Reading roundup
3. Steven Brust, The Phoenix Guards -- I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, though I still definitely prefer the Vlad Taltos books. Paarfi's style is something I find more frustrating than funny, especially when it comes to dialogue, a deterrent rather than a bonus when it comes to this series. But, OK, it was not too bad. ( More, with spoilers )
Well, it was transliterated Russian, which looks largely like gibberish. I think if I weren't so used to typing in translit, I may have just overlooked it. (I think either this comes up again in one of the later Khaavren books or there's another author who uses Russian as a fantasy language, because I remember leafing through a book at the bookstore which had the Russian phrase "Evil consumers of horse flesh!", and it was so random that I still remember it like 15 years later XD
Tazendra was quite wonderful! Porthos was always my least favorite of the four musketeers, but I think I may like her best of all of them, or second best after Khaavren.
I really am quite amazed how much stuff Brust puts in his books that you don't see very often in fantasy, and it's all interspersed with humour, so it never feels like, oh look, I'm writing serious socio-political stuff, so I'm always surprised to encounter these bits.
I'm reading Five Hundred Years After at the moment, and enjoying that, too, though it's rather amazing to see how much Khaavren has changed (and how little the others have).
Reply
Leave a comment