Dzur – Steven Brust

Tor, copyright 2006, 285 pages

ISBN 978-0-7653-4154-9

Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Read May 2011 (age 35)

This is book #10 by publication order of the Vlad Taltos series of novels.  It’s not a good starting point.

From the back cover:

When you’re a short-statured, short-lived human in an empire of tall, long-lived Dragaerans, you’ve got to hold on to your wits.  Long ago, I made a good living as a captain of the Jhereg, the noble house that runs the rackets in the Imperial city.  But love, revolution, betrayal, and revenge ensued - as they do – and for years now, I’ve been on the run, just trying to stay a step ahead of the Jhereg.  Because after everything that’s gone down, they’d kill me without a second thought.

Now I’m back in the city.  The rackets I used to run are now under the control of the mysterious “Left hand of the Jhereg” – a cabal of women who report to no man.  My ex-wife needs my help.  My old enemies aren’t sure whether they want to kill me, or talk to me and then kill me.  A goddess appears to be playing tricks with my memory.  And the Great Weapon seems to have plans of its own…

Yes, I know.  Shut up, Loiosh.

Reactions, and probably some spoilers, after the break: 

Overall:

We’re still in Vlad’s head, and we have a bit more of a swashbuckling adventure happening.  But the feel was much more like Issola than the earlier books.  So, not entirely fantastic.

Rating: 3

Premise:

The story directly follows Issola, but feels like a side-trip instead of the main story.  Cawti is failing at running a portion of the city’s thieves’ guild, and needs help.  Vlad needs more enemies, apparently, so he goes and helps her.

As ever, each book focuses on a particular noble house with particular tendencies.  In this one, Vlad tries to figure out the Dzur – those who love to be outnumbered, fighting hopeless causes.

Characters:

Pretty much the same as in the rest of the books.  Good, but not much more to say about them.

Setting:

Back to Adrilanhka, with not much new to learn about.  We revisit some old friends, and some old friends we’d never heard about, but other than that – same ol’ same old.

Plot:

Vlad tries to find a way for Cawti to deal with the Easterner’s quarter (read: Humans) without intervention from the humans (read: Elves).  He bumbles around, does some research, does a poor job of explaining things, and then eventually wins.  It didn’t work very well for me, I think because of how little our hero saw fit to share with the reader along the way.  Normally, I find terseness to be one of Mr. Brust's strengths, but in this case, I thought he overshot.

Readability:

Okay.  I was frustrated throughout the book because our hero, the narrator, just didn’t bother telling us what was going on.  In one scene that I remember, he shatters a bottle of wine on the wall, but doesn’t bother to mention it.  It takes the rest of the page to figure it out, as he trades barbs with his familiar and cleans up the wine.  It was an annoying authorial decision.

Other Opinions:

This is a pretty heavily-reviewed book.  Here are a couple I liked:

Russ Allbery

Liked it more than I did.  It may be that I’ve been spacing the books out a fair bit, so the last time I hit on the main plot points that we’re coming back to in this book was… 3 years ago for me? That may have been why I found there was insufficient explanation.

Trollsmyth

Asks some interesting questions.  Better articulates how the books isn’t self-contained than I did.