The personal conflict starts off with Cawti being upset that Vlad wants to control her actions and movements and Vlad is upset that Cawti is acting secretly and recklessly; but it gets significantly harder once they realize how far apart their values are. Cawti believes in the righteousness of the struggle to improve society, while Vlad believes that change is hopeless and meaningless, that the best one can do is see to their own security and that of those around them.
Cawti and Vlad are talking past each other for most of the book, arguing about different things. Similarly, we learn that the factions are talking past one another as well. Kelly and his clique, like Cawti, are working towards long-term social change; the Jhereg opposing them is primarily concerned about the immediate impact on his business concerns, particularly the decline of his prostitution revenue as the Easterners have driven his pimps out of the city. Kelly, Cawti and the others assume that they're being opposed by counter-revolutionary forces, but they aren't, at least not intentionally so. Likewise the Jhereg think that killing Franz will send a message to stop interfering with their business, but that message is not at all received, because the Easterners don't see what they're doing as impacting business.
The main reason I wanted to write this blog post is to note how much I love how politics are discussed in this book. Our main point of view, Vlad, is highly critical and skeptical of the politics espoused by Kelly, so we're not getting a direct authorial endorsement of them. While he's slightly more sympathetic towards them by the end of the novel, he still doesn't agree with them, so it also doesn't feel like a straw-man. We can see the flaws in Vlad's attitudes and thinking towards Cawti, which primes us to question his political positions.
I think the thing I like the most (well, "like" probably isn't the best word, more "appreciate") is the actual political arguments. This isn't some Socratic dialogue where ideas as fleshed out and thoroughly explored. It feels much more realistic, where Vlad will just kind of zone out when he starts hearing something he disagrees with, will start thinking about what he's going to say next, and just kind of mentally go "blah blah blah." The big triumph isn't that Vlad comes around to Kelly's way of thinking, it's that Vlad starts to actually pay attention to what he's saying at all. (Interestingly, it seems like the "hook" to start paying attention is when Kelly starts discussing a poet they both enjoy, which supports my general sense of art being particularly efficacious in reaching skeptics.)
In sum, this is pretty much the opposite of "The Iron Heel", which had a fantastic concept but the absolute worst political discussions in any book I've ever read this side of Ayn Rand. I'm very curious to see whether Vlad continues to engage with the social and economic issues Kelly and Cawti care about, or if this is a cul-de-sac in the evolution of his character.
END SPOILERS
This ended up being a slightly longer post than I expected! I'm already looking forward to reading more Vlad books, but again, due to the library situation it may be slower going than normal. I suspect this will be a series that I don't blog about with each entry, but we will see what happens!
