Rating: 
Summary: Great
Review: I have probably read about 2 full books on my fair time my whole life... once I read Jhereg I couldn't stop with Steven Brust, I have read four of his book so far in the past 2 weeks. I think it's great! So far Jhereg is still my favorite. If you like this one try Dragon, it can get confusing because it switches scenes like the movie "Pulp Fiction" would do, but I think it's great.
Rating:
Summary: The best assassin doing his best work, Vlad Taltos
Review: I have read 5 book from Steven Brust, he has the best way to keep you on reading his books. He's way of explaining the situations let's us imagine the whole dragerean world. I hope I can buy all his books...
Rating:
Summary: Brust at his BEST!
Review: I love Steven Brust's work! I've been reading this series for about 8 years, and cannot put them down. If you see Brust's name on a book, you can rest asured, it's fantastic. I've never seen a writer get the reader so deep into a character, or a world set, for that matter. He makes you believe in his world, his characters, everything. Even people who aren't die-hard fantasy readers will enjoy this set. I for one, would love to go charging into battle, knowing Sethra Lavode was at my side!
Rating: 
Summary: Suprised
Review: I read -or tried to read- this book, but I couldn't get into it. Although I admit the wit was there, the characters seemed flimsy and the details virtually nonexistent. Maybe I'm too used to the all-encompassing detail of Robert Jordan's books, but Steven Brust left me bored and uninterested in finishing the story. Since there are several excellent reviews of it, though, I recommend you read him anyway. Just because I didn't like it doesn't mean you won't!
Rating:
Summary: a title for your review
Review: I though that this series of books was excellent. The Book of Jhereg is a collection of the first 3 books with Vlad Taltos. The plot line is great, and is carried out very well thoughout all of the Taltos books. A very fun read, the world of sorcery and war will drag you in, and not let you put the book down. BUY NOW.
Rating:
Summary: Pow! Biff! SPLAT!
Review: It's like a comic book, without the pictures, and you've just been dropped into the middle of it. Or maybe a video game, and you'd better be able to reach your shurikens or poisoned dagger while your faithful reptile companion holds the other assasins off. But if you're killed, don't worry: you've got insurance that will bring you back. Vlad is a human in a city dominated by eight-foot Dragaerans, who never have to shave and live to be a thousand. It's their turf, and their rules, and they routinely conquer and abuse "Easterners" like Vlad. He's not the type to take this, so he becomes a "Jhereg" assassin, working up the ranks of a criminal syndicate until he comes to boss dozens of Dragaerans around, befriending some and terrorizing others. He adopts a new-hatched mini-dragon or jhereg, finding that the cat-sized beast has a humanlike intelligence and a nasty sense of humor, and wins a grudging respect from the dominant species. All his friends are 900 years old, or undead vampires, or legendary thieves; but don't hold it against them. Vlad solves mysteries and evades death, and cooks fiery fungus-laced omelets, in a bizarre semi-alien milieu. He finds love. He sharpens knives. He gloomily bandages his jhereg bites. He'd be right at home in a Zelazny novel, which is reason enough to buy this or any other Brust book.
Rating:
Summary: Assassination for Fun and Profit
Review: Let me start by saying I like Steven Brust very much, and that I think the Vlad Taltos series is outstanding. The three stories in this volume are among the best of the early books, and show Brust's writing at its best. But any thoughtful reader needs to consider the subject.Here we have a hero in Vladimir Taltos who makes his living assassinating people, selling illicit - well, untaxed - drugs, running whorehouses and operating a numbers racket. He's not a nice guy. It's true that he had a rough childhood, lives as a member of minority in a culture that's even less nice, and tried work as a restaurateur first, but even so... How can we like this guy? How can we recommend books about this guy to anybody? The Dragarean culture is deeply dysfunctional. It is based on sorcery in fundamental ways, and upon the failure of sorcery a few hundred years before Taltos was born, the society essentially collapsed into chaos (sorry). Crime, including assassination, is an accepted line of work. The empress herself recognizes its necessity. Nor are all assassinations necessarily fatal, although a lamentable number of those that Taltos commits seem to be. Sorcery is very powerful, and revivification is often possible. And so many of the targets richly deserve it. And there is an afterlife. At least for Dragearans. And sometimes Taltos feels bad about it afterwards. After the torture and murder of one sorceress, who was guilty of nothing more than what Taltos does for a living, he tells us that years later it still bothers him. Brust is a good enough writer that he makes you like Vlad Taltos, and care about him, despite his vocation. Brust presents the picture of a deeply complex man who wants to deny those complexities, in the tradition of the best mystery writers. Characters are well-developed, plot lines imaginative and tight, and the dialog is very good. The novels are themselves are each very much pieces of the puzzle that is Vlad Taltos. While there are a few inconsistencies across the books, they are relatively minor. There is a sense that Vlad Taltos is much more important than he knows, and that he will have a critical, even indispensable, role in the society in which he finds himself. There are mysteries that span several books, some still unanswered. Who is Vlad's mother, for example? Why does the very oldest Dragearan foster and protect him? Why does a goddess take such a interest in him? The mysteries and shadows, some revealed in later books and some still dark, make Taltos more compelling. These are entertaining, even compelling yarns in a richly imagined world. In the end, you don't care that Vlad Taltos is a multiple-murderer; you just want Steven Brust to write another book.
Rating:
Summary: Three of my all time favorites in one book!
Review: Loaded with sarcastic wit and action! Vlad is an assassin in this universe's version of the Mafia, the House of Jhereg. He is likeable rogue who always lands on his feet. One of the best developed characters I've seen. Read this book; you will not regret it!! (And if you like the characterization, give Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series a try)
Rating:
Summary: Trite crap. And this is what GOOD fantasy reads like...
Review: My first experience with Brust was when I read his novel To Reign In Hell, an account of the events in Heaven preceding the formation of the world and so on. I thought it was an excellent book, and recommend it to many of my friends. I have the copy with the foreword by Roger Zelazny, and I figured, hey, if the man behind the Amber Chronicles likes this guy, why not give it a shot?
I try not to read much fantasy; and I tend to be picky about books I read in general, but this one managed to slip in under my crap-radar on the strength of the aforementioned excellent work.
Man, this Vlad Taltos stuff sucks. It's a headlong, breathless, no-pausing-for-story-or-description plunge into a trite, pointless little world full of stock characters and little to no real drama. It's the story of Vlad "I have an Evil Name so I must be Cool" Taltos, a mob boss, assasin, and all around wannabe badass who happens to have a huge retinue of unbelievably powerful friends with godlike powers, including the power to 'revivify' him if he's ever killed (which happens an awful lot- man, talk about your drama-killers right there...)
The pace of these books is the worst part. Brust's penchant for basing his stories almost entirely on dialogue worked for him in To Reign In Hell, where the description of Heaven and it's denizens worked better being kept vague, but not in a world that just screams out to be defined, as it Jhereg's Dragaeran Empire does.
If you like this kind of thing, I'd suggest trying out China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. Far better written, with an almost Gibson-esque obsession with description and detail. Love it.
Rating:
Summary: Trite crap. And this is what GOOD fantasy reads like...
Review: My first experience with Brust was when I read his novel To Reign In Hell, an account of the events in Heaven preceding the formation of the world and so on. I thought it was an excellent book, and recommend it to many of my friends. I have the copy with the foreword by Roger Zelazny, and I figured, hey, if the man behind the Amber Chronicles likes this guy, why not give it a shot?
I try not to read much fantasy; and I tend to be picky about books I read in general, but this one managed to slip in under my crap-radar on the strength of the aforementioned excellent work.
Man, this Vlad Taltos stuff sucks. It's a headlong, breathless, no-pausing-for-story-or-description plunge into a trite, pointless little world full of stock characters and little to no real drama. It's the story of Vlad "I have an Evil Name so I must be Cool" Taltos, a mob boss, assasin, and all around wannabe badass who happens to have a huge retinue of unbelievably powerful friends with godlike powers, including the power to 'revivify' him if he's ever killed (which happens an awful lot- man, talk about your drama-killers right there...)
The pace of these books is the worst part. Brust's penchant for basing his stories almost entirely on dialogue worked for him in To Reign In Hell, where the description of Heaven and it's denizens worked better being kept vague, but not in a world that just screams out to be defined, as it Jhereg's Dragaeran Empire does.
If you like this kind of thing, I'd suggest trying out China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. Far better written, with an almost Gibson-esque obsession with description and detail. Love it.
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