Dragon (Vlad, 8) - Softcover

Brust, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250163706 ISBN 13: 9781250163707

Publisher: Tor Books, 1999

Synopsis

After years of surviving in Adrilankha by practicing the trade I know best--killing people for a living--suddenly I'm in the last place any self-respecting assassin wants to be: the army. Worse, I'm right in the middle of a apocalyptic battle between two sorcerous armies, and everyone expects me to play a role they won't explain. All I've got between me and the worst kind of death is my wits. Oh, and a smart-mouthed winged lizard...

About this title

Review

Vlad Taltos is not your average sword-and-sorcery hero. He runs a territory for the criminal House Jhereg. He's a witch with a flying reptilian familiar as smart and sarcastic as any sidekick in literature. He's also a master assassin in Adrilankha, the capital of the Dragaeran Empire. (Dragaerans are tall, very long-lived elves; Vlad is an Easterner, or human.)

Steven Brust is not your average fantasy writer. Like his mentor, Roger Zelazny, he enjoys playing with time. Although Dragon is the eighth book about Vlad to be published, most of it takes place between Taltos, the first book chronologically, and Yendi; interludes and an epilogue occur after Yendi, but before Jhereg. Dragon tells the story of the oft-mentioned Battle of Barritt's Tomb, and how Vlad enlisted in a Dragon army (Dragons are the warrior Dragaerans) and learned that war is nothing like assassination.

Vlad is quick to let readers know the score. "I'll let you stay confused a little longer, and if you don't trust me to clear everything up, then you can go hang. I've been paid." Trust him. Dragon stands alone, but don't miss the others (after Jhereg come Teckla, Phoenix, Athyra, and Orca). It's a fast-moving, satisfying series. --Nona Vero

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1250163706
• ISBN 13: 9781250163707
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288