4.0 to 4.5 stars. The above quote just about perfectly sums up the tone and style of Steven Brust's JHEREG novels...playfully dark, coolly subdued and dangerously badasstic...in a word YUMMMMMM!! Seriously, I am pretty smitten with Brust's breezy style and this series is currently on a very short list of what I call literary comfort food. They just really hit the sweet spot and are such a potent combination of well written, tightly plotted stories (averaging under 200 pages) with a highly engaging and endearing main character and set in a well drawn, well realized fantasy world. Yeah, I guess you could say I am a bit of a fan. While I like most every aspect of the stories, I think I am most impressed with the amount of “story” that Brust crams into these slender novels. In this regard, they remind me a bit of Jack Vance’s stories in that Brust is able to accomplish in less than 200 pages what lesser writers can spend twice as long doing half as well. Also, like Vance’s stories, these books, though thin, are not light reading and Brust deals with some serious emotional and political issues while telling his tale. SERIES BACKGROUNDFor those of you not familiar with the series, the stories are set on another planet ruled by an Elf-like species known as Dragaerans. The Dragaerans are much taller and more muscular than humans (averaging 7 feet in height) and are extremely long lived, having lifespans that last thousands of years. The Dragaeran Empire is made up of 17 Great Houses whose members each excel at a particular skill or ability (e.g., fighting, business, intellect, etc.). In turn, the Empire rules over a much larger population of mostly humans who are referred to by the Dragaerans as Easterners. There have been several hints during the first three books that the Easterners maybe descendants of long lost Earth colonists, but so far I that has not be confirmed in the stories. The humans are treated as second class citizens and are looked down on (figuratively as well as literally) by the Dragaerans and generally treated with anything from rude indifference to outright cruelty. Vlad Taltos, our main man, is a human who has become a citizen of the Empire as a result of “buying into” one of the less noble houses known as the Jhereg . The Jhereg are assassins and criminals and are generally hired by members of the other great houses to do dirty work. Vlad is a very skilled assassin and is also a fairly talented witch. His constant companion is his jhereg familiar, with whom he shares a psychic bond (jheregs, for which Vlad’s Great House is named, are tiny dragon-like creatures…see the cover above). Each of the novels is framed as a sort of noir mystery with Vlad being hired to accomplish some task which turns out to be a lot more complicated than it initially appears. PLOT SUMMARYThis installment is a bit of a departure from the first two in that the plot takes on a very political tone when Vlad discovers that his wife, Cawti***, has joined a group of radical Easterners bent on bringing down the Empire. When the leader of the group is assassinated, Cawti takes up his job. Vlad is several miles short of pleased with this as he fears for Cawti’s safety. ***(SIDE NOTE: Incidentally, Cawti is a former assassin who met Vlad when she was hired to kill him…which she did…but that’s a long story and I just wanted to tease you with that nugget.) Anyway, as Vlad learns more and more about the “cause” the rebels are fighting for, he begins to question his own life and his choice to be an for the Dragaeran Empire. Meanwhile, his relationship with his wife becomes increasingly strained, making for some very dark moments for Vlad. Vlad generally deals with dark moments by killing people, which he does. Overall, these books are just about perfect as far as pacing and plot and I love the main character. If you haven’t tried this series, I would certainly recommend that you give it a try. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
After the first two Jhereg novels, I can recall Teckla being a huge disappointment. Riddled with political discussion and marital strife, it was worlds away from the swashbucking assassination fantasy of the first two books.The book does suffer both from Brust's at-the-time personal relationship problems, as well as his avowed interest in Trotsky-style Communism. That said, with the perspective (too many) years, I found the book weaker than its predecessors, but not as fatally flawed as I felt it at the time. The closer examination of the society and economics and injustices of the Dragaeran Empire, especially in its treatment of both Teckla and Easterners, and Vlad's view of his own role in all of this, has some interest and even moral necessity. (How many classic-style fantasies ever really look at or challenge ideas of nobility and the wretched lives of the serfs, rather than just reveling in aristocratic maneuvering and intricate magic systems?)The loss (or sidelining) of the Cawti/Vlad relationship is a shame (I love a good husband/wife duo), but probably necessary; Cawti as a character had never been well-fleshed out in the time we saw her, and the Vlad books are themselves so very personally focused, it's not clear she ever would have been without this disruption. There are darker, less successful books in the series ahead (I simply won't reread Phoenix or Athyra again), but after that things mellow out a great deal. Meanwhile, the next book, Taltos (Vlad and the Paths of the Dead) is one of my favorites, and I look forward to rereading it a great deal.
What do You think about Teckla (2015)?
1,5 / 5this is the third book i've read in this series..While i do like the universe, and the concept, i'm becomming increasingly dissapointed with this series..I have different standards for the first books in a series and the later...It is to be expected that the universe and the characters in the first stories are a bit hollow, and thin, since that can be filled out later.. i think that was the case with the dresden files..But this series doesnt really seems to deepen, it was written so that one could read the series in no particular order, and that really makes it weak.This story in particular was stupid, really really stupid ! 80 percent of it consists of a fight Vlad has with his wife (who has been irrational in all the books so far), and its very tedious reading.. wont go into detail, but this story made no sense at all. He continues to make a problem out of nothing for the entire book, and then when he has reached his page count, resolves everything in 4 pages...I havent given up on these books yet, but they are seriously stretching it !
—Brandt
It’s official. I am now a fan of Vlad Taltos. He may even be one of the great characters of the Fantasy genre. He’s not a hero nor is he a villain. There’s a little bit of both in there, but I don’t know that he can actually be called an anti-hero. He may be beyond classification. Sometimes he’s a wiseass, sometimes he is just wise, but he is always intelligent, and more intelligent than nearly everyone around him. That intelligence is born and nurtured in a mind that is always thinking, working on itself and on the problems that surround it. He is deadly, cold, temperamental, occasionally foolhardy. He’s capable of loyalty, capable of deep love, capable of caring, and capable of shoving a knife into a lackey’s heart simply because he’s annoyed. He is – in short – one of the most complex and complete characters I can think of.And, as fans of the Vlad Taltos series will tell you, Vlad is only one level of the series’ complexity. But he is the bedrock upon which everything else rests, and keeping Vlad compelling, keeping him interesting, allows Brust to do things with his stories that he wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. In the case of Teckla, Brust is able to engage in meditations on big issues like division of labour, worker and peasant power, racism, and revolution, while he’s busy engaging with the more personal issues of trust in love, self-reflection and family loyalty. Teckla is so many things. And thanks to Brust it is never too many things.I’m reading these in order. Teckla is the best so far. I’ll be taking a break from Vlad for a while, but I will be back very soon.
—Brad
-Más Fantasía noir, con aproximaciones al thriller y toques de humor.-Género. Narrativa Fantástica.Lo que nos cuenta. Vlad Taltos es un asesino y empresario de toda clase de negocios ilegales en la capital del Imperio Dragaerano, Adrilankha. Ahora cuenta con mucho dinero y tiene ganas de ampliar sus zonas de control, pero la aproximación de su esposa a la causa de los orientales, cuyo líder acaba de ser asesinado, le crea muchos problemas ya que los miembros de este grupo tienen muchas reivindicaciones que bordean la rebelión contra el Imperio. Tercer libro de la serie de Vlad Taltos.¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
—Olethros
