Search Results for: steven brust

Vintage Treasures: To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust

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To Reign in Hell (Ace Books, May 1985). Cover by Stephen Hickman In 1983 all my friends in Ottawa were talking about the debut novel by a young fantasy writer from Minnesota. The book was Jhereg, and it launched Steven Brust’s career in a major way. A caper tale (told from the criminal’s point of view) in a world of high-stakes court intrigue, Jhereg became an instant fantasy classic. As Fletcher Vredenburgh wrote years later here at Black Gate, Jhereg…

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Future Treasures: Good Guys by Steven Brust

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The first book I ever read by Steven Brust was Jhereg, the opening volume in the long-running (15-book!) and best-selling Vlad Taltos series that has come to define his career. In 2013 he collaborated with Skyler White to launch a contemporary fantasy series, The Incrementalists, but before that his last standalone novel was Agyar in 1993. So I was surprised and pleased to receive a review copy of Good Guys this week, which the accompanying press materials describe as a…

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Future Treasures: Vallista by Steven Brust

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I read Jhereg, the first book in Steven Brust’s long-running Vlad Taltos series, when my brother Mike thrust it on me in 1983. It was fun, fast-paced, and totally different from anything I’d ever read before. Steven Brust was a fast-rising literary star in 1983, but Jhereg, and the series it spawned, established him as a major name. He’s produced numerous popular and acclaimed novels in the intervening years — including To Reign in Hell (1984), Brokedown Palace (1985), The Phoenix Guards…

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Steven Brust’s Five Roger Zelazny Books that Changed His Life

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Over at Tor.com, Steven Brust (The Incrementalists, the Vlad Taltos novels) talks about what may be my favorite fantasy novel, Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light (1967). You always get asked, “When did you know you wanted to be a writer?” And, of course, there’s no answer, or a thousand answers that are all equally valid. But I usually say, “In high school, when I read Zelazny’s Lord of Light.” You see, until then, I had never known you could do that….

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Future Treasures: The Skill of Our Hands, Book 2 of The Incrementalists, by Steven Brust and Skyler White

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I missed The Incrementalists, the new novel from Steven Brust (the Vlad Taltos series) and Skyler White (In Dreams Begin) when it came out in hardcover from Tor in 2013. But folks who were more on the ball than I did not — such as John Scalzi (“Secret societies, immortality, murder mysteries and Las Vegas all in one book? Shut up and take my money”) and David Pitt at Booklist, who wrote: A secret society has existed for millennia, operating under…

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The Omnibus Volumes of Steven Brust: The Adventures of Vlad Taltos

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The omnibus editions of The Adventures of Vlad Taltos from Ace Books, collecting the first seven volumes: The Book of Jhereg (1999), The Book of Taltos (2002), and The Book of Athyra (2003). Covers by Stephen Hickamn, Kinuko Y. Craft, Ciruelo Cabral Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels are unique in modern fantasy. They’re caper novels in which a supremely gifted assassin, Vlad Taltos, teams up with a group of like-minded companions (including pickpockets and vampires) to right wrongs, alter the…

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New Treasures: Hawk by Steven Brust

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I was surprised and delighted to receive a new book in the Vlad Taltos series from Steven Brust in the mail last week. Hawk is the 14th novel in the adventure fantasy series that began with Jhereg (reviewed by Fletcher Vredenburgh here) way back in 1983. A total of 19 are planned; the last one was Tiassa (2011), and the next is Vallista. If you’re a newcomer to the series, I highly recommend The Book of Jhereg, a paperback omnibus collection…

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A Rogue’s Early Days: Yendi by Steven Brust

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Steven Brust has written that Yendi (1984), second in his ongoing series about gangster Vlad Taltos, is his least favorite book. As it’s only the second of his novels I’ve read, I can’t tell you where it falls on a greater continuum of his work, but I can tell you it’s a pretty good book. Sure, the book is flawed, but the good bits far outweigh the bad. If this is the low point in the series, then I’m REALLY looking…

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A Hero in the Service of Organized Crime: A Review of Jhereg by Steven Brust

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I’m always excited to find a new author, especially one with a long back catalogue for me to plunge into. With 26 novels to his name, Steven Brust is one of those finds. When I first started blogging about swords & sorcery I spent some time looking around for newer books and series (newer for me meaning anything written after 1984). Again and again, people suggested Steven Brust’s Dragaeran Empire series. Without reading too much about it I learned the main…

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A Review of Jhereg by Steven Brust

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Jhereg By Steven Brust Ace (224 pages, $2.50, April 1983) I’ve played in a lot of tabletop RPGs, including a couple of homebrewed systems and homebrewed worlds. I’ve never encountered one that goes into the culture-changing potential of resurrection, though. It’s treated as an acceptable break from reality, a way to keep things fun, one that has little effect on the world besides providing a way for the campaign’s archnemesis to keep coming back. Jhereg, by Steven Brust, the first…

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