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A review by whalleyrulz
Dragon by Steven Brust
4.0
It's been a while. It was nice to get back into this series.
Dragon, by Steven Brust, is (as always) an exploration as to what makes up the house the book is titled after. Dragons, in the Taltos series, are military minded, follow their own honor codes, and believe nothing is better than obeying orders. They're essentially Klingons, but without the anger issues. In this book, Vlad winds up fighting inside a squadron of Morollan's army, against an incredibly dangerous wizard, in a battle he has no idea why he's fighting. Worse, he's been given a special mission and it has been made abundantly clear - he is not to assassinate. What's an assassin to do?
I'll tell you what he's to do: explore war. Explore what it is to be a soldier. Have a terrifying time writing about what it's like to be shoulder-to-shoulder with a group of people who are completely comfortable with dying for someone else's cause.
And oh god, the timeline. I would kill to have that level of control over my own writing. Dragon bounces seamlessly through Vlad's experiences in the Battle of Baritt's Tomb, the aftermath, and years later, with no confusion whatsoever. You know what's happening at any point. You know who the people are. You get giddy little moments of glee, knowing how Vlad will be closer friends with some of these characters later.
If you like the Taltos series, this is (as usual) a fantastic book. There's nothing new here; Brust is a fantastic writer. If you haven't read any books in the Vlad Taltos series, this would be a good "first book" despite being book number 8 - Brust writes his books completely out of sequence, and he experiments with how he tells stories each time. This isn't the best one I've read, but each and every one is fantastic.
Dragon, by Steven Brust, is (as always) an exploration as to what makes up the house the book is titled after. Dragons, in the Taltos series, are military minded, follow their own honor codes, and believe nothing is better than obeying orders. They're essentially Klingons, but without the anger issues. In this book, Vlad winds up fighting inside a squadron of Morollan's army, against an incredibly dangerous wizard, in a battle he has no idea why he's fighting. Worse, he's been given a special mission and it has been made abundantly clear - he is not to assassinate. What's an assassin to do?
I'll tell you what he's to do: explore war. Explore what it is to be a soldier. Have a terrifying time writing about what it's like to be shoulder-to-shoulder with a group of people who are completely comfortable with dying for someone else's cause.
And oh god, the timeline. I would kill to have that level of control over my own writing. Dragon bounces seamlessly through Vlad's experiences in the Battle of Baritt's Tomb, the aftermath, and years later, with no confusion whatsoever. You know what's happening at any point. You know who the people are. You get giddy little moments of glee, knowing how Vlad will be closer friends with some of these characters later.
If you like the Taltos series, this is (as usual) a fantastic book. There's nothing new here; Brust is a fantastic writer. If you haven't read any books in the Vlad Taltos series, this would be a good "first book" despite being book number 8 - Brust writes his books completely out of sequence, and he experiments with how he tells stories each time. This isn't the best one I've read, but each and every one is fantastic.