Taltos

Rating:
Summary: Vlad Taltos: One Very Unique Fantasy "Hero"
Review: The thing I most like about Vlad Taltos (the "star" of Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series) is that he is Mr. Sarcasm. He's surrounded by all these mighty warlords and sorcerers and noblemen yet he does not fear pissing them off with his sarcastic wit and disrespectful comments. It's funny as heck!

Vlad Taltos is an assassin and a minor mob boss in this novel. There are eight Vlad Taltos novels in all and this one (Taltos) is the best one to start with (even though it was the fourth written). Good book -- it turns your typical epic fantasy on it's ear. Vlad is hired to steal (he isn't a thief, he's an assassin!) an object for an "honorable" warlord and a vampire-sorceress. Somehow, this leads to Vlad taking a trip to the realm of the dead. All in a day's work, I guess.

Good novel. I really enjoy Steven's Brust's work and I think Vlad Taltos is a most unique fantasy "hero".

Rating:
Summary: It's good. See.
Review: The thing is, I got sick of fantasy because I got sick of Tall Beautiful Elves and Short Grumpy Dwarves and Nasty Old Ogres and Absolute Good and Evil. Get rid of it all, keep the magic, rub the entire story with ashes to get that nice grey look, and add a whole lot of very funny lines, and you get something I can really get into.

If it sounds like something you could really get into, too, than definitely pick this book up, and introduce yourself to this series.

Oh, one thing? I was lying a bit about the Elves. But only a bit.

Rating:
Summary: It's good. See.
Review: The thing is, I got sick of fantasy because I got sick of Tall Beautiful Elves and Short Grumpy Dwarves and Nasty Old Ogres and Absolute Good and Evil. Get rid of it all, keep the magic, rub the entire story with ashes to get that nice grey look, and add a whole lot of very funny lines, and you get something I can really get into.

If it sounds like something you could really get into, too, than definitely pick this book up, and introduce yourself to this series.

Oh, one thing? I was lying a bit about the Elves. But only a bit.

Rating:
Summary: Short and Sweet
Review: This book is a joy to read. You find plenty of one liners and low humor, while at the same time getting a beautiful and subtle understanding of the main character (Vlad). This is all done in a relatively short book which manages to pack in three timelines which dovetail perfectly at the end.

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Summary: Vlad hasn't lost his touch
Review: This book is very enjoyable and would appeal to even a person who has never read a Vlad Taltos book. This book has incorporated plenty of action in the first thirty some ought pages and a a good lot of mysteriousness. It has the same good stuff that made all the Vlad books excellent, so you get the idea of what it's like. This book was hard to put down. I think you'll feel the same way when you read it. Beleive me.

Rating:
Summary: Vlad hasn't lost his touch
Review: This book is very enjoyable and would appeal to even a person who has never read a Vlad Taltos book. This book has incorporated plenty of action in the first thirty some ought pages and a a good lot of mysteriousness. It has the same good stuff that made all the Vlad books excellent, so you get the idea of what it's like. This book was hard to put down. I think you'll feel the same way when you read it. Beleive me.

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Summary: Robbing an Athyra wizard is only the beginning
Review: This fourth volume of the Vlad Taltos series is (currently) the earliest in sequence. It's contained in the collection _The Book of Taltos_, the cover of which is graced with _Taltos_'s original Stephen Hickman cover art. (The only drawback to a 3-in-one volume is that one ends up with 1 rather than 3 of Hickman's cover paintings.) The more you know of Vlad's life story, the more you'll get out of this book.

This is, in fact, the tale of Vlad's first encounter with Sethra Lavode, the Enchantress of Dzur Mountain, and Lord Morrolan e'Drien of Castle Black, whose idea of an invitation to come to Dzur Mountain was to push one of Vlad's employees into stealing money and fleeing to Dzur Mountain. Vlad's smart-aleck response to this is really cool. (At the beginning of their next encounter in _Dragon_, you'll see that Morrolan took Vlad's remarks to heart.) This is, in short, a tale of Vlad in his youth, when he was, errr, not overly burdened by a conscience and took no guff from anybody.

Morrolan and Sethra have been looking for the soul of Morrolan's cousin Aliera ever since the Interregnum, 200 years before, when she was flung out of her body but never reached the Paths of the Dead. (Sethra, being undead, should know.) They've found it in a staff in the home of an Athyra wizard who refuses to sell it, and since his alarm system only keeps out 'humans' (i.e., Dragaerans), Vlad has been chosen to retrieve it. While he's not a professional thief, he can protect himself if the job goes bad. (Players of Looking Glass Studios' game _Thief: The Dark Project_ should enjoy this sequence; it would make a good mission in the game.) Unfortunately, not for one moment is the adventure to stop there; if Vlad gets the staff, someone has to take it to the Paths of the Dead and persuade the Lords of Judgement to let Aliera have her life back. And since Dragaerans aren't normally allowed to come out of the Paths of the Dead still living, and those rules don't (or may not) apply to Easterners...

Brust experiments with nonlinear storytelling in this volume. Late in the book, Vlad must invent a new witchcraft spell, but the spellcasting isn't shown in that scene; instead, it appears a piece at a time, as a few paragraphs of flash-forward at the beginning of each chapter, which the reader only fully grasps on reaching the point where Vlad realizes he needs the spell - at which point, it's already been presented. Neat touch.

Apart from that, Vlad indulges in reminiscence about his childhood as the son of an Easterner restaurant owner in a Dragaeran city, whose father wanted to *be* Dragaeran to the point of buying a title in house Jhereg, but whose grandfather runs a little witchcraft shop and uses only Eastern-style fencing. Here we see his first encounter with Kiera the thief as a child, and his first forays as an employee of the 'organization' side of House Jhereg. And if you've ever wondered about that 'blood of the goddess' story that he would never explain to Morrolan in later years, Brust has now put us out of our misery.

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Summary: Vlad blasts into a wizard keep... then goes to hell.
Review: This is one of my favorite Vlad Taltos books. Full of the cynical wit you'd expect from Vlad, this adventure gives you more than you bargained for. "Taltos" reveals how Vlad meets up with Morrolan, Sethra, and later Aleria. Very exciting, I couldn't put it down.

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Summary: A Light and Enjoyable Series So Far...
Review: This is one of those series that are far from perfect, but are really fun and quick to read. Brust has become a favorite author of mine because of his entertaining plot style, and Vlad has become a favorite character because of his entertaining methods.

What really helped in drawing me into this series is the way that Brust jumps around in the timeline of Vlad's life... The second book takes place before the first book, and third book takes place after books one, two and four etc... Much in the style of Pulp Fiction, Brust jumps back and forth in time, fleshing out these interesting stories that were only hinted at previously, leaving us with plenty of mysteries, and no clue where we will be taken to next. If he had told the whole story in chronological order, it probably would have been much less interesting.

My one problem with Vlad's character is that he is too much like a human-Swiss-army-knife. He is an assassin. He is a detective. He is a thief. He is a mob captain. He knows witchcraft. He knows sorcery. He is a master knife-thrower. He is an ace with a rapier. Perhaps its just my nit-picking nature showing through, but its a bit much to swallow even for a fantasy novel. Still, you'll probably find that Brust holds all this mud together quite well!

Taltos, is book four in the Vlad Taltos Series, and it was thankfully much better than the third book, which was a bit of a dud. I recommend reading Jhereg, then Yendi, and then this book. Its a good ride!

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Summary: This book should be read first of the Vlad Taltos books.
Review: This is probably the thinnest of the Vlad novels, you finish it even faster than you do most Brust books. In this one, we get to know how Vlad first met his Dragon friends and how he started his career. The plot is basically that Vlad is recruited (in a rather unusual way) by Sethra and Morrolan to steal a staff that contains Aliera's soul. Then he must travel to the Paths of the Dead to get the soul out of the staff. I like this book because it's funny and fast-paced (and my favourite character Sethra is in it, too) but there's a lot of looking back on his childhood and such, and one gets a little tired of that after a while. It is one of the most entertaining Vlad books; Brust has such an elegant style, I admire him.