Dragon (Tor fantasy) [Mass Market Paperback]

This highly entertaining comic fantasy novel is the eighth by publication order in the story of Vladimir Taltos. It describes his experiences in an army of Dragonlords, under the command of Morrolan and Sethra Lavode, during the war of the Wall of Barritt's Tomb. It is set much earlier than most of the recent books in the series.

Steven Brust loves juggling multiple timelines, and I had difficulty deciding whether to describe "Dragon" as the second or third in chronological sequence. Based on the timing of the main action of this book, it is the second in the series, beginning just after the chronologically first book, "Taltos." However, Vlad is narrating the story three years later, a few weeks after the second published book, "Yendi", and before the main story of the first published book, "Jhereg." The final dénouement comes at this later stage.

When the reader first meets Lord Morrolan of Castle Black in the first published book in the series, "Jhereg," the hero explains that he is on retainer to Morrolan as a security consultant, and adds that Morrolan had killed a thousand people in battle during a military campaign called "The wall of Barritt's Tomb." This book, "Dragon" goes back to tell the story both of how Vlad was recruited by Morrolan and how Vlad came to join Morrolan's army for that campaign.

If you have not previously read any of Steven Brust's "Vlad Taltos" novels or "Khaavren" romances, they are all set in a world of magic, where there are several intelligent species, including two types of men and women. Humans like ourselves are usually referred to as "Easterners," the other type of men and women call themselves humans but are usually referred to in the books as "Dragaerans" or occasionally as Elves.

Dragaerans are usually taller than humans, live for two or three thousand years, and then after death are taken to walk "The Paths of the Dead" from whence they may be eligible for reincarnation provided they have not annoyed a God too much or had their soul destroyed by a "Morganti" weapon or a "Great Weapon."

Morganti weapons are used between mortals when they are really angry with someone because they don't just kill you, but destroy your soul. "Great Weapons," are especially powerful Morganti weapons which can even harm Gods. Legend has it that there are only seventeen Great Weapons, (this is a special number to Dragaerans) and they are all extremely important - it turns out that the whole point of the action of "Dragon" is about one particular Great Weapon.

All Dragaerans belong to one of seventeen "Great Houses" named after animals of the fantasy world in which the novels are set. Twelve of the thirteen novels to date featuring Vlad Taltos, including "Dragon," are named after one of these great houses, usually also featuring members of that house in a prominent role: if Steven Brust is planning to write a novel for each house we are about two thirds of the way through the series.

Most of the great houses also have a preferred occupation. For examples: "Dragons" and "Dzurlords" are soldiers, "Tecla" are peasants, "Chreotha" are merchants, "Orcas" are sailors, pirates or bankers, and "Jhereg" are gangsters or assassins.

Most members of House Jhereg are also involved in "the organisation" which controls organised crime. The hero, Baronet Vladimir Taltos, is an assassin and minor sorcerer, who at the time of this book is still a prominent member of House Jhereg. (In books which are earlier in the series Vlad goes on the run from the Jhereg after developing an unfortunate case of principles, but this entire book is a flashback to a time before that happened.) Vlad has a companion and familiar, Loiosh, who is an actual Jhereg - that is to say, he is a small intelligent flying reptile. (In some of the books Loiosh has a mate, Rocza, but again, this book is a flashback to before Rocza comes along.)

Taltos narrates these stories with a wonderful dry wit which is one of the best aspects of the novels.

As mentioned, the books are not written in a regular chronological sequence. The fourth novel, "Taltos" is a prequel set before the main action of any of the others: during that book Vlad and Morrolan first meet, and the story requires them to walk the paths of the dead together while still alive. While there they meet the shade of Morrolan's fellow Dragon, Barritt, who has only just died.

This book, "Dragon" starts just after they get back, as Morrolan starts to organise Barritt's funeral and tidy up his affairs. Lord Morrolan hires Vlad to help deal with some plots which he expects to follow. Morrolan's expectations are more than fulfilled, and result in a private war.

Many of the Vlad Taltos novels contain flashbacks to earlier events, references to later events, multiple timelines, or all three. "Dragon" has three timelines. Most of the chapters start with Vlad narrating scenes from a "grunt's eye" account of his experiences as a private soldier in Cropper Company during the final phases of the war of the Wall of Barritt's Tomb. Then the rest of each chapter tells the story of how Vlad came to be there.

Towards the end of the book there are also "interlude" scenes set approximately three years later. These begin when Sethra the Younger comes back from the parallel dimension where Sethra Lavode exiled her at the end of "Yendi" and set her, like a naughty schoolgirl, to write out 83,521 lines.

Having been set thousands of lines as a punishment for plotting, what does Sethra the Younger do on her return? You guessed it!

It is on this later timeline when Vlad and Morrolan finally discover what the entire war was really about.

For the nit-pickers; Stephen Brust is incredibly good at putting these complex books together so that all the fiddly little details are consistent between volumes. "Dragon" offers you a rare chance to catch him out changing his mind about something, specifically the composition of the armies which fight it out at the wall of Barritt's Tomb.

When Brust wrote "Tecla" he inferred that one army was composed of human (Eastern) conscripts, the other of Tecla (Dragaeran peasant) conscripts, that the humans and peasants did all the dying, and he wrote that there were two dragonlords present "who were never in any real danger".

In this book, which describes the same campaign in much more detail, the human and Tecla conscripts are mentioned only in passing. It is possible that they were a large part of the rank and file of the two armies but they certainly don't appear to predominate in the units at the cutting edge of the action. And there are a lot more than two members of House Dragon present.

In fact, just about every other member of "Cropper Company", the unit which Vlad joins, appears to be a member of House Dragon. So almost all the soldiers Vlad fights with or against are dragonlord or dzurlord volunteers. And far from never being in any real danger, plenty of them get killed.

You will get most out of the Vlad Taltos books if you read them in something close to the "official" order. My recommendation would be to start with either the first book written, "Jhereg" or the chronologically first book, "Taltos."

Here is a list of the books in publication order, with the chronological place of the main action of each book in brackets after:

1) Jhereg (4th)
2) Yendi (3rd)
3) Tecla (5th)
4) Taltos (1st)
5) Phoenix (6th)
6) Athyra (8th)
7) Orca (9th)
8) Dragon (2nd)
9) Issola (10th)
10) Dzur (11th)
11) Jhegaala (7th)
12) Iorich (12th)
13) Tiassa (13th).

If you enjoy the Taltos novels, you might be interested in another sequence of books which Steven Brust has set in the same country, but quite a few centuries earlier. These are something between a parody and a homage to the novels of Alexandre Dumas. He's called them the "Khaavren Romances" after the central character of the first two novels, who corresponds very closely to D'Artagnan.

Obviously none of the human characters overlap, but some of the Dragaerans do: Khaavren himself meets Vlad briefly in the book "Tecla" and properly in the most most recent book "Tiassa (Vlad Taltos)." Two of the major characters in Taltos novels like "Dragon", Sethra Lavode and Morrolan, The Lord of Castle Black, are also important enough in the Khaavren novels to have books named after them.

The five Khaavren romances, in sequence, are

1) "The Phoenix Guards" (equivalent to "The Three Musketeers")
2) "Five Hundred Years after (Khaavren Romances)" (equivalent to "Twenty years after")

Then a trilogy "The Viscount of Adrilankha" (e.g. "The Viscount of Bragelonne") which comprises

3) The Paths of the Dead
4) The Lord of Castle Black
5) Sethra Lavode

Overall I found both the "Taltos" novels and the "Khaavren Romances" very entertaining: I recommend both series and this book.

I'm a fan of this series from way back, but must agree with prior reviews stating that Brust gets a little confused in terms of character development, presenting a Vlad Taltos with the maturity of the later books into the chronology of the earlier efforts. Fair enough, and I understand that it must be a difficult task to "roll-back" the evolution of one's character in order to fit the needs of a non-linear publishing schedule (Lois Bujold undergoes similar difficluties with Mile Vorkosigan). But that wasn't my problem with the book. My problem with the book was that I didn't find the portrayal of Vlad's adventures in the army particularly compelling or convincing. Brust has never been a overly verbose writer (with the exception of Five Hundred Years After and the Phoenix Guards), a fact that I appreciate, but in the past I found his off-hand sketches of the city atmosphere to be quite illuminating in terms of creating a scene for the action. I never really got that sense from his descriptives of the various battlefields, camp life, etc...Perhaps he meant to indicate the confusion of war with this scarcity of language, but it didn't have that effect for me. I felt like he failed to fully imagine his backdrop. Much of the book struck me as taking place in a sort of colorless, generic battlefield context. I didn't get the sense of place that i've come to expect from his work.

That said, I found many of the characters quite enjoyable, most notable Vlad's squadmate dragons. And it is refreshing to see him return to the 1st person.

Vlad and the readers once again find themselves in a completely unfamiliar environment - this time in the middle of a dragon war. It's very amusing to see Vlad try to settle into the new environment, while not actually forget who he is or why he's there. The bouncing timeline, similar to that used previously is frustrating and clumsy, again leading to a somewhat anti-climactic feel. Brust is also getting a little careless with spreading his exposition about and not concentrating it all in lumps. Fun new characters and insight into the dragon philosophy though and important plot points for previous and future books.