“Wolves Beyond the Border” is one of the original Conan stories written by Robert E. Howard. The action, however, does not feature Conan himself. Howard chose to skew his literary camera off to one side and look at the world around his protagonist from a different angle.

This is my first memory of being exposed to this particular technique. It creates a very interesting effect, although — ultimately — I think the story is a failure. In the years since then, I’ve seen the technique used in a variety of series, and the result is more often failure than not.

Which is why, when I realized that Athyra was going to be using this particular approach, I subconsciously bunkered down for a long and painful slog…

… only to be more-than-pleasantly surprised to discover that my fears were unfounded.

In fact, it didn’t take me very long to realize that Vlad Taltos lends himself particularly well to this particular approach. Part of it can simply be boiled down to the fact that the Taltos stories have been told from the POV of Taltos himself. So this is literally our first opportunity to see what he looks like to other people. (Whereas with Conan, for example, the stories are told from a third-person POV, so there’s already some distance from the character.)

But Taltos’ susceptibility to this kind of technique also has a lot to do with the nature of the character himself: Taltos likes to play his cards close to his vest. He plots and he plans, but he usually keeps those plans — and even the information those plans are based on — a closely kept secret. When you’re inside his head, though, he can’t keep any secrets from you. It’s like watching a poker tournament on TV: You can see all the cards.

In Athyra, on the other hand, we suddenly find ourselves on the outside looking in: The cards are hidden from us. And that, in itself, is interesting.

But what really makes it fun is that, at this point, we’ve gotten to know Vlad pretty pretty well. So we still have a pretty deep insight into the types of games he plays and the way he plays them. So, on the one hand, we can suddenly sympathize with the new protagonist who finds himself baffled by Vlad’s hidden strategies (a POV that suddenly gives us a fresh insight into the perspective of many supporting characters from the previous books), but on the other hand we can also appreciate the deeper structure of what Vlad is doing.

I think the other thing that makes Athyra work is the type of story Brust has chosen to tell: The main character is Savn, a young Dragaeran lad on the cusp of reaching adulthood. The novel, in short, falls into the familiar genre of “young boy/girl finds unique bond with exotic mentor while coming of age”. (My personal favorite in this category is probably Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis, although you’ll find examples of the genre cropping up everywhere.)

This type of story weds itself well to the enjoyment gleaned from knowing Vlad better than the main character does. In fact, the entire genre is largely driven by the fact that we — either as adults or as the genre-aware — can appreciate the “exotic mysteries” of the mentor figure. Part of the genre’s effectiveness is that it saddles both sides of the chasm which is “coming of age”. On the one hand, we remember the (relative) innocence of our youth. On the other, we know the wider world which is being revealed. In the interstice between the two, we remember what that coming of age was like… and thus become intimately sympathetic with the main character as they follow the same journey.

(When I was a kid, on the other hand, these stories operated on a very different level: The fictional mentor became my mentor as well, and I became intimately sympathetic with the main character because their journey was my journey.)

The other thing about this type of story is that, although it is not told from his POV, the mentor is a main character. When done properly, the story is as much the mentor’s as the student’s. So even though we’re pushed out of Vlad’s head, Vlad in some sense remains a main character (which I think helps make the technique work).

COMING OF IMMORTAL AGE

In my reaction to Yendi I discussed the genre-alteration of familiar tropes. Brust has a talent for taking existing archetypes, running them through the unique characteristics of his fantasy world, and creating something refreshingly unique and entertaining.

In the case of Athyra, Brust is telling a coming of age story for Savn… but Savn is 80+ years old.

Savn is a near-immortal Dragaeran with a lifespan of several hundred (possibly thousand) years. He is also a farmboy still serving in his apprenticeship to a physick. So in terms of social position (and even maturity), Savn is basically a teenager. A very old teenager.

Brust appears to be consciously attempting to explore what it would mean to be a near-immortal living in a society of other near-immortals. It’s a bold challenge. And, in the narrow case of Savn and the story of Athyra, Brust succeeds.

But, to a large extent, he only succeeds by “cheating” — and so, in a broader sense, he also fails.

By “cheating”, I mean that he has placed Savn in a rural community which is socially backwards and largely populated with ignorance. This allows Brust to get away with having Savn be relatively naive and culturally under-developed. In other words, it allows him to largely draw a line of equivalence between “human 16-year old” and “Dragaeran 80-year old”.

Which, as I say, works just fine for the story… but still disappoints on some level because it misses out on what could have been a much bolder and more dynamic challenge.

Let’s try to break this down. If you actually took human lifespans and started lengthening them, what would happen to the concepts of “childhood” and “adulthood”?

Well, to some extent we don’t have to imagine it: It’s been happening all around us for the past hundred years or so. The concept of “teenager”, for example, is a recent one. (The term itself wasn’t even coined until the 20th century.) It represents a rather radical departure from ages past, when people we now consider “kids” would have actually been seen as fully functional adults. And over the past decade or so, I have noted increasing trends to infantilize college students, with a growing expectation that colleges and universities should be acting as some sort of surrogate parents for their students.

And this social trend appears to be expanding even as recent physical trend lines indicate that the onset of puberty is happening at earlier ages.

Speaking in general terms, I see three reasons for this expansion of pre-adulthood:

First, the increase in average lifespan lessens the sense of urgency in reaching adulthood and pursuing adult goals.

Second, the amount of “basic knowledge” expected for someone to function as an adult in society has drastically increased. We’ve gone from the completion of high school being exceptionally rare to a college education being seen as a fairly standard expectation. The acquisition of more knowledge requires more time, and this naturally expands the amount of time it takes to become an adult in the eyes of society.

Third, the amount of leisure time and the economic structure of our society has fundamentally shifted. When it’s an economic necessity for your kids to help you in the field, you’ll get them out there as soon as they’re physically capable of helping you. But the vast majority of modern careers don’t have that kind of structure. This, again, reduces the sense of urgency in reaching the transition from childhood to adulthood.

But there’s an important proviso here: The 16-year old of today is not the functional equivalent of the 10-year old of yesteryear. And this is the mistake that Brust makes when he draws the line of equivalence between a modern 16-year old and a Dragaeran 80-year old. The expansion of childhood isn’t like taking the same chunk of butter and spreading it over a larger slice of bread.

Because, fundamentally, the 80-year old Dragaeran will still have 80 years of experience, even if they’re not functionally an adult in the eyes of their society. And you can kinda duck around that, as Brust does, by putting the character into a situation where they can easily hit a ceiling of knowledge and enter an endless cycle of dreary life.

But I think you’re ducking out of the really interesting question: Whether it’s a matter of physical maturation or social construct (or both), what does it really mean to be 80 years old and still be a child?

Athyra doesn’t try to answer that question. If it did, it might have been a great novel. As it is, it’s merely a fun one.

GRADE: B

Steven Brust
Published: 1993
Publisher: Ace
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0441033423
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One of the things that tends to happen with long series of speculative fiction novels is that, at some point, the author will stop, look around, and begin thinking about how the world around their main character really works. They’ll begin asking questions like:

What is it really like to live as a near-immortal in this semi-feudal, caste-based, Fate-bound Empire I’ve created? How long does a near-immortal remain a child or a young adult? What types of jobs do the common people do? How does the economy function?

And so forth.

This can either be a good thing or it can be a bad thing. It’s a good thing if it adds a richer depth to the world and opens up stories which might otherwise never be told. It’s a bad thing if it leads to the author blandly info-dumping their “research” (which, in this case, doesn’t even have the advantage of imparting actual facts).

In the case of Brust’s Dragaera novels it is a very good thing.

As with my discussion of non-traditional narrative structures in Taltos, this is another trend that actually started with Teckla, but it’s a tradition that carries strongly into Phoenix.

Brust doesn’t make the mistake of boring his readers by having his protagonist (Vlad) lecture them on the finer details of Imperial history, military tactics, or social engineering. Instead, the world simply happens. Details are dropped when necessary for comprehension, but the focus remains tightly fixed on the immediate story being told.

In the case of Phoenix, it’s a story made up of political assassinations; divine meddling; foreign entanglements; social unrest; and (most importantly) personal crises.

I think it says something about this novel that, by page 5, Vlad is standing in front of a goddess… and proceeds to haggle with her.

Let me say that again: Vlad stands in a front of a goddess and haggles with her.

I’m not sure what it says to you, but to me it said: “WARNING: AWESOME ROLLERCOASTER RIDE COMING UP.”

The other thing to note here is that what really makes these Vlad Taltos novels click is not what happens (although that’s almost always entertaining in its own right), but how those events affect the characters.

The only real criticism I can level at Phoenix is that it never quite comes into its own — it never quite seems to figure out how to fire on all cylinders. The events of the novel are all entertaining enough, but don’t quite rise to a particularly memorable level in their own right. The supporting cast is still varied and well-drawn, but none of them are deeply affected by the events of the novel. (Which should not be thought a flaw: There is no particular reason why they should be affected or transformed by these events.)

Which means that the real engine of the novel is, essentially, the character arc of Vlad Taltos himself. But even here, the developments of Phoenix are essentially a coda to the turning point reached during Teckla. In many ways, in fact, Phoenix ends up feeling like an extended (although not over-extended) epilogue to that novel.

Which is fine. It’s probably even a necessary step in the development of Vlad’s character. But it does mean that Phoenix is (a) the first novel in the series that doesn’t stand by itself; and (b) pleasant enough, but nothing to get particularly excited about.

Actually, maybe “epilogue” isn’t quite the right description. In a lot of ways, this book feels like the second part of the trilogy — having neither the advantage of an explosive beginning (Teckla) nor the satisfaction of a well-earned conclusion (wherever Vlad’s going).

One final note: I was utterly unsurprised when I reached the end of the novel, read Brust’s biographical blurb, and discovered that he had joined a band. I’m not sure what it is about SF authors who join bands, but they seem incapable of realizing that what they think are “pithy” observations about how “crazy” the music biz is are (a) not that interesting and (b) usually bone-jarringly anachronistic.

It kinda reminds me of certain military SF written by actual combat veterans in which the tactics, jargon, and culture of 33rd century warfare all look and sound exactly like whatever war the author was fighting in (even when that doesn’t make the slightest lick of sense).

I think it must have something to do with the experience being personally transforming, while also being so incredibly personal and specific that they have difficulty using the material to enrich their writing instead of letting the material use them. (For a counter-example, consider J.R.R. Tolkien’s personal experiences in World War I.  The battles described in The Lord of the Rings don’t look anything like trench warfare (and would be horribly anachronistic if they did). But I feel that Tolkien was still able to use his personal experiences to enrich his fictional depictions of what being in a war feels like.)

GRADE: B-

Steven Brust
Published: 1990
Publisher: Ace
Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0441662250
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I’m a sucker for non-traditional narrative structures.

Start in the middle of the story and then have two narrative tracks — one going forward in time and one going backwards in time — with matching revelations at the end of each track? Awesome.

Six different characters without any apparent connection to each other but experiencing events which are clearly interconnected? Awesome.

In terms of Brust, this trend actually started in Teckla — a novel in which a literal laundry list is used as prelude, omen, and outline. (It’s actually quite difficult to give this proper justice, but it’s really, really clever.)

In Taltos, Brust goes in a completely different direction: He has three different narrative threads, all starring the same character, and all taking place at different times during the character’s life. In some ways, he’s taking the non-linear meta-structure of the series and realizing it in the confines of a single volume.

Of course, the most important thing with a non-traditional narrative structure is not the oddity of the structure — it’s the effectiveness of the use to which it is put. In Taltos, that use is subtle, but effective. A lot of it is about thematic resonance and characterization — I show you X in timeline A and then I show you Y in timeline B. By juxtaposing the two concepts or the two thoughts or the two actions, what conclusions can you draw?

But there’s also a practical side to the structure, as exposition dropped in timeline C will suddenly crop up in timeline B (or even vice versa). This creates, in a very specific way, a complexity of character that isn’t possible in a more traditional narrative structure — because it highlights the fact that a person is not merely a sequence of events or a static entity.

And while the book stands by itself in some regards, the entire narrative is deeply enriched by the knowledge that we — as readers — bear with us from other books. The revelations of Taltos reshape our understanding of events we have already witnessed; and the revelations of previous books (as yet unknown to the Vlad of this story) shape our understanding of Taltos.

That type of multi-layered, interconnected resonance is not easy to create, but it’s very satisfying to read.

All of this is evidence of Brust’s continuing maturation as an artist. And that growth can also be seen in other aspects of the work. For example, one of the comments I made in my reaction to Yendi was that Brust had failed to raise the stakes from the previous volume in the series: “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, he used the rocketship. In Taltos he uses the rocketship with his left hand while building brand new rocketships with his right hand.

In short, he takes his existing tableau of characters, history, and mythology and builds upon them in new and interesting ways. Simultaneously, he is creating whole new swaths of hitherto unseen mythology which is not only creative in its own right — but which is then immediately pressed into service on a deeper narrative level, as well.

GRADE: B+

Steven Brust
Published: 1988
Publisher: Ace
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0441182003
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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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