Dzur (Vlad Taltos) [Hardcover]

Steven Brust (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vlad Taltos | Publication Date: August 8, 2006

In which Vlad Taltos confronts the Left Hand of the Jhereg…and discovers the game has more players than he thought

Vlad Taltos, short-statured, short-lived human in an Empire of tall, long-lived Dragaerans, has always had to keep his wits about him. Long ago, he made a place for himself as a captain of the Jhereg, the noble house that runs the rackets in the great imperial city of Adrilankha. But love, revolution, betrayal, and revenge ensued, and for years now Vlad has been a man on the run, struggling to stay a step ahead of the Jhereg who would kill him without hesitation.

Now Vlad's back in Adrilankha. The rackets he used to run are now under the control of the mysterious "Left Hand of the Jhereg"--a secretive cabal of women who report to no man. His ex-wife needs his help. His old enemies aren't sure whether they want to kill him, or talk to him and then kill him. A goddess may be playing tricks with his memory. And the Great Weapon he's carrying seems to have plans of its own…

Picking up directly where Issola left off, Dzur gives us Vlad Taltos at his best--swashbuckling storytelling with a wry and gritty edge.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After a detour with the Viscount of Adrilankha trilogy (Sethra Lavode, etc.), Brust returns to sometime assassin and popular protagonist Vlad Taltos in the 10th installment of his famously disordered series. Beginning where Issola (2001) left off, this novel follows Vlad simultaneously through a complicated scheme to disrupt the political maneuvering of a shady association known as the Left Hand of the Jhereg and an exquisite dinner at the renowned restaurant Valabar's. (Each chapter, like a course in a literary feast, opens with descriptions of the fare at Valabar's.) Brust brings the grimy streets of Adrilankha to life in swift, vivid strokes and keeps the narrative skipping with wisecracking conversations amongVlad, his companion Loiosh and friends old and new. Though the in-jokes fly thick and fast and the line between familiar and recycled sometimes blurs, new readers won't notice and fans will be too happy at the prospect of another Taltos book to mind. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Vlad Taltos' latest adventure starts where Issola (2002) left off. For many years, he was a contented boss in the Jhereg, which ran the rackets in the imperial capital, Adrilankha. But after his wife got in trouble, and he got her out, he had a price on his head that kept him running for some time. Now he is sitting down to a meal at Valabar's, and Valabar's has the best food in the Dragarean Empire. But his ex needs help again. The Left Hand, a cabal of sorceresses without a boss, is taking over the Jhereg, which doesn't affect the reward for Vlad but does induce some erstwhile colleagues to want him to help them before they claim it. Also, a goddess is manipulating his memory, and the great weapon he carries is acting independently. It's adventure time again. Brust adds a charming twist this time. Vlad gets his meal, and each chapter's title and heading describe one delicacy at Valabar's. A must-read for series fans. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 285 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (August 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765301482
• ISBN-13: 978-0765301482
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #989,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and raised in a family of Hungarian labor organizers, Steven Brust worked as a musician and a computer programmer before coming to prominence as a writer in 1983 with Jhereg, the first of his novels about Vlad Taltos, a human professional assassin in a world dominated by long-lived, magically-empowered human-like "Dragaerans." Over the next several years, several more "Taltos" novels followed, interspersed with other work, including To Reign in Hell, a fantasy re-working of Milton's war in Heaven; The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, a contemporary fantasy based on Hungarian folktales; and a science fiction novel, Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille. The most recent "Taltos" novels are Dragon and Issola. In 1991, with The Phoenix Guards, Brust began another series, set a thousand years earlier than the Taltos books; its sequels are Five Hundred Years After and the three volumes of "The Viscount of Adrilankha": The Paths of the Dead, The Lord of Castle Black, and Sethra Lavode.While writing, Brust has continued to work as a musician, playing drums for the legendary band Cats Laughing and recording an album of his own work, A Rose for Iconoclastes. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada where he pursues an ongoing interest in stochastics.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More a snack than a feast, August 10, 2006

By 

Jonathan A. Turner (Nashua, NH United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dzur (Vlad Taltos) (Hardcover)

_Dzur_ is about two-thirds of a Vlad novel. It's got a lot of fabulous dialogue, some sumptuous descriptive writing, and the welcome return of some old friends. What it doesn't have is much in the way of plot.

I was really looking forward to this one. Vlad used to be a small cog in the big machine of Adrilankha. Then he was a desperate refugee. Now he's back in Adrilankha, but no longer as a bit player. Now, he's a power to be reckoned with.

But _Dzur_ doesn't really show much of a change in Vlad, in Adrilankha, or in the relationship between them. Brust could have set the tale in Vlad's early life, before his exile, without many alterations. It's as though Brust, having made Vlad into a big cheese, is trying to explain it all away so that he doesn't have to tell a different kind of story.

Furthermore, having set up the conflict in the opening chapter, Brust follows with a surprisingly low-key plot. Vlad walks around and talks to people a lot. There's only one bit of action, which lasts about a page. The emotional intensity is very low (something that could have been different if Cawti had any major role to play; she appears, vanishes, and comes back for a brief epilogue). And Vlad's ultimate solution to his problem is something he really could have done around chapter 3. All that walking and talking in the middle of the book contributes very little to the end.

If you're new to the series, DO NOT start here. If you like Vlad, on the other hand, you'll probably enjoy reading this novel. It's, well, Vlad-like. (I particularly enjoyed meeting Kragar again.) But don't be surprised if you're hungry again an hour later.

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I wanted more from this book, August 21, 2006

By 

wysewomon "wysewomon" (Paonia, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dzur (Vlad Taltos) (Hardcover)

There are quite a few things to like in this, the 10th volume of Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series. Like that it IS a book in the Vlad Taltos series. And that it takes the reader with interest in Dragaeran events one step closer to the end of a story arc that I suspect will require 8 more books. Not to mention the action and the snappy dialog.

But I felt the bill of fare was just a little too lean. In previous volumes, Brust has managed to balance action and process to a good effect. Here, I often felt left out of the loop. Several times, Vlad made connections that were never explained to my satisfaction, or said something like "the pieces fell into place," without ever saying what the pieces were or how they fit. This bothered me. Since I've never before had trouble following Vlad's reasoning, I mostly ended up feeling that information was withheld to no good purpose, except maybe to move the story along to the more active bits. But since I didn't have the information, the active bits didn't have the impact they could have.

I had a hard time understanding why Vlad got involved in the situation in the first place. This was mainly because his feelings for Cawti at this point in his history were mainly left unexplored. Several times Vlad himself, as narrator, mentioned something from his past and then declined to go into detail. This annoyed me. Even though I've read all the books in this series and understood what he was referring to, I felt hearing some of Vlad's own perspective would not have come amiss.

A couple plot devices seemed misplaced. The subplot about the Demon Goddess served mainly to distract from the main doings of the book. I got the sense of, "this is going to be relevant later and it has to go somewhere..." I wish it had had more bearing on the matter at hand. Also, as much as I enjoy seeing Kiera the Thief, her appearance in this volume seemed largely gratuitous.

Each chapter is preceded, as others have mentioned, with portions of a description of Vlad's long-awaited meal at Valabar's. Brust has used this interweaving technique to great efect before, notably in _Taltos_. Here, it seemed out of place. There was no clear connection between the meal and the rest of the story. Also, the descriptions of the food were so loving and lavish that it made the action seem rather uninteresting in comparison.

Until Chapter 15, I was a little bored by this book. After that, things started happening and got more interesting.

In the end, I was glad to read another Vlad novel, but I felt strongly that this was a book not really meant to stand alone, but best taken in context as a a transitional point of the series. As such, a reader new to the series should not start here.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a literary feast, September 11, 2006

By 

cfc (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dzur (Vlad Taltos) (Hardcover)

As a huge fan of Brust and the Vlad Taltos series, I eagerly awaited this sequel to Issola. Unfortunately, this was perhaps the first in the entire series where I found myself disappointed.

Most of the disappointment centers around the plot. For the life of me, I still can't figure out why Cawti needed Vlad to bail her out - bail her out of what? We never really find out why the Jhereg returning to South Adrilankha to plague the easterners is a problem for her. It comes across as a rather thin plot device for Cawti to reveal the secret she's been hiding from Vlad since he left.

Aside from the plot weaknesses, there are the problems with the characterizations. After building up the estrangement between Cawti and Vlad for what, 2-3 books now?, their meeting comes across as emotionally flat and rather pointless.

Brust lays down some good hints of things to come. I'm hoping he can actually propel his characters forward with a story that holds together a little better in the next outing.

Three stars only because it's Brust and Vlad.