Jhegaala (Vlad Taltos) [Hardcover]

It really is amazing that this the eleventh novel; in the Vlad Taltos serirs is as captivating as the first. Steven Brust attempts to write each novel so that it can stand on it's own, and again in this one he has done so. When I recommend people read them books, it varies on my approach. Always start with Jhereg but to some friends I recommend reading in order of publication and some in order of chronology. This book steps back from the last few and tells of an earlier tale. A tale of a man in search of his past and his family. It is also a tale of murder, intrigue, confusion and misunderstanding that all leads to a high body count.

In each of the Vlad Taltos novels Brust approaches them differently. He has created such a believable world that side stories and books mentioned become something the read would like to possess. In this book each chapter begins with quotes from a play Six Parts Water by a playwright named Miersen. These snippets leave you wanting to read or see the play. It is hard not to like the witty and humorous Vlad Taltos, even if he is an assassin by profession, even if he betrayed his 'crime family' to save his estranged wife. Even is he got most of his distant family murdered because he did not understand a situation he blundered into. This is Vlad Taltos, the man we would like to meet and know and count among our friends. He has impeccable taste in food and drink and live by a motto akin to 'Life is to short for bad food or drink.'

In this book we see a very different side of Vlad, he is not an Easterner trying to fit in without fitting in; in the Dragaera Empire, he has returned to the land of his ancestors in the east. He is a human among humans and yet he fits in even less than we are used to. In part because he has live his whole life in the west. Because of that in this book we see for the first time Vlad take a major misstep and pay a personal price, he is injured worse that we have seen yet in any of the books.

This book will be a great summer read for any fan of the fantasy genre, or for people who are already fan's of Brust works. It fills in some of the story between early books, and answers some of the reader's ongoing questions about Vlad, unfortunately it also raised many new questions. But those must be answered in another tale. Hopefully soon.

(First Published in Imprint 2008-06-27.)

This comic fantasy thriller is the eleventh published book in the story of Vladimir Taltos. In chronological sequence, however, it is number seven: the action of the story begins a couple of months after Vlad goes on the run from the Jhereg "organisation" in which he had formerly been an assassin and crimelord, at the end of "Phoenix."

Before leaving the Imperial capital, Vlad had appointed his grandfather as regent of a property he owned outside the city. A few weeks later he secretly visited his grandfather there, and asked about his long-vanished mother. It turns out she came from a paper-making town called Burz in the human kingdom of Fenario, to the East of the Dragaeran Empire in which Vlad has grown up.

Fenario, where the action of "Jhegaala" takes place, is also the setting for a stand-alone Steven Brust novel not featuring Vlad Taltos or Khaavren, called "Brokedown Palace."

Knowing little about his mother other than her maiden name of Merss, Vlad goes to Fenario and starts asking after her family. This creates a strange reaction. At first everyone in Burz who he asks after his mother's family either clams up totally or takes the question as a threat. No sooner has he discovered where in the vicinity of Burz a family with that name lives than someone burns down their house before he can get there, murdering every man, woman and child inside.

There are three sinister powers that dominate Burz - the feudal count who is nominal overlord and runs the mill, the "Guild" which dominates trade and a hidden "coven" of witches. One of them is clearly threatened by Vlad and ordered the murder of the Merss family, who had probably been his relatives. But which ?

If he had any sense, Vlad would move on: the longer he stays in one place the greater the chance that the Jhereg "organisation" will track him down and kill him. But whoever murdered the Merss family has made a fatal mistake. Vlad may have stopped working as an assassin, he may be a hunted fugitive, but he still has the skills which made him one of the most powerful crimelords in the empire. He doesn't need to kill anyone personally to destroy them. And the people who murdered his relatives have made him very angry ...

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" while 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 taller than humans, live 2,000 years or so, and after death are 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 only used between mortals when someone is really angry because they don't just kill you, they also destroy your soul. "Great Weapons," are particularly deadly Morganti weapons which can even kill Gods.

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 featuring Vlad Taltos, including "Jhegaala," are named after one of these houses, and this is the only such novel which does not feature a member of the eponymous house in a prominent role. If Steven Brust is planning to write a novel for each house he is about two thirds of the way through the series.

Each great house also has one or more preferred occupations and two house characteristics. For example, "Dragons" and "Dzurlords" are soldiers, "Tecla" are peasants, "Chreotha" are merchants, "Orcas" are sailors, pirates or - wait for it - bankers, and "Jhereg" are gangsters or assassins. This book has a table at the front with a picture of the house animal of each house and a description of their principal characteristics, which for the Jhegaala are "Metamorphosis and Endurance"

The hero, Baronet Vladimir Taltos, is an assassin and minor sorcerer, who used to be a prominent member of House Jhereg, and like most members of that house was involved in "the organisation" which controls organised crime.

However, in the chronologically preceding book "Phoenix" Vlad's wife Cawti, who is also an assassin, developed an unfortunate case of principles. In the process of digging her out of the mess which resulted and saving her life, Vlad enraged the Jhereg organisation and had to go on the fun from them, with a huge price on his head.

Cawti was also extremely annoyed with Vlad for interfering, in spite of the fact that he saved her life. As a result, at the time of this book their marriage appears to be over, which Vlad is rather upset about, and which contributes to a sadder tone to this book than most of the rest of the series.

Vlad has two companions, Loiosh and Rocza who are actual Jhereg - that is to say, they are small intelligent flying reptiles. Loiosh is Vlad's familiar and the two communicate telepathically - with an amusing line in banter. Taltos narrates these stories with a wonderful dry wit which is one of the best aspects of the novels.

The books are not written in a regular chronological sequence: for example, the fourth novel, "Taltos" is a prequel set before the main action of any of the others. Most of the books contain either flashbacks to much earlier events, references to much later events, or both.

This book is organised into five parts and into a prologue and seventeen chapters, each with their own unique introduction. Each of the five parts is prefaced by an extract from a Dragaeran biology text describing part of the life cycle of the Jhegaala; each of the seventeen chapters is preceded by a few lines from a Dragaeran play, apparently a comic murder mystery.

You will get most out of these books if you read them in something close to the "official" order.

If you are new to the Vlad Taltos series, my recommendation would be to start with either the first book written, "Jhereg" or the chronologically first book, "Taltos." If you like the first one you do read, and decide to tackle the rest, I recommend that you follow the order the books were published. 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 a parody of and homage to the novels of Alexandre Dumas. He's called them the "Khaavren Romances" after the central character of the first two novels, who is a mix of D'Artagnan and Sherlock Holmes.

Obviously none of the human characters in the Taltos series had been born at the time of the Khaavren romances, but some Dragaerans overlap: Khaavren himself meets Vlad Taltos briefly in "Tecla" and at much more length in "Tiassa." Two major characters in the Taltos novels, Sethra Lavode and Lord Morrolan of Castle Black, are also important enough in the Khaavren series 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" (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.

Brust has been writing about Vlad for some twenty years now. In that time we've seen many aspects of the man, in some portraits being cold, calculating, ruthless, and ambitious; in others loving, caring, lonely, introspective, and ethical, in still others cynical, wise-cracking, and devil-may-care-ish. What is remarkable about this is how all these aspects fit together in one very real person.

This book once again takes us on a journey inside Vlad, who this time shows just how (in his own estimation) stupid and block-headed he can be - although the reader may find his cognitive abilities in determining just what is going on and who did what to whom far from being `stupid'. Vlad, on the run from certain people out to eliminate him, decides it would be nice to take a little vacation far from the intrigues and plots of the Dragaera Empire, and heads out to find his birthplace in the East and those relatives who still might live there. As usual, he's accompanied by his familiars Loiosh and Rocza, source of much of the wise-crackery, although in this book it seems to be limited to his familiar's denigration of Vlad's stupid (in their opinion) plans and actions. Vlad's appearance at the village of Burz invokes immediate suspicion - what's an Empire man doing in this quiet Eastern village? Events quickly turn very dark, with several apparently reasonless murders, and we follow Vlad as he tries to determine the why and who in true whodunit fashion, and eventually his plan to deal out his form of justice, even while severely incapacitated.

We don't get much more detail about the Empire here, but this book does fill in some of the holes about the `human' societies of this world and their type of magic. The Vlad of this book shows us a gritty, very determined, and yes, block-headed and stubborn man, not someone you'd like to meet in a dark alley. And as usual, there is a set of ethical questions posed within this work, and the answers given here may not be to everyone's liking, but they ring true to the basic fiber of what makes Vlad Vlad.

Perhaps not the best of the Taltos series, but a very strong entry that adds quite a bit to the picture of Vlad the man.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)