31 March, 2004
Taltos, Steven Brust (181 pp, MMPB, 1988)
Although this is the fourth book in the Vlad Taltos series, it takes place earlier (in Vlad's personal timeline) than all the other ones which have been written thus far. Basically, it fills in the background of Vlad's life, which was only referred to in the first three volumes. Taltos tells the story of how Vlad first met his Dragaeran friends Morrollan, Aliera, and Sethra Lavode. (And what a story it is: the adventure has Vlad first burglarizing the home of a powerful wizard, then going on a journey to the Dragaeran underworld, where he meets various gods and famous dead people like the founder of the Empire. Sprinkled throughout that narrative are flashbacks to Vlad's past (childhood and teenage years).
This one is a lot more enjoyable than Teckla. Yay. It is also the first book in the series to really explore the nature of the Dragaeran universe--you know, gods and metaphysics and stuff, which adds another level of interesting-ness to the series (beyond simply being funny books about a guy who kills people for a living).
Brust seems to have put a lot of effort into interweaving the three narrative threads which run through the book (the main adventure, the flashbacks, and the little mini-scene bits of which start off each chapter). He succeeds perhaps a bit too well: it all flows so seamlessly that I never felt any need or desire to think about how they interacted with one another on a literary/symbolic/whatever level.