Book: Jhereg

[liv]

Author: Steven Brust

Details: (c) 1983 Steven KZ Brust; Pub Ace 1999 (compendium); ISBN 0-441-00615-9

Verdict: Jhereg is great fun!

Reasons for reading it: I was sidetracked by the author's forward into reading Yendi before this, so I needed to go back and read it.

How it came into my hands: rysmiel gave me the first three books of the Vlad Taltos series as a single-volume set.

Jhereg is not as technically polished as Yendi, but it's more exciting. It's a great story with some lovely characters, and as pacy as anything without compromising on subtlety. There's a few things I could nitpick, but I don't really feel like it; I just had so much fun reading the story. There were several occasions where I was exclaiming to myself how cool this book is, and several more when I was so completely absorbed in the story I wasn't even commenting on it.

I am glad I read Yendi first, because it would have been weird to read it knowing what was going to happen a year after the end of the book. But Jhereg is a much more powerful opening to the series. I would recommend Yendi to people who like the kind of book it is; I would recommend Jhereg to almost anyone.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I like Jhereg a lot; what it has that IMO really matters from a larger-scale story perspective is establishing the reason why so many such powerful Dragaerans actually deign to hang around with this irritating Easterner. Which is lovely - Aliera's comment on genetics is one I've admired for a long time.

[liv]

The thing about Aliera on genetics is that, well, it's good, but it's also multiple pages of in character exposition in the middle of a Cuban missile crisis level of world-threatening emergency. That annoyed me a bit; I don't mind exposition when it's done as well as Brust does it, but the pacing of that bit is really janglingly off, IMO.

But yes, it does set up the relationships between Vlad and the power elites. I also enjoyed the background of the relationship between Vlad and Loiosh. Besides which, it's an incredibly fun and exciting story, certainly not merely establishing the setting à la Tad Williams.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The thing about Aliera on genetics is that, well, it's good, but it's also multiple pages of in character exposition in the middle of a Cuban missile crisis level of world-threatening emergency.

An entirely fair point, and thinking back on it, he really does a remarkable job of making that crisis feel real and scary despite how short a space he has to intoduce all the elements that go to make it up.

[ I also think it's neat that in Jhereg Vlad is essentially scavenging the results of other people's actions, as a way of dealing with the crisis, whereas in Yendi he's thinking twistily. ]