Following on the heels of Jhereg and Yendi, Teckla was a completely unexpected — and thoroughly pleasurable — suprise.

There is a unique pleasure to be had in discovering, as you’re reading through a series of novels, that an author has suddenly reached a higher level in their craft. And Teckla is the point at which Steven Brust raised his personal bar of excellence.

Everything positive I had to say about Jhereg and Yendi remains true: The seamless mixing of high and low fantasy. The addictive nature of Brust’s prose. The intriguing suggestions of a non-linear meta-narrative. The unique take on familiar scenarios.

But unlike Yendi, Teckla raises the stakes. In my reaction to Yendi, I wrote: “The first time you show me a rocketship? Awesome. The second time you show me a rocketship? Nifty. Now, what are you going to do with it?”

In Teckla, Brust uses the (metaphorical) rocket ship.

Perhaps the most dramatic improvement in Teckla is the depth with which the characters are drawn. In the previous books, Vlad himself was a great narrator and quite a few members of the supporting cast were interesting people. But in Teckla, Vlad basically walks up to you and says, “Hi. I’m a real person.” There’s no single, clear-cut example that I can point to with that — but the difference is palpable.

The supporting cast is similarly drenched with utterly believable characterization. And Brust is impressive in his ability to write characters with radically different personal philosophies while still having them ring completely true.

I was particularly blown away when I realized, halfway through the book, that I was frequently in vehement disagreement with Vlad… and yet I still sympathized with him and had no problem being inside his head for the duration of the novel.

That, frankly, is not easy to do.

And because Brust manages to pull it off, Vlad’s personal journey — a journey that actually transforms him in deep, meaningful, and utterly non-contrived ways — really pops off the page here.

I can contrast this directly with the love story in Yendi, which was supposed to be a similarly transformative experience for Vlad… but was instead a fairly flat and unbelievable “love at first sight” and “burning loin hormones” affair that I was really only able to buy into because I had previously seen the couple’s later married life in Jhereg (which had been drawn with some legitimate affection and detail).

Here’s the meat of it: At the heart of the novel, Teckla is the story of a failing marriage and a man’s desperate quest to find peace with himself. It manages to be both heartbreakingly true and upliftingly hopeful, without riddling itself with either maudlin pathos or cheerful relationship porn.

Wrapped around this story (and playing into it), Brust weaves a complicated tale of gang warfare which ties into a social uprising… all of which is told from the POV of a man who understands the former, but doesn’t understand the latter at all. The effect is incredibly evocative, and Brust takes full advantage of not having an omniscient viewpoint form which to tell his story in order to get you really living the story right down at street level.

GRADE: A

Steven Brust
Published: 1987
Publisher: Ace
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0441799779
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Coming off of Jhereg, I had very high expectations for Yendi, the second book in the Adventures of Vlad Taltos. In fact, having finished Jhereg in a late night bout of reading (inspired entirely by the fact that I could not put the book down), I promptly went out the next day to track down the next book in the series.

This actually proved surprisingly difficult. The early books in the series apparently went out of print a few years ago and were recently released in a series of trade paperback omnibus editions, starting with The Book of Jhereg (which actually collects the first three Vlad Taltos books — Jhereg, Yendi, and Teckla). But I’m not a big fan of trade paperbacks (which lack the durability of hardcovers and the convenient size of paperbacks), and it didn’t make much sense to spend $16 on a collection when I already owned a third of it. (My decision was also being heavily influenced because I already had a used copy of Teckla for $2.50 in my other hand.)

So I ended up picking up the third and fifth books in the series from Uncle Hugo’s (the local used SF bookshop), and then hit up Amazon for used copies of Yendi and Phoenix (the second and fourth books in the series).

Long story short, I was pumped up and ready to go by the time Yendi arrived in my mailbox.

In terms of the actual book itself, however, I ended up being somewhat disappointed. Not hugely disappointed, but somewhat disappointed.

Most of my disappointment, I suspect, stems from the fact that the plot of Yendi is not terribly dissimilar from that of Jhereg: Vlad Taltos gets a case at street level that leaves him perplexed and fearing for his life. He bums around with his friends in high society for a bit and hears some interesting gossip about world-shattering events and historical trivia that appears to be inconsequential… until it turns out that his case, the world-shattering events, and the historical trivia are all intimately connected!

It’s a solid formula, but it ends up being like the magician who performs the same trick twice in a row: The second time he does it, it’s pretty easy to figure out how you’re being fooled.

In Jhereg, Brust had me fooled: The high-society gossip and historical trivia all looked like the type of background world-building detail that you find strewn around the better fantasy novels. My brain promptly filed them as such and, as a result, I was completely surprised when Brust pulled back the curtain and showed how everything was interconnected.

When he tries to pull the exact same trick in Yendi, however, I can spot it coming from a mile away. And since I can clearly see the information he doesn’t want me paying attention to, it’s far too easy to figure out what’s coming long before it arrives.

One of the mistakes Brust makes is in his conservation of characters. In most fiction, you don’t want any spare characters just wandering around filling up space. Those spare characters just become needless bloat.

But in a mystery, those “spare characters” have another name: Suspects.

If you’re reading a mystery and you can clearly see why all the characters are in the story… except for this one lady who just wanders through and says “Hello” every so often. Well, it doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out whose guilty.

(The better mystery authors will avoid the “spare character” problem by making sure that all of their characters have at least one legitimate and obvious reason for being in the story. That way you don’t just have faceless names wandering around, but you’re also not tipping your hand.)

In Brust’s case he kind of ends up with the worst of both worlds: He has lots of spare characters wandering around in a perpetual state of name-bloat… but they’re all part of Taltos’ criminal organization. In the circles of high society, on the other hand, Brust has an austere conservation of characters… except for the guilty party, who really does just wander by and say “Hello” every few dozen pages.

The other shortcoming of Yendi, in my opinion, is Brust’s failure to raise the stakes. Jhereg gave us a really nifty and multi-layered setting with lots of interesting and original characters. And the unique magical physics of the Dragaeran setting let Brust create entirely unique methods for conducting both crime and politics. There’s a definite sensawunda at work.

Yendi gives us a second dose of the same stuff… but not much notably new or different. The first time you show me a rocketship? Awesome. The second time you show me a rocketship? Nifty. Now, what are you going to do with it?

In that sense, the part of the book I enjoyed the most was probably the first few chapters: A young Taltos is running a small gang in the slums of Adrilankha when another crime boss decides to make a play for his territory. The evolving battle of sorcerous gang warfare, which lasts for several chapters, is frankly enthralling. Brust does a really slick job of taking a familiar archetype (“gang war”) and running it through the unique characteristics of his fantasy world to give something refreshingly unique and entertaining.

(In fact, I would have been perfectly happy if the entire book had stayed at that level of petty gang politics. But once the story moves into high society, the gang war pretty much disappears from the narrative and the cloning of Jhereg’s plot begins.)

With all these negative things being said, I think it’s important to make this point: I still had a rapacious appetite for this book. I would frequently find myself fighting off sleep in order to squeeze in a few more pages.

That’s the unmistakable sign of a book that, despite it’s shortcomings, is still extremely entertaining.

I should also note that Yendi takes place before Jhereg, telling the story of a younger Vlad Taltos at the beginning of his career. I find Brust’s decision to tell these stories out of chronological order very intriguing. It appears to be a very deliberate choice, and not one structured in quite the traditional roles of “prequel” and “sequel”. Just off of these two books, I’m left with the impression of listening to an old warrior telling tales of his youth in whatever order strikes his fancy at the moment. (An impression somewhat spoilt by the last few paragraphs of this book, but more strongly supported by the opening of Jhereg.)

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

GRADE: B-

Steven Brust
Published: 1984
Publisher: Ace
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0441944566
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A lot of my contemporaries have fond memories of the boardgames Dungeon! and HeroQuest. I was never that enamored of them. I think this is largely because I came to the games via Dungeons & Dragons rather than vice versa — so it always seemed like the poor man’s version of a fuller and richer game. There are myriad limitations to the game, of course, but the largest lack I felt was that — although the contents of a room could change — the board was largely immutable. There was no true sense of exploration.

HeroQuest, in particular, was never a game I really warmed up to. The inclusion of a gamemaster allowed for dungeons with more flavor, but also emphasized the fact that — with the same play dynamic — I could be playing an actual RPG. (Perhaps Advanced HeroQuest or Warhammer Quest would have left a different impression on me, but I’ve never even seen a copy of those games.)

The completely randomized Dungeon!, on the other hand, at least served the niche of “I want to play D&D, but I don’t have a DM”. It just didn’t scratch it very well (at least for me).

Over the years I’ve occasionally dipped back into this particular sub-genre, usually to be met with disappointment. Most recently the Order of the Stick boardgame failed to be anything more than an unbalanced, colossal bore.

Which brings me to Munchkin Quest — which finally scratches the itch I first developed twenty years ago: DM-less dungeoncrawling. It has a variable board which you discover as you explore it,

Over the past few weeks, my little circle of friends have played Munchkin Quest almost a dozen times, more than any other game. That’s probably not a pattern of usage that will last forever, but it does speak to a dynamic and interesting game.

SLOW PACE

The only real complaint we had with the game was its slow pace. Allow me to explain…

Munchkin Quest is based on the popular Munchkin card game, which I played a lot 3-4 years ago before losing my regular playing group. In Munchkin, every turn stats by opening a Door — which generally means fighting a monster. And once that monster has been defeated, play proceeds to the next player.

In Munchkin Quest, in order to facilitate the exploration of the dungeon complex, players are instead given 3 movement points (which can be increased or decreased with various pieces of equipment or other abilities in the game). When players explore into a new room (generally by spending a single movement point), they encounter a monster and fight it.

Begin to see the problem?

In Munchkin a player’s turn usually consisted of a single combat. In Munchkin Quest, on the other hand, we were usually seeing 3 or 4 combats on every player’s turn.

The first time we played the game, it took 90 minutes before the fourth (and final) player finally got to take their first turn. Even with all the out-of-turn actions that can be taken in the game, this was still hugely problematic. The long breaks between turns not only tended to result in players disengaging from the game, it also had several knock-on effects that also degraded gameplay.

For example, because of the multiple combats per turn the players tend to level up faster in Munchkin Quest than they do in Munchkin (at least in terms of the number of turns — in actual playing time, Munchkin Quest is a little slower). In our experience, a game of Munchkin Quest was over in just 3-4 turns (which would take 3-5 hours). This had a direct impact on the flow of the game (unlike Munchkin it didn’t feel like you were in a race with other players — the pace was just too slow for that).

One of the more interesting elements of the game are the wandering monster mechanics — which allow undefeated monsters to move from one room to another. But the longer, slower turns significantly lessened this dynamic of the game. Monsters rarely moved and didn’t move very far.

The longer, slower turns also created poor gameplay in other ways. During our third game, for example, it took nearly two hours for the fourth player to get their first turn. At their beginning of that turn, the first three players were already levels 6th, 8th, and 7th. (The game is won at 10th level.) The fourth player was already 2nd level, but had ended up out of position as the others had all moved away from the entrance of the dungeon. She hadn’t been able to join in the combats or treasure hauls and was seriously disadvantaged.

HOUSE RULES

In order to fix this problem, we introduced a simple set of house rules:

(1) At the beginning of the game, all players roll a single d6. The player with the highest result becomes the Quest Master. (Re-roll ties.)

(2) At the beginning of a round of play, all players draw one (1) Deus ex Munchkin card.

(3) At the beginning of a round of play or at the end of any monster movement phase, the player with the most green feet (movement points) takes a turn. In the case of ties, start at the Quest Master and go clockwise.

(4) On their turn, in addition to all the other actions allow by the rules (playing cards, combat, etc.) a play can take any ONE action which requires the use of movement points.

(5) At the end of each player’s turn, there is a monster movement.

(6) If all of the movement points at the table have been spent at the end of a monster movement, then a new round begins. Flip all of the red feet back to green and continue play.

EFFECTS

These house rules have several effects:

(1) Play looks a little more like traditional Munchkin in that, on any given turn, a player will probably only fight a single combat (at most).

(2) Players don’t have such long lapses between their turns, which also means that there will be a more active churn of resources (which helps to keep the game fresh).

(3) Monsters become more active in their movement around the board, making the dungeon feel more dynamic.

(4) As far as we can tell, no meaningful strategies from the original game are eliminated. But we have discovered that all kinds of new strategies have been created. One major area of strategy became the manipulation of remaining movement tokens (allowing you to take more turns or affect the sequence of play). Another area of strategy rose up around how players traveled together. (In the original rules we all felt like we were basically soloing the game. But the house rules allowed people to either move off by themselves; move with small partnerships; or huddle up as one big group and stick together.)

Game balance appears to be completely unaffected by the modification.

I suspect that once we get the 6-player expansion for the game, the dynamics made possible with these house rules will become even more interesting. And, in my opinion, necessary: When it takes 45-75 minutes to get to the fourth player’s first turn in a four-player game, I can only imagine that it would take 90-120 minutes toget to the sixth player’s turn in a six-player game. And that would be outrageous.

Why didn’t anybody tell me about this?

Jhereg, the first in a series of books starring the character of Vlad Taltos, was originally published 25 years ago and I’m only finding out about it now?

Not fair.

Truth be told, though, I only have myself to blame. I’ve heard about the Dragaeran books a number of times over the last decade or so, mostly on the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup, but also as far afield as Penny Arcade. I actually bought Jhereg about four years ago, started it, and bounced off the first chapter.

It should be noted that I didn’t bounce because it was bad. I just bounced because I wasn’t in the mood for that sort of book

Which is ironic, because the book is actually almost nothing like the first chapter.

The first chapter reads like the introduction to a grand saga of sorts — something along the lines of A Game of Thrones or the Malazan Empire books. The rest of the book reads pretty much nothing like that. In fact, if I was going to describe the rest of the book, it would be something like this:

A pulp detective novel by Raymond Chandler, except the main character is an assassin instead of a private detective and his seedy office is in a world of high fantasy instead of the 1940s.

And it really is as awesome as that sounds.

Actually, though, saying “high fantasy” is somewhat misleading because one of the things Steven Brust does very well is blending together high fantasy and low fantasy. Vlad Taltos runs a small-time criminal organization in a gritty fantasy city. But just a short teleport-hop away, Taltos will also find himself rubbing shoulders with powerful Dragonlords who have lived for thousands of years and wield powerful sorceries that can lay waste to mountains.

And it works.

As an example of making things work, Brust’s world is one of the rare instances in which I’ve seen anyone attempt to work with a society where easy, prolific, D&D-style revivification is possible. And he makes that world believable, largely by simply saying, “This is the way things works.” And then building the world logically around it. “Death” in the Dragaeran Empire doesn’t mean what “death” does in the real world, and everyone in the story just seamlessly accepts that reality.

What else can I say about Jhereg?

Perhaps the most notable thing about the book is Brust’s prose. It’s not the type of eloquent or beautiful language that lends itself to loving quotation, but it’s tight and it’s fun to read. It’s really easy to plow through a hundred pages and then find yourself wondering where the last hour disappeared to you. I literally lost myself in the story, which is a rare pleasure.

Long story short: If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend Jhereg. You might be 25 years late to the party, but it’s a really great party and you won’t be the only one to have just arrived.

GRADE: B

Steven Brust
Published: 1983
Publisher: Ace
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0441006159
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THE RINGWORLD ENGINEERS

Louis Wu sleeps his way across the Ringworld… and then kills everybody he slept with.

THE RINGWORLD THRONE

Within the first few chapters of The Ringworld Throne, I was struck repeatedly by two thoughts:

1. “This is incredibly turgid.”

2. “Oh lord, here we go again.”

To explain the first, let me offer an example: Early in the novel there is a sequence in which the main characters are waiting to meet with another group of characters. They have to wait three nights.

First, it must be understood that there is no particular reason why they have to wait three nights. Niven simply made an arbitrary choice. Second, it must be understood that essentially nothing of interest happens in those three nights. There is exactly one significant conversation and nothing else of consequence.

Despite that, Niven spends over twenty-five pages describing the events of those three nights. The characters mill about pointlessly; they sleep; they eat; they have meaningless sex. And it’s all described in mind-numbing detail. The one significant conversation meanders along through three different sequences stretched across half a day and six pages and is three times too long at that.

It’s boring. Achingly, painfully boring.

To explain the second, let me simply say this: It takes Niven less than a dozen pages before he has retconned the entire plot of the second novel and rendered it into a math error.

Since the entire second novel was, in itself, a massive retcon of the first novel, one begins to wonder if there was ever any actual substance here or if it’s just retcons all the way down.

I also think that there’s a fairly good chance that the original title of this book was Ringworld: Home of the Pointless Orgy until Niven’s editors made him change it. I have never read about so much sex while simultaneously being bored out of my mind. Niven never lets a dozen pages pass without having somebody humping somebody else, nor does he ever let an opportunity pass to make sex sound as boring as he possibly can.

Also, let’s take a moment and talk about Protectors: I know it’s always been kind of tough to take them seriously if you’re a hard science fiction buff. But when the entire conclusion of the novel consists of Protectors running around willy-nilly and a plot lifted from a Benny Hill sketch with the words “sexy nurse” scratched out and replaced with the word “Protector”… well, it’s kinda hard to take them seriously at all.

GRADES:

RINGWORLD ENGINEERS: B-
RINGWORLD THRONE: F

Larry Niven
Published: 1980/1996
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0345334302 / 0345412966
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