Best Fantasy fiction series - part 1: Steven Brust
I purchased my first Steven Brust book a few years ago, intrigued by the cover blurb. Who says blurbs don’t sell books? That book was Jhereg, the first in the Vlad Taltos series. Taltos is a sort of assassin, hit-man, expert swordsman with a passing command of witchcraft. There is a quotation on the cover blurb of one of Brust’s books that reads “Imagine James Bond in a world of magic… exciting”. I think it’s a reasonable analogy, although I’m not sure what Mr. Brust thinks of it.
Sure enough, the Taltos books are fast-paced with an excellent sense of humour that doesn’t make the books either comedies or farcical. The dialog is extremely snappy and realistic and we also get to share Taltos’s internalisations since Brust has written most of the books in the first person. He carries that off very well too - many authors don’t in my opinion. With a couple of exceptions, the books have an intricately woven and clever plot. (in a very down-to-earth way) For example, I’ve never seen a tailoring “shopping list” used as a plot device before! Excellent stuff. If you like a good sword and sorcery romp with plenty of action, great characterisation and atmosphere without the narrative verbosity of many fantasy series, buy these books!
Should you choose to read the books in publication or chronological order, you can find both lists here.
And if you like the Taltos books, Brust has written several more set in the same world of Dragaera. These are also a heap of fun and styled on the great Alexandre Dumas. You can find these listed in the same book list, above.
Finally… the latest in the Taltos saga, Dzur, comes out in August. You can preorder it at Amazon.
