Iorich (Vlad) [Hardcover]

Steven Brust (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vlad | Publication Date: January 5, 2010

House Jhereg, Dragaera's organized crime syndicate, is still hunting Vlad Taltos. There's a big price on his head on Draegara City. Then he hears disturbing news. Aliera--longtime friend, sometime ally--has been arrested by the Empire on a charge of practicing elder sorcery, a capital crime.

It doesn't make sense. Everybody knows Aliera's been dabbling in elder sorcery for ages. Why is the Empire down on her now? Why aren't her powerful friends--Morrolan, Sethra, the Empress Zerika--coming to her rescue? And most to the point, why has she utterly refused to do anything about her own defense?

It would be idiotic of Vlad to jump into this situation. He's a former Jhereg who betrayed the House. He's an Easterner--small, weak, short-lived. He's being searched for by the most remorseless killers in the world. Naturally, that's exactly why he's going to get completely involved...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brust's enjoyable 12th Vlad Taltos adventure (after 2008's Jhegaala) brings the former organized crime figure back to his hometown, where he must avoid the many assassins still on the lookout for him. As Vlad tries to help Aliera e'Kieron, an old friend recently fallen from high places, he uncovers an increasingly complex web of intrigue aimed at creating an illegal drug trade. To thwart the plot, Vlad must navigate among the Dragaeran Empress and her associates, his ex-wife, his former associate Krager, and other schemers. Named for the Dragaeran clan of lawyers and judges, this installment has less action and more inscrutable dialogue than previous novels, providing some new insight into the interactions of the 17 clans. Newcomers will be a bit lost, but Brust fans will find a lot to think about as well as hints of larger plots to come. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

In his new adventure, Vlad Taltos is still running from the Jhereg with a huge price on his head. Hearing that old friend Aliera e’Kieron has been arrested on a trumped-up charge and wondering why her comrades, starting with the empress, haven’t lifted a finger, he repairs to Adrilankha to investigate, narrowly skirting his enemies, encountering many well-wishing old friends, and then uncovering a complex political situation encompassing everyone from the empress to the Left Hand of the Jhereg. And he meets his son and has a bittersweet reunion with his ex. A good read for longtime fans and newbies alike. --Frieda Murray

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (January 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765312085
• ISBN-13: 978-0765312082
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #546,423 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

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exquisitely painted by the numbers, January 9, 2010

By 

Dylan Alexander - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Iorich (Vlad) (Hardcover)

In concept, Iorich is the perfect Vlad Taltos book for someone like me with a legal/military/libertarian background. It's tacked around the philosophy and activities of the House of Iorich, that faction of the Dragaeran Empire concerned with justice and usually employed as lawyers, judges, and prison guards. The seed of the plot is caused by the massacre of civilians during a counter-insurgency campaign/rebellion being put down by the empire. And the primary motivation of the bad guys is an attempt to outlaw or heavily regulate mind-altering drugs to earn profits selling them on the blackmarket.

Unfortunately, beyond the setting there's little here we haven't seen before, so I can't give it five stars. There are no important new characters, yet less interaction with the old favorites than you might expect. The actual operation of the plot is the usual slightly implausible motives and actions of shadowy factions that Vlad stumbles around for most of the book before unravelling it in a flash, followed by a quick planning session with supporting friends and (literal) execution that wraps everything up neatly at the end.

It's nothing you haven't seen before, and while it's just as much fun as it was the last five times, it's not more.

I will give special appreciation to the chapter intros, which here consist of depositions, memos, and minutes of an investigation into the civilian massacre. Almost all of them are interesting, a few are amusing, and one (Aliera's) is hilarious. Brust also continues to impress in how he's handled the huge Plot Device of Invincibility introduced at the end of Issola to avoid making Vlad boringly immune to real danger or difficulty.

I'd like to say that the events of this book and the especially the state of play at the end sets us up for a big change of story arc or at least gut punching development ala Phoenix or Issola, but we've been suckered by that before. I do have hope the next book will continue the chronological arc forward; the recent pattern is two steps forward, one step jumping back. Jhegaala was the most recent flashback, and Iorich only gave us a few hints at what happened the last four years since Dzur, so I think we'll get one more forward push of the story line before Brust jumps back to cover the Dzur-Iorich interval.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Boilerplate Vlad, February 9, 2010

By 

K-Bob (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Iorich (Vlad) (Hardcover)

I'm a diehard Brust fan, in awe of what he can accomplish when he takes his time and works through a number of drafts to perfect a masterpiece of investigation, action, and lively wit. "Iorich" isn't one of those works, however. This latest installment reads like it was swiftly and sloppily cobbled together from pieces of Brust's previous novels -- much as happened all too frequently with the late Robert B. Parker (one of Brust's acknowledged influences), who likewise swung from excellence to mere self-plagiarism.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Damning with faint praise, August 15, 2010

By 

Sardan (Round Rock) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Iorich (Vlad) (Hardcover)

First let me make this clear: if you're a fan of Vlad, you'll like this book. It always fun to return to Vlad's world and hear him interacting with Loiosh and his old friends.

But....

While this book is better than Jhegaala, it simply isn't at the level of the earlier works of the series. The stakes don't seem very high for Vlad, there's little action and nearly no magic and much of the book is him grasping for clues that seem barely significant even after they're revealed. Instead of "holy cow, THAT's what they were hiding!?" it's more like "err, that's all?"

The end of the book clearly sets up the next volume and the stakes will be much higher for Vlad. Let's hope that reignites the series. Brust needs to give these excellent characters more to do!

Iorich is like a family reunion with relatives that you truly love to spend time with but leaving the reunion with no interesting anecdotes. A pleasant time but not memorable.