Review: Hawk, by Steven Brust

There are three authors whose latest books I have regularly bought in hardcover on initial release…and then immediately read them aloud to Jane. The first is Terry Pratchett (although I’ve been avoiding Raising Steam); the second is Lois McMaster Bujold; and the third is Steven Brust.

Hawk, the latest novel in Brust’s long-running “Vlad Taltos” series, arrived in the mail last week, and I finished reading it to Jane rather late yesterday evening. It was a treat, and the two of us enjoyed it thoroughly.

What, you want more?

Let’s see. Either you’re familiar with the series, and want to know whether Brust sticks the dismount with this one, or you’re not familiar with the series.

If you’re familiar with the series, this is the book where Vlad finally gets tired of being on the run, and comes up with a scheme for doing something about it. More than that I’m not going to tell you, except that Jane and were well-satisfied at the end of the book.

If you’re not familiar with the series, it’s a fantasy series that takes places in the Dragaeran Empire. Dragaerans are human-like, though taller, and much longer-lived; two-thousand years is a reasonable lifespan. Vlad Taltos is an “Easterner”, which is to say a real human; and though the Empire isn’t too friendly to Easterners he’s managed to chisel out his own niche. As we meet him in the first published book, Jhereg, he’s a small-time boss in the the Dragaeran equivalent of the Mafia. He’s also an assassin, a little bit of a sorceror (he can use a certain amount of Dragaeran magic), and a reasonably skilled witch (a practictioner of Eastern magic, which is quite different). He’s not a particularly nice guy, but he’s loyal to his friends, and he has an entertaining narrative voice (Most of the Taltos books are told in first person.)

The first couple of books are concerned with his life as a member of the Jhereg; and then things take an abrupt left turn. Or several. Opening a new Taltos book is always a surprise; the order of publication isn’t the same as the chronology of Vlad’s life, and Brust frequently does interesting and unique stylistic changes with each book. You never know quite what you’re going to get.

So anyway. I’m fresh out of superlatives, but if you like fantasy you should find a copy of Jhereg (or, alternatively, The Book of Jhereg, which is an omnibus of the first three books in the series) and read it post-haste. You can find reading order information (and lots of other stuff) at the Lyorn Records.