Rating: 
Summary: Read any other Dragaera Brust book before this one
Review: Brust is my favorite fantasy author due to his Vlad Taltos series, which I love. I found the earlier romances (Five Hundred Years After and The Phoenix Guards) to be somewhat long-winded, but ultimately fulfilling. I cannot say the same for The Paths of the Dead. It is slow moving and long winded, due in large part to the writing style attributed to the fictional original author Paarfi.
At one point, I actually went through a few pages and determined that a simple conversation encompassing 4 pages could have been accomplished in about half a page! Some may enjoy this writing style, but I found it frustrating and repetitive.
Additionally, conversations and descriptions are filled with such minute and trivial details as to be distracting. For example, I wish Brust would publish some maps instead of or in addition to providing arduous passages describing geography. If the Dumas books (after which, I'm told, his romances are fashioned) contain such descriptions, they at least have the advantage of referring to real places.
Apparently, this is the first part of a trilogy. Be aware that time is spent in setting up characters which don't contribute to the main storyline in this book. While time (and 2 more books) can only tell the success of this storytelling, it is an uncomfortable burden for this single book to bear.
Brust does provide welcome insight into the backgrounds of familiar characters. For example, backgrounds of Morrolan and the Necromancer are revealed. These tidbits and my acknowledgement that this book is only the first in a trilogy are the only reasons I grant even a 3 star rating.
I don't suggest this to anyone as an introduction to Brust's works. Read one of the Taltos books first, like Jhereg or Yendi.
If you've read all the other Dragaera books, you might want to wait for the the rest of the trilogy to be available.
Rating: 
Summary: This book will make you talk funny for weeks afterward
Review: First off, I would strongly advise reading the two earlier books - even though this is advertised as Book 1 of "The Viscount of Adrilankha," it is not, in fact, the first book in the series. You should read "The Phoenix Guards" and "Five Hundred Years After" first. I'll wait while you click to buy those... OK, you're back. (I should mention that there are fan websites for this series, which I have not viewed; it is possible that there are people who give you far more in the way of hints and spoilers than this reviewer will. I myself prefer to avoid spoilers so that I can have the joy of looking for all the inside jokes and solving all the puzzles without help, and only looking for other people's interpretations after I have gone as far as possible on my own.)
Now a little bit about the series. The first book made me talk funny for several days, and my spousal unit is STILL talking funny on occasion, even though it's been a year since we discovered "The Phoenix Guards." "Five Hundred Years Later" was not quite as funny - but it contains a great deal of plot you won't want to miss. This book gets back to being hysterically funny, and it leaves the reader thinking in long paragraphs which contain sentences which have several nested clauses within them. So, sort of like some other famous series, the first and third book (where this is the third) are better than the 2nd; you read the 2nd as a bridge between the two.
Now, this book in particular. In this book, Brust acknowledges the deep debt he has to Tolkein. What, you say? You pretend that there is some connection between Tolkein's fantasy and Brust's, beyond that of the general category of fantasy? Well, yes, I do myself the honor of making that claim. There has been a great deal of imitation of Tolkein over the past 40 years, featuring elves and whatnot that have funny names and go on quests for magical objects, and most of it, in my opinion, stinks. Brust's books, however, take the same basic elements but make something creatively new while acknowledging "the mother of all modern fantasy." For example, in this book, we finally learn what the Easterners - you know, those short-lived people like us - call the Dragaerans: elfs. We find this out through a very funny scene in which Morrolan discovers that he is an elf, and wanders through several pages doing the Dragaeran equivalent of smacking his head: I'm an *elf*?!? *I'm* an elf?!? And we, of course, also smack our heads, because while we knew that Dragaerans were different, we didn't think of applying this term to them, but now that we hear it, we go, of course! Long-lived, tall and slender, trying to be kind to short and short-lived people, even though they don't mix much? Of course they're elves!
Next, we have a blatant tribute to LOTR, in which our mixed party of elfs and humans enters an enchanted mountain by way of an invisible door into that mountain...
By the way, it is absolutely necessary that you read all of the acknowledgments, introductions, and so on, especially the essay at the end, "Some Notes Toward Two Analyses of Auctorial Method and Voice." This is known, for short, as "How to write like Paarfi." Here, there is more fun. One of my favorite lines is the one about the play "Redwreath and Goldstar Have Travelled to Deathsgate." It is possible, if you are not of my generation, that you don't know what this refers to, and I will only give you one hint: translate the names Redwreath and Goldstar into German. (Or Dutch, and I suspect Danish and Swedish are similar.)
There are also, throughout the book, many subtle references to some of the great classics of fantasy, and if you are a younger reader who has not read them all, I would suggest picking up some copies of, amongst others, Fritz Leiber's works. (A sentence from the short story, "The Holy Grail":
"The great magician (there was something hysterical about the way Mouse insisted on that "great," for to the world Glavas Rho was but a hedge-wizard, no better than a Mingol necromancer with his second-sighted spotted dog or a conjurer beggar of Quarmall) - the great magician and his dwelling were alike protected by strong enchantments no impious outsider cound breach - not even (the heart of Mouse skipped a beat) the lord paramount of these forests, Duke Janarrl, who hated all magic, but white worse than black."
And that's by no means the longest sentence in there! Furthermore, the city in Leiber's stories is named Lankhmar, clearly an antecedent of Adrilankha.) While much of Leiber's work may seem old-fashioned - much of it was written about 40 years ago) - it contains the seeds of much of the same kind of humor and sword-and-sorcery that Brust uses.
In short: if you hate wordplay and adventure, you'll hate this book; everyone else, however, should enjoy it hugely!!
Rating:
Summary: Not my favourite
Review: For the last ten years or so, _The Viscount of Adrilankha_ has been listed as a forthcoming book. Well, here it is, at least in part. In _The Paths of the Dead_ Steven Brust continues his amusing Dumas riff with a parallel to that esteemed author's _The Vicomte de Bragelonne_. Like that work, PotD is the first of a trilogy. Also like that work, PotD is, well, a pale shadow of its very entertaining predecessors.Essentially, this book is the tale of the end of the Dragearan Interregnum (or the beginning thereof) and the oft mentioned story of how Zerika III traveled the Paths of the Dead to bring back the Orb and restore the Empire. If you don't know what that last sentence meant, you probably do not want to read this book because PotD takes for granted a certain familiarity with Brust's previous work in this particular world. Start with _The Phoenix Guards_ or something in the Vlad Taltos line. I did not enjoy this book as much as I usually enjoy Brust's work, and especially the volumes in this series. Although the Dragaeran books are numerous and -- I suspect -- encompass a vast, single story, each volume until now has stood alone, telling a complete tale. PotD does not, not really. It does get Zerika through her task, but the vast cast of other characters are merely jockeyed about with very little sense that they have any connection to anything. I particularly could not fathom why Morrolan appeared in this book at all, as he didn't do anything. I would have preferred it if Brust had just left him out of it and brought him in in _The Lord of Castle Black_. I also felt that the coachman could have used more explanation to make him fit into this reality. As it was, he just seemed like an interesting concept from _The Gypsy_ that didn't quite fit. I also have to admit that the Paarfi-speak is wearing a little thin with me. When you have a book where something is actually happening it's an amusing stylistic device. But so little happened in PotD that it felt as though the sole reason for the book was to continue the stylistic exercise; I was keenly aware that the language actually was used to stretch a very brief narrative into 400-odd pages. And I found the treatise on how to write like Paarfi a bit smug, like someone indulging in an in-joke. I've read 3 books in this style now, I don't really need to have the details pointed out to me. All in all, I think I would have preferred it if Brust (and/or the publisher) had just waited and released _The Viscount of Adrilankha_ as one book, or all at one time. I'd waited ten years for it, I could have waited a couple more. And I don't feel that BRust's style (or Paarfi's) is really suited to a boundaryless story with no clear progression or end. Brust fans will want to read this one, but if you aren't already a fan, don't start here!
Rating:
Summary: Great Fun, IF...
Review: Great fun, IF you enjoy the immensely verbose 'voice' of Paarfi of Roundwood. Apparently, its a rather big if, though personally I'm a Paarfi fan: to me, he less 'Dumas' than 'Python', and the manner in which he discourses at great-- even irritating-- length in order to prolong one's anticipation of events is just part of the spice that makes this dish very satisfying indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of frosting but no cake
Review: I enjoyed reading this book. But.... I have read all off Brust's other novels, and liked (or more than liked) all of them except Freedom And Necessity. For a fan, this was a fun bit of fluff. We get to see some of our favorite characters again, and get introduced to a few new ones. And if you like Parfi, you get more of him. If you don't like Parfi, you get more of him anyway. But this book entirely lacks the emotional depth of a Vlad novel, to say nothing of a work like Agyar. For someone who does not know the characters involved, the book would be an exercise in frustration. There's no subtext here, just text. We do get some moments of Brust-like wit and style, but without an exciting story or a deeper structure it becomes a cake which is all frosting and no cake.
Rating: 
Summary: Solid, but not his best...
Review: I found Paths of the Dead quite entertaining. The book fills in several unanswered questions that readers of Brust's other works undoubtedly have lingering in the back of their minds. Still, the particular sort of quasi-historical fantasy style he adopts has its ups and downs. I appreciate how clever the writing is, but find it a bit self-indulgent at times. Like most of Brust's writing, it's a pleasure to read because the author obviously enjoys his created universe so much. On the other hand, it's a bit undisciplined for the same reason. At his best, Brust matches Peter Beagle's efficient compelling style and even manages to make it more fun than Beagle's more serious novels. Overall, I heartily endorse Paths of the Dead for Brust's regular readers, but I'd recommend starting with an earlier novel for folks that aren't familiar with his style.
Rating: 
Summary: The Paths of the Tedious
Review: I found this book unreadable. I have read all of Brust's Taltos novels. I have read the Phoenix Guards, and 500 Years Later, although (to be truthful) I do not recall much about them. But I READ them in their entirety. I gave up on this book half-way through, something I have done with maybe 5 books over 40 years of reading fantasy. I found the style only mildly amusing and greatly irritating. The discussion of simultaneity of action allowed the author to claim two or more pages of writing for what should have been (at most) a paragraph. The purported historian is obviously a historian because his writing would not sell otherwise. (And, no, I would NOT compare him to Dumas; I would not insult the creator of Edmund Dantes so.) So why should such cutesy, interminable prose be inflicted upon we readers. I finally succumbed to the leeching effects of bad writing halfway through the book. I have no intention of reading its sequel ( or, God forbid, if it is a trilogy, its third part). I have better authors with which to beguile my time... Alexander Dumas, for example.
Rating:
Summary: Aaarghh!
Review: I hate to say this, but the only character in this book that comes across as "real" is Sir Paarfi of Roundwood, and at that it would have been best had the reader been apprised of his death at childbirth.
This is a story that you really have to work for, dragging the relevant bits and pieces from the dregs of "Sir Paarfi's" stilted writing style, which I enjoyed in the other books. Perhaps that is because the style is not used to enhance, but to enlength the book to something with the requisite number of pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I wanted to like this book. I'd really enjoyed Brust's earlier works, including the first several books of his Vlad Taltos series. And as someone who had wondered about the background of Morrolan, how Castle Black came to be, and what life was like during the Interregnum, the book looked promising. But I soon found myself frustrated. Unlike his earlier work, here Brust has chosen an unusual narrative style, telling the tale from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, a historian, if you will, who stops the pace of the narrative flow to chat about word origins, the strange customs of other peoples, and whatever else catches his fancy. It reads a bit like a nineteenth century novel. It's clever and slyly humorous, but goes too far. All of that cleverness serves to put a wall between us and the characters. We can't get to know or care about these people because we're seeing them through the veil of this narrator, and the action jumps around as we're introduced to a cast of dozens (if not hundreds). In the end, the book didn't hold my interest. I didn't care what happened to any of the characters, and just wanted it to be over. I still treasure the books he wrote in the 1980s and early 1990s, but this one disappointed me. There's a great story in here somewhere, but it's hopelessly buried by the weight of the narrative.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I wanted to like this book. I'd really enjoyed Brust's earlier works, including the first several books of his Vlad Taltos series. And as someone who had wondered about the background of Morrolan, how Castle Black came to be, and what life was like during the Interregnum, the book looked promising. But I soon found myself frustrated. Unlike his earlier work, here Brust has chosen an unusual narrative style, telling the tale from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, a historian, if you will, who stops the pace of the narrative flow to chat about word origins, the strange customs of other peoples, and whatever else catches his fancy. It reads a bit like a nineteenth century novel. It's clever and slyly humorous, but goes too far. All of that cleverness serves to put a wall between us and the characters. We can't get to know or care about these people because we're seeing them through the veil of this narrator, and the action jumps around as we're introduced to a cast of dozens (if not hundreds). In the end, the book didn't hold my interest. I didn't care what happened to any of the characters, and just wanted it to be over. I still treasure the books he wrote in the 1980s and early 1990s, but this one disappointed me. There's a great story in here somewhere, but it's hopelessly buried by the weight of the narrative.
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