Book: Dragon
Jan. 29th, 2010 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor:Steven Brust
Details: (c) 1998 Steven Brust; Pub Tor 1998; ISBN 0-312-86692-5
Verdict: Dragon seems a somewhat formulaic return to the earlier books of the series, though it is still definitely fun.
Reasons for reading it: I was saying toloreid that I normally don't read series, especially not when they're long, and even more when they are incomplete. But I mentioned that I'd made an exception for the Vlad Taltos books, a planned series of 17 of which 12 exist so far, produced over the course of nearly 30 years. Partly cos they're good, but they also get round my prejudices against multipart series, because each individual book is short and easy to read, and satisfying in itself (though I wouldn't call them standalone, exactly) yet there's an over-arching meta story which means that reading lots of them is distinctly more enjoyable than reading a set of books merely set loosely in the same world. There's nothing that feels like a space-filling middle book, and the plotting is always tight.
How it came into my hands: Birthday present from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rysmiel. It's also the first book I've read since before Christmas, which is very unusual for me. Partly I'm busy, partly it's the fault of having a smart phone so that I can read the internet (instead of novels) when I need to fill odd five or ten minute gaps, and partly it's that I just didn't quite get into it.
The problem I had with Dragon is that the trick of jumping back in time to events chronologically early in Vlad's career just didn't work for me. I enjoyed three books' worth of Vlad being a wise-cracking but somewhat shallow character, but what kept me going through the series was the way that he developed and rounded out, so that by the time of Phoenix-Athyra-Orca he's a lot more mature and complex. Dragon feels almost like an alternate-world prequel to the original Jhereg, reprising themes that have already been worked in Taltos and Yendi. I suspect something clever is going on with the alternate-world aspect, especially with the sudden introduction of the reader as an actual character in the story in the form of Vlad's mysterious metal box, the comments about problems with memory, and so on. But having read several books forming an arc which travels a long way beyond the original premise, it's a bit frustrating to come to what is essentially a reboot version of the story.
Wise-cracking Vlad is indeed witty, and the banter with Loiosh is among the best in the series (there are times when it feels like it falls back on a rote repetition of Loiosh saying "Boss, this is a bad idea" and Vlad retorting "Shut up, Loiosh"). The portrait of Dragaeran war is vivid, but I didn't quite care about the outcome. I spent about the first two thirds of the book expecting to be deceived by my first impression and find that it was actually doing something more subtle, but it never really develops beyond Vlad having a jolly adventure and saving the day and rescuing the MacGuffin. Characters other than Vlad are mentioned, but don't get much screen time; there's a little bit of Sethra Lavode, but Morrolan and Cawti and Aliera barely rise to the cameo level, and Vlad's fellow soldiers are solid minor characters but still rather redshirt-ish.
I pretty much trust Brust by now; I fully expect that later books in the series are going to reveal the apparently straightforward story of Dragon in a new light, and I'm sure something interesting is going to happen with all the hints of unreliable narrator-hood. But considered on its own merits, Dragon didn't quite grab me.
Details: (c) 1998 Steven Brust; Pub Tor 1998; ISBN 0-312-86692-5
Verdict: Dragon seems a somewhat formulaic return to the earlier books of the series, though it is still definitely fun.
Reasons for reading it: I was saying to
loreid that I normally don't read series, especially not when they're long, and even more when they are incomplete. But I mentioned that I'd made an exception for the Vlad Taltos books, a planned series of 17 of which 12 exist so far, produced over the course of nearly 30 years. Partly cos they're good, but they also get round my prejudices against multipart series, because each individual book is short and easy to read, and satisfying in itself (though I wouldn't call them standalone, exactly) yet there's an over-arching meta story which means that reading lots of them is distinctly more enjoyable than reading a set of books merely set loosely in the same world. There's nothing that feels like a space-filling middle book, and the plotting is always tight.How it came into my hands: Birthday present from
rysmiel. It's also the first book I've read since before Christmas, which is very unusual for me. Partly I'm busy, partly it's the fault of having a smart phone so that I can read the internet (instead of novels) when I need to fill odd five or ten minute gaps, and partly it's that I just didn't quite get into it. The problem I had with Dragon is that the trick of jumping back in time to events chronologically early in Vlad's career just didn't work for me. I enjoyed three books' worth of Vlad being a wise-cracking but somewhat shallow character, but what kept me going through the series was the way that he developed and rounded out, so that by the time of Phoenix-Athyra-Orca he's a lot more mature and complex. Dragon feels almost like an alternate-world prequel to the original Jhereg, reprising themes that have already been worked in Taltos and Yendi. I suspect something clever is going on with the alternate-world aspect, especially with the sudden introduction of the reader as an actual character in the story in the form of Vlad's mysterious metal box, the comments about problems with memory, and so on. But having read several books forming an arc which travels a long way beyond the original premise, it's a bit frustrating to come to what is essentially a reboot version of the story.
Wise-cracking Vlad is indeed witty, and the banter with Loiosh is among the best in the series (there are times when it feels like it falls back on a rote repetition of Loiosh saying "Boss, this is a bad idea" and Vlad retorting "Shut up, Loiosh"). The portrait of Dragaeran war is vivid, but I didn't quite care about the outcome. I spent about the first two thirds of the book expecting to be deceived by my first impression and find that it was actually doing something more subtle, but it never really develops beyond Vlad having a jolly adventure and saving the day and rescuing the MacGuffin. Characters other than Vlad are mentioned, but don't get much screen time; there's a little bit of Sethra Lavode, but Morrolan and Cawti and Aliera barely rise to the cameo level, and Vlad's fellow soldiers are solid minor characters but still rather redshirt-ish.
I pretty much trust Brust by now; I fully expect that later books in the series are going to reveal the apparently straightforward story of Dragon in a new light, and I'm sure something interesting is going to happen with all the hints of unreliable narrator-hood. But considered on its own merits, Dragon didn't quite grab me.
