Tiassa Review: Needs More Vlad
Apr. 5th, 2011 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jadedmusingsSo. Tiassa.
I pre-ordered my copy even though it was hardcover, but that's because Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels are immediate buys for me and, despite my mild disappointment with this installment, they still are.
Short review: Needs more Vlad. Seriously, he makes up only about one-third of the content of the book, which the cover tells me is "A new novel of Vlad Taltos." That, I discovered, isn't quite a lie, but it's not the truth either.
Longer review: The first 117 pages are, minus a couple of pages here and there, told from Vlad's point-of-view and directly involve Vlad. Minus the epilogue, this is the most we see and hear from Vlad, unless you count a couple of pages in the last section.
When I'd read in the summary that Vlad would meet the captain of the Phoenix Guards, Khaavren, I expected...well I expected something other than what I got. Now, I haven't read any of the Phoenix Guard novels (They're on my list, I swear!), but when I'm reading a Vlad Taltos novel, I don't think I should spend a little over one hundred pages with Khaavren. Sure, he interacts with Vlad for a couple of pages here and there, but mostly I felt like I got tricked into reading a Phoenix Guards book.
Even when we were dealing directly with Vlad, the story was sub-par compared to what I'm used to. The first section, "Tag," felt rushed and there was a hell of a lot of telling versus showing. I sear on one page I must have read "and then [X]....and then [Y]" at least three or four times, and so it was for this section. The plot was intriguing, but it suffered from being rushed, though I still enjoyed it and liked seeing a bit Vlad and Kragar working together again (this part was a flashback to right before Vlad and Cawti married).
The next section, "Whitecrest," didn't involve any Vlad, at least not directly. There was Cawti and Norathar, and Khaavren's wife (plus a little Khaavren), but no Vlad. Now, Cawti and Norathar were working together to do something to help keep Vlad hidden (this part took place after Phoenix, when Vlad had to flee the Jhereg), but it was more about bringing down the person trying to trick Vlad into showing up so he could kill him.
"Conception (An Interlude)" was a nice little snippet showing Verra, Aliera, and Verra's desire for a granchild. It was cute, humorous, and presented a very nice break in the book. I look forward to how this is going to play out in future novels.
The last section, "Special Tasks" (an allusion to Khaavren's Special Tasks group), was, like I said above, pretty much all about Khaavren and how he dealt with a case that only tangentially involved Vlad. Other readers might disagree with me, but I spent pretty much this entire section going, "Okay, so where's Vlad? Where's this Vlad and Khaavren interaction I was expecting?" Again, I haven't read the Phoenix Guards book, but the writing style was probably in that of a Phoenix Guards novel and not a Vlad Taltos novel. I could have forgiven it if there was more of Vlad and Khaavren working together, or at least tolerating each other's presence. Instead, there was the short interview with Vlad and then there was the plot reveal at the end.
My problem isn't that we didn't have Vlad's standard first-person narration. Orca is told in the third person more or less from Savn's point-of-view, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, and then there was the book that switched between Kiera the Thief and Vlad's point-of-view, also enjoyable. But unlike Tiassa, those books directly involved Vlad and what he was doing, even when Vlad was off-screen. Not so in Tiassa.
I guess the argument could be made that the book wasn't really about Vlad and more about the silver tiassa he received as a "gift" ten years before, but as I said, I really did expect more Vlad.
Overall, it wasn't a bad book. The writing (except for the first part) was great, and in the last section Brust's gift of dialogue shone brightly, and I suppose at the end of Tiassa I'm even more eager to finally get around to reading about Khaavren and his adventures.
But I just can't stop being disappointed that there wasn't more Vlad. Oh well, at least this wasn't the last Vlad Taltos book.
I pre-ordered my copy even though it was hardcover, but that's because Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels are immediate buys for me and, despite my mild disappointment with this installment, they still are.
Short review: Needs more Vlad. Seriously, he makes up only about one-third of the content of the book, which the cover tells me is "A new novel of Vlad Taltos." That, I discovered, isn't quite a lie, but it's not the truth either.
Longer review: The first 117 pages are, minus a couple of pages here and there, told from Vlad's point-of-view and directly involve Vlad. Minus the epilogue, this is the most we see and hear from Vlad, unless you count a couple of pages in the last section.
When I'd read in the summary that Vlad would meet the captain of the Phoenix Guards, Khaavren, I expected...well I expected something other than what I got. Now, I haven't read any of the Phoenix Guard novels (They're on my list, I swear!), but when I'm reading a Vlad Taltos novel, I don't think I should spend a little over one hundred pages with Khaavren. Sure, he interacts with Vlad for a couple of pages here and there, but mostly I felt like I got tricked into reading a Phoenix Guards book.
Even when we were dealing directly with Vlad, the story was sub-par compared to what I'm used to. The first section, "Tag," felt rushed and there was a hell of a lot of telling versus showing. I sear on one page I must have read "and then [X]....and then [Y]" at least three or four times, and so it was for this section. The plot was intriguing, but it suffered from being rushed, though I still enjoyed it and liked seeing a bit Vlad and Kragar working together again (this part was a flashback to right before Vlad and Cawti married).
The next section, "Whitecrest," didn't involve any Vlad, at least not directly. There was Cawti and Norathar, and Khaavren's wife (plus a little Khaavren), but no Vlad. Now, Cawti and Norathar were working together to do something to help keep Vlad hidden (this part took place after Phoenix, when Vlad had to flee the Jhereg), but it was more about bringing down the person trying to trick Vlad into showing up so he could kill him.
"Conception (An Interlude)" was a nice little snippet showing Verra, Aliera, and Verra's desire for a granchild. It was cute, humorous, and presented a very nice break in the book. I look forward to how this is going to play out in future novels.
The last section, "Special Tasks" (an allusion to Khaavren's Special Tasks group), was, like I said above, pretty much all about Khaavren and how he dealt with a case that only tangentially involved Vlad. Other readers might disagree with me, but I spent pretty much this entire section going, "Okay, so where's Vlad? Where's this Vlad and Khaavren interaction I was expecting?" Again, I haven't read the Phoenix Guards book, but the writing style was probably in that of a Phoenix Guards novel and not a Vlad Taltos novel. I could have forgiven it if there was more of Vlad and Khaavren working together, or at least tolerating each other's presence. Instead, there was the short interview with Vlad and then there was the plot reveal at the end.
My problem isn't that we didn't have Vlad's standard first-person narration. Orca is told in the third person more or less from Savn's point-of-view, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, and then there was the book that switched between Kiera the Thief and Vlad's point-of-view, also enjoyable. But unlike Tiassa, those books directly involved Vlad and what he was doing, even when Vlad was off-screen. Not so in Tiassa.
I guess the argument could be made that the book wasn't really about Vlad and more about the silver tiassa he received as a "gift" ten years before, but as I said, I really did expect more Vlad.
Overall, it wasn't a bad book. The writing (except for the first part) was great, and in the last section Brust's gift of dialogue shone brightly, and I suppose at the end of Tiassa I'm even more eager to finally get around to reading about Khaavren and his adventures.
But I just can't stop being disappointed that there wasn't more Vlad. Oh well, at least this wasn't the last Vlad Taltos book.
