Ant-Man, December ramble meme, day 17: Dragaera
Anniversary, yay! I got flowers, we had dinner, it was nice (except that I got a headache by the end). Details later, but for now some fannish things:
We watched Ant-Man with the rodents. I enjoyed it a lot! OK, so, I'm kind of ant-phobic. Individual ants are fine, I even find them sort of cute, but more than five of them, especially if they're clumped together or swarming, and I get freaked out. So, this movie... this movie I alternated between giggling and shutting my eyes, peeking out, and going, "Ughhhh". But I still enjoyed it a whole lot, which is pretty impressive, considering! I think the rest is just going to have to be bullet points -- my thoughts are cheerful but not coherent: Spoilers from here!
- I totally had not expected a Sam Wilson cameo, and was quite happy about that, even if he was mostly there to get his ass kicked.
- I also had not expected the action to be taking place in San Francisco. Not, you know, the parts of San Francisco that I mostly go to, but still.
- I really liked Scott and the various facets of him -- talented burglar, down-on-his-luck ex-con trying to reform, fish-out-of-water trying to learn the superhero gig, caring dad. Honestly, as far as MCU protagonists go, I think he might be my second favorite after Tony at this point.
- I also like Douglas as Pym. I know Pym is supposed to be kind of an asshole, and that came across even in this version, but I still liked him well enough. And I thought the contrast between Pym and Hope's father-daughter relationship and Scott and Cassie's was a nice touch, if laid on a bit thick sometimes. Also, Douglas saying, "I need you to break into a place and steal some shit" with a straight face was kind of hilarious.
- The visuals were pretty cool. I mean, ridiculous, because ANTS, but done with a nice mix of special effects and humour. Small stuff becoming large never stopped being funny, basically, especially with the Thomas the Train scene. And just the whole big/small back and forth dynamic was nicely done -- not so abrupt that it was confusing, but also fast enough that the acion scenes worked for me.
- Normally, the type of sidekick humour that this movie was full off would be a turn-off to me, but somehow "the wombats" managed to be actually charming. Especially Luis, and I had fully expected that delivery to grate on me -- but it didn't. Magic! I didn't even mind the hacker's fake Russian accent.
- There were some other funny moments for me, like Cassie's devotion to her horrifying new stuffy, the scene at the Baskin-Robbins. A couple of jokes fell flat for me, like Scott accidentally breaking up Hope and Pym's heart-to-heart, which I thought was a totally pointless addition. But for the most part the humour worked.
- L pointed out that Scott's ex-wife's cop boyfriend looked a lot like L's friend R's father. I also liked that he turned out to be a decent guy, and that by the end they were all a functional family of sorts.
- This is the most critterrific MCU movie, of course. We all thought Cassie keeping the enlarged ant/messed-up dog as a pet was really cute. L was distraught about the experimental subject sheep that went splat, but thought the miniaturized one was adorable. She was also very sad about Antony, with the dramatic wing drop. And We all went "awww" when the ants with the sugar cubes turned away dejectedly after Scott said he didn't want sugar anymore.
We also watched another episode of Buffy: "Some Assembly Required" Spoilers for the rest of the season! the rodents were deeply grossed out by the whole body parts thing, and the look on L's face when she realized about the dead brother. They both seemed pretty thoroughly traumatized XD In non-main plot, L giggled a ton a "awkward!Giles", and I did too -- I really love the relationship with Jenny, though in my case it's a bittersweet love, knowing what's coming. She missed Giles's "Thank you, Cyrano," line, but I pointed it out to her, and she laughed a lot, 'cos they have just finished reading Cyrano in English and she has written some essays on it. Rewatch bonus: Cordelia asking Angel to walk her home after he provides moral support at the dumpster with the body parts. I think it's their first scene together? Interesting to see in light of AtS.
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December ramble meme, day 17: Dragaera/Steven Brust (prompted by q99, who is very indulgent of my obsession, for which I'm quite grateful :))
So, OK, first of all, what even is Dragaera? (in case you've somehow managed to avoid me talking your ear off about it already). Let's have a couple of quick introductory points:
1) Dragaera is a series of books -- or, rather, two different sub-series and a standalone, all set in the same universe.
2) Said universe is a world populated by Dragaerans (~Elves, but there's more to it), Easterners (humans like us, although the Dragaerans consider themselves humans), gods (occasionally), as well as an assortment of weird critters, like telepathic owls, bat-winged panthers, and web-weaving fox things, plus bunnies that eat dragons. It's technically sci-fi, I guess (see this Penny Arcade comic about it. The Dragaerans have a rigid House (Planet of Hats more than caste) structure, with each house taking a turn at governing the empire, switching every couple of hundred/thousand years. There are different kinds of magic, soul-destroying weapons, both sentient and not, and general swashbuckling a la Chronicles of Amber.
3) The protagonist of the Vlad books is an assassin/minor crime boss (or at least he starts out as one; where he goes from there is, I think, a not very usual arc); there are currently at 14 books of a planned 19 book series (one for each of the 17 houses + chronological bookends). The narrator of the Paarfi books, which are a loving Three Musketeers homage/pastiche, is an in-universe historian who does not fully grasp what brevity is; there are five of these, although they form a trilogy (it's complicated). The standalone, Brokedown Palace, set in an Easterner kingdom and basically a fairy tale; it's cute, but I wouldn't start there.
4) The Vlad books start with Jhereg, going in publication order, or with Taltos going in chronological order (and either is a decent starting point, IMO), and are available in omnibus editions (grouped by publication order), the first of which is The Book of Jhereg. The Paarfi books start with The Phoenix Guards. As of now, all of them are (finally) available in e-book format.
5) If you read these books, I will love you forever.
To start with, Steven Brust and Dragaera are pretty much synonymous to me. I know he's written other things, and I've even read The Incrementalists (it was fine, but not my sub-genre of choice, and I think I resented it for not being more Vlad, which of course it does not owe me to be) and a Bordertown song in a short story collection, and I do want to read Agyar and Cowboy Feng's at some point, but I'm definitely all about Dragaera when it comes to Brust.
I remember exactly where I encountered Dragaera, and also approximately when. I actually picked up The Phoenix Guards first, in the Crown Books store that was between Lowell and my house, so I stopped there nearly every day on my way home. On days when I didn't have as much homework/my classes ended earlier, I'd browse for an hour or so, actually reading some books completely over a series of visits (The Princess Bride was one of them). So, this would've been when I was in high school, between 1992 and 1996. Given that I don't remember seeing Five Hundred Years After on the shelf, I think it was probably before 1994, when that was published, but it's hard to say. Anyway, I picked up the book because of the cover, and the blurb sounded very enticing -- I was going through a Three Musketeers renaissnce around that time. I remember reading the opening scene and being totally lost due to the worldbuilding (I don't think Paarfi is a good first introduction to Dragaera AT ALL, though I do know people whom it worked for without the preparation of Vlad). The Dumas-esque style didn't work for me then, so I gave up on it pretty quickly, but I do remember encountering a line of absolutely random (and not very good) transliterated Russian from Pel, which might've been the final bit of WTF that made me give up on the books.
I remember where I was when I "met" Vlad, too, though not so much when. Though it must've been after 1993-94, probably, since otherwise Brust's name would've rung a bell for me on The Phoenix Guards. It was at the Ortega library, because I remember browsing their sci-fi paperbacks section and finding Jhereg. That one I did like a lot, and eventually read at least Taltos, Teckla, and Phoenix (and maybe Yendi? I cannot remember Yendi at all, from that time, but I couldn't remember Yendi at all even after I had evidence that I's read it, courtesy of LJ. I do know that by early 2004 I came across Issola at Parkside Library. Then there was a long break, until I came across Dzur (at West Portal, I think), in 2007. This reminded me how much I liked the series, and then I wanted more, because Dzur is kind of a tease of a book. So I went back and reread Taltos and Phoenix, and then caught up on Dragon as part of my sabbatical reading the same year. And then something weird happened in 2009, and I went off into my current obsessive spiral. I hardly ever reread books, but I reread Dzur, then the first three books in publication order, then Jhegaala (newly published then). There wasn't quite enough stuff to carry me through until Iorich publication, but Iorich was, I think, the first book I actually bought instead of waiting for it to show up at the library (if not, then it was definitely Tiassa). After I read that at the beginning of 2011, I basically never stopped. I went and caught up on the Paarfi books, which worked much better for me the second time around, especially once I got to Adron ♥ and young Morrolan). Then, once I was out of Paarfi books, I started rereading the series chronological order, and went back and read Orca and Athyra, which I'd previously been missing. This, plus the occasional reread of my favorite bits of Taltos, lasted me until Tiassa came out, and then I sort of continued with the same while anxiously awaiting Hawk. And, well, it's likely to continue until we get Vallista.
This is a very odd trajectory for me, a 15-20 year acquaintance followed by a sudden escalation into obsession. I tend to fall for things right away, or sometimes it takes having a fandom support system for something I like well enough to transmute into something I love -- like ASOIAF. The thing about Dragaera, though, is that it does something very (IMO) unusual: the whole is much more impressive than the sum of its parts, and it takes a certain critical mass of canon to get to the point where you can see that. The early Vlad books are fun noir-ish capers by themselves, the Paarfi books are fun (if you like that sort of thing) Dumas pastiches. But the thing that's really impressive to me is how you can see growth in the Vlad narrative, through the unreliable (and occasionally deeply in denial) narrator, the occasional outsider POV, and the way the interplay of unreliable narrators and their assorted biases bounces across the Paarfi books and the Vlad books. It's hard to know, with Brust, how much is pre-planned and how much he's just making up as he's going along, but however he's built it, I admire the edifice.
I also enjoy the swashbuckling, first person smartass, the exposition-through-dialogue that he does, the way he varies the sub-genres and plays with narrative structure. Not every book in the series is necessarily to my taste -- I definitely prefer Vlad's narration to anyone else's (but it's neat to get an outside look at Vlad through Savn's eyes in Athyra and through Khaavren/Paarfi's in Tiassa), the structure of Jhegaala, however fitting to the house it may be, doesn't work for me very well, and I find the only-loosely-connected novellas of Tiassa unsatisfying -- but I do always find it interesting and admirable that he keeps changing things up, instead of writing yet another Vlad caper. And books like Teckla and Phoenix are not a whole lot of fun -- bitter divorce and doomed-to-fail revolutions generally aren't, but, man, I respect them a whole lot.
And here's another thing I respect: Brust has very strong political views (he's a Tsotskyist, I believe is the correct term), but you wouldn't ever know it from his books. Nothing turns me off an author quicker than finding Authorial Soapboxes in their books, regardless if I agree with their ideas or not. I read a blog post or an AMA or something by Brust where he talked about how he avoids this trap: he says that if he finds it necessary for a character in a novel to express views that he shares, he tries to make sure it's a not-very-likeable character going so, and that a likeable/favorite character holds an opposing view, and lets it be known. This is a really nice trick, and something I really appreciate. At the same time, he is certainly aware of all that stuff in the background, even though he's not putting it out on the mage. Which is an interesting author perspective to have when he's writing about a literal divinely sanctioned monarchy in a world where the privileged and the oppressed truly do have different abilities and the protagonist is somebody whose views are, er, not unproblematic when it comes to the system, oppression, and so on.
Let's talk a bit about favorites!
Favorite Vlad book: Taltos (also my overall favorite)
Favorite Paarfi book: tough call between Five Hundred Years After and Lord of Castle Black. LoCB is really funny, and I love it for that reason, but I find 500YA really moving, unexpectedly so.
Favorite character: Morrolan, duh. But Adron is a close second, and I also love Tazendra and Zerika.
Favorite ship: Vlad/Morrolan, also duh. I'm, to be honest, not entirely sure how certain bits of the book are meant to be read outside of that subtext...
Favorite house: Dragon! All my very favorite characters are Dragonlords, and some of my favorite secondaries, too. And I just love them in general, the pride and military prowess and self-appointed responsibility for people and the world and the way they're quite simple people, really, under all that belligerent posturing.
House I would actually be a part of: I've gotten Athyra on a quiz before, and... quite possibly? I mean, they're callous psychopaths, for the most part, but, like... I can see how I would fit in. (I got Issola as a strong secondary house, and the combination actually feels about right.)
Back when I was answering luckweaver's prompt for day 13, The book/movie/TV show you wish there was a bigger fandom for, and why, I mentioned that my real answer was the Dragaera books, and that I'd answer that part of the question here. So:
Dragaera fandom is essentially non-existent. There are people who have been hardcore fans of the books for AGES, and there are amazing resources like Alexx Kay's Dragaera timeline, Mark Mandel's sadly defunct site Cracks and Shards (link goes to the Wayback Machine), which collects Easter eggs, allusions, and apparent inconsistencies in the books, as well as some collected worldbuilding info. Fandom interaction seems to mainly take place via the mailing list, but even that's been pretty dead lately. Fans comment and interact somewhat on Brust's personal blog, but his posts are more likely to be about history or politics, or a filk, than book discussion. Not that the filks aren't great! His last post has some really great Robert Frost poem filks, especially from others, in comments. But as a fannish hub, it's not exactly. People do various cool things -- there was a Russian get-together an costumed trial at some point, apparently, and maybe even Dragaeran campains? I know captainecchi runs a Dragaeran-based LARP game occasionally. But none of this is happening in ways I can interact with it, which is deeply frustrating!
And as for LJ, well... I've actually done as exhaustive a search of LJ as it's possible to do -- meaning that I searched on "dragaera", "vlad taltos", and other key character names and went through every link LJ (and Dreamwidth) turned up -- mostly RP stuff, as it turns out. But what seems to happen is, some person discovers the books, is obsessed with them, or maybe even specifically with Morrolan -- as is most relevant to my interests -- but by the time I find them across the vastness of the internet, they're years past this and have moved on to a different platform entirely, with no forwarding address. This is even more deeply frustrating!
So, to be honest, I've been kind of shamelessly trying to grow my own fandom. Like, I generally try to rec people books that I genuinely think they'd like, tailored to their specific tastes. But the Vlad books are weird and all different, an acquired taste, I think -- they were for me -- and the Paarfi books are frankly esoteric (though I do rec them to hardcore Dumas fans), so I always hesitate to rec them on those grounds. And yet! After my first couple of recs (for other books) met with success with lunasariel, I brought some Vlad books to her and was like, "I don't know if you would actually like these? But here's a stuck of books anyway! :D?" I know lobolita has read a number, from my endless yammering about them on LJ, and my "let me helpfully point out all the possible reading orders!" I've been VERY SUBTLY pimping them to ikel89 on LJ and in real life, and to pretty much everyone on LJ. And, of course, I have a policy of immediately friending anyone who even knows about these books, and always hopefully listing them among my interests in friending memes for all the good it usually does me
Here are the things I would love to see if it were a bigger fandom:
- Fanfic. There is actually some really good fanfic out there (I love misura's Vlad/Morrolan ficlets, and Edonahana/rachelmanija's The Sword and the Dagger, and < ahref = "http://archiveofourown.org/works/129386">Witchcraft by dhaunea, but... it tends to be either quite short, or unfinished, and it really is the same handful of people ("handful" might actually be overstating it) that have written all the good fic. And there's so much room for really meaty fic in this universe! The books allude to all kinds of Noodle Incidents, the unreliable narrator thing opens it up to very interesting takes on the same events from a different POV, all kinds of characters it would be very interesting to explore without Vlad or Paarfi's filters.
- Swag. There's gift shop, but their selection is actually fairly disappointing. Where I like the ideas behind the swag, I don't much care for the execution, and where I like the images, I don't find the ideas interesting/relevant enough. And it's a fandom that would lend itself splendidly to swag. I mean, T-shirts with (nicely designed!) Cycle critters in house colors are a given. Replica Great Weapons! Plushy hand-puppet Loiosh! There is SO MUCH STUFF I would buy, if it were only available.
- A landcomm. No seriously! I know these are probably passe, but it would work so well! And, like, the Paarfi books basically came about because Brust was talking about which Dumas characters would go in which Dragaera houses. I had this whole game planned out. (There are a couple of sorting quizzes, at least, which were still live when I found them, though I'm not sure they're still around.)
And now: Top ten reasons people should flock to the Dragaera fandom:
1) First person smartass in the Vlad Taltos books. If you enjoy The Dresden Files, chances are this style of narration will appeal to you. (And when Vlad comes across as an ass, he is actually meant to be an ass, which I find refreshing.)
1b) Alternately: Dumas pastiche, if you're into that.
2) Worldbuilding #aesthetic reminiscent of Chronicles of Amber. Brust is a big ol' Zelazny fanboy (he named his firstborn Corwin), and it shows. I don't mean that Dragaera is *like* Amber, but there's intrigue between people with kinda crazy priorities, named magical swords, sorcery, dramatic fights, lots of banter. And the world is big, and complicated, and really interesting to explore.
3) The gender-equality of the setting. The Dragerans are a very gender-equal society (Easterners who have held on to their culture, less so), and it's actually carried through to every level of worldbuilding. The women are at least as badass as the male characters: the ruler of the Empire is Empress Zerika, the legendary general and most powerful non-divine person in Dragaera is a woman, the Porthos analogue in the Paarfi books is female, the highly respected assassin team, the Sword and the Dagger, are both women, many of the competent antagonists are women as well, etc. etc. There are default gender-neutral pronouns in Dragaeran -- they are not used in the English text, because the English text is presented as a translation, but when Paarfi hears about gender-netural pronouns being replaced by "he" in the translation of his writing, he is not happy about that at all. What I like about the way this is done in the Dragaera books is that this is just the way it is. There's none of this stuff that annoys me with Scott Lynch, where he sets up a pretty gender-neutral world and then decides to deliver feminist lectures via Sabetha-as-mouthpiece anyway -- it is quite simply not an issue in Dragaera (but we do get glimpses of other places which are not like that). And the gender equality doesn't turn Dragaera into any sort of utopia -- there are plenty of other kinds of inequality there, which is treated with nuance and thought. But it's definitely a world where one doesn't have to worry about token females or sexy lamps or whatever.
4) Character growth. I have more fun with younger Vlad, when he was just a thug who didn't stop to examine his own motives for very long... but I think his character arc from there is interestingly done: both the kinds of things that bring it about, and the way he reacts to those things, and what realizations he does and doesn't have about said character growth, and how he reacts to that.
5) The unreliable narrator thing. No, really, I've never seen an author so committed to the concept across such a long series. It's disconcerting, because once you stop to think about it, you realize that we don't actually know ANYTHING, but it's something Brust plays with really neatly. And acorss different narrators, too, as mentioned above.
6) Speaking of Brust playing with things, the variation between books. He likes playing with time (alternating strands of timelines in Taltos and Dragon, e.g., interludes in Tiassa which take place out of time entirely), and chapter epigraphs (an in-universe song, etiquette lesson titles, a laundry list), and genre flavors (Dragon the war story, Tiassa the set of heists).
7) Really fun dialogue, and chunks of storytelling through dialogue alone. I realize the latter is not everybody's cup of tea, but I find it really fun, to have even non-verbal actions and happenings revealed through people's verbal reactions to them.
8) Orca is uncannily prescient about the banking crisis of 2008. Like, to a ridiculous degree. My favorite bit on that note is this tweet from (I forgot to note down the author): "Any day now, @StevenBrust will finish his incisive allegory about the 2008 financial crash, “Orca”, and drop it in a wormhole to 1996."
9) Food porn. No, seriously. Vlad is a gourmand and loves to cook, and Dzur, at minimum, will make you hungry. Throughout the whole book.
10) Brust wrote Paarfirotica (pretty much what it says on the tin). It's... you know, porn written in the style of Paarfi, the Dumas expy, which I do not think is everyone's cup of tea, and I certainly don't find it hot, but I'm amused by the fact that such a thing exists. On a similar note, Iorich includes a gag real/outtakes at the end of the book. Pulling a gag real off in a printed medium is something, certainly! He generally loves trolling his readers, but, you know, good-naturedly so.
11) Did I mention I'd love you forever if you read them? :P
We watched Ant-Man with the rodents. I enjoyed it a lot! OK, so, I'm kind of ant-phobic. Individual ants are fine, I even find them sort of cute, but more than five of them, especially if they're clumped together or swarming, and I get freaked out. So, this movie... this movie I alternated between giggling and shutting my eyes, peeking out, and going, "Ughhhh". But I still enjoyed it a whole lot, which is pretty impressive, considering! I think the rest is just going to have to be bullet points -- my thoughts are cheerful but not coherent: Spoilers from here!
- I totally had not expected a Sam Wilson cameo, and was quite happy about that, even if he was mostly there to get his ass kicked.
- I also had not expected the action to be taking place in San Francisco. Not, you know, the parts of San Francisco that I mostly go to, but still.
- I really liked Scott and the various facets of him -- talented burglar, down-on-his-luck ex-con trying to reform, fish-out-of-water trying to learn the superhero gig, caring dad. Honestly, as far as MCU protagonists go, I think he might be my second favorite after Tony at this point.
- I also like Douglas as Pym. I know Pym is supposed to be kind of an asshole, and that came across even in this version, but I still liked him well enough. And I thought the contrast between Pym and Hope's father-daughter relationship and Scott and Cassie's was a nice touch, if laid on a bit thick sometimes. Also, Douglas saying, "I need you to break into a place and steal some shit" with a straight face was kind of hilarious.
- The visuals were pretty cool. I mean, ridiculous, because ANTS, but done with a nice mix of special effects and humour. Small stuff becoming large never stopped being funny, basically, especially with the Thomas the Train scene. And just the whole big/small back and forth dynamic was nicely done -- not so abrupt that it was confusing, but also fast enough that the acion scenes worked for me.
- Normally, the type of sidekick humour that this movie was full off would be a turn-off to me, but somehow "the wombats" managed to be actually charming. Especially Luis, and I had fully expected that delivery to grate on me -- but it didn't. Magic! I didn't even mind the hacker's fake Russian accent.
- There were some other funny moments for me, like Cassie's devotion to her horrifying new stuffy, the scene at the Baskin-Robbins. A couple of jokes fell flat for me, like Scott accidentally breaking up Hope and Pym's heart-to-heart, which I thought was a totally pointless addition. But for the most part the humour worked.
- L pointed out that Scott's ex-wife's cop boyfriend looked a lot like L's friend R's father. I also liked that he turned out to be a decent guy, and that by the end they were all a functional family of sorts.
- This is the most critterrific MCU movie, of course. We all thought Cassie keeping the enlarged ant/messed-up dog as a pet was really cute. L was distraught about the experimental subject sheep that went splat, but thought the miniaturized one was adorable. She was also very sad about Antony, with the dramatic wing drop. And We all went "awww" when the ants with the sugar cubes turned away dejectedly after Scott said he didn't want sugar anymore.
We also watched another episode of Buffy: "Some Assembly Required" Spoilers for the rest of the season! the rodents were deeply grossed out by the whole body parts thing, and the look on L's face when she realized about the dead brother. They both seemed pretty thoroughly traumatized XD In non-main plot, L giggled a ton a "awkward!Giles", and I did too -- I really love the relationship with Jenny, though in my case it's a bittersweet love, knowing what's coming. She missed Giles's "Thank you, Cyrano," line, but I pointed it out to her, and she laughed a lot, 'cos they have just finished reading Cyrano in English and she has written some essays on it. Rewatch bonus: Cordelia asking Angel to walk her home after he provides moral support at the dumpster with the body parts. I think it's their first scene together? Interesting to see in light of AtS.
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December ramble meme, day 17: Dragaera/Steven Brust (prompted by q99, who is very indulgent of my obsession, for which I'm quite grateful :))
So, OK, first of all, what even is Dragaera? (in case you've somehow managed to avoid me talking your ear off about it already). Let's have a couple of quick introductory points:
1) Dragaera is a series of books -- or, rather, two different sub-series and a standalone, all set in the same universe.
2) Said universe is a world populated by Dragaerans (~Elves, but there's more to it), Easterners (humans like us, although the Dragaerans consider themselves humans), gods (occasionally), as well as an assortment of weird critters, like telepathic owls, bat-winged panthers, and web-weaving fox things, plus bunnies that eat dragons. It's technically sci-fi, I guess (see this Penny Arcade comic about it. The Dragaerans have a rigid House (Planet of Hats more than caste) structure, with each house taking a turn at governing the empire, switching every couple of hundred/thousand years. There are different kinds of magic, soul-destroying weapons, both sentient and not, and general swashbuckling a la Chronicles of Amber.
3) The protagonist of the Vlad books is an assassin/minor crime boss (or at least he starts out as one; where he goes from there is, I think, a not very usual arc); there are currently at 14 books of a planned 19 book series (one for each of the 17 houses + chronological bookends). The narrator of the Paarfi books, which are a loving Three Musketeers homage/pastiche, is an in-universe historian who does not fully grasp what brevity is; there are five of these, although they form a trilogy (it's complicated). The standalone, Brokedown Palace, set in an Easterner kingdom and basically a fairy tale; it's cute, but I wouldn't start there.
4) The Vlad books start with Jhereg, going in publication order, or with Taltos going in chronological order (and either is a decent starting point, IMO), and are available in omnibus editions (grouped by publication order), the first of which is The Book of Jhereg. The Paarfi books start with The Phoenix Guards. As of now, all of them are (finally) available in e-book format.
5) If you read these books, I will love you forever.
To start with, Steven Brust and Dragaera are pretty much synonymous to me. I know he's written other things, and I've even read The Incrementalists (it was fine, but not my sub-genre of choice, and I think I resented it for not being more Vlad, which of course it does not owe me to be) and a Bordertown song in a short story collection, and I do want to read Agyar and Cowboy Feng's at some point, but I'm definitely all about Dragaera when it comes to Brust.
I remember exactly where I encountered Dragaera, and also approximately when. I actually picked up The Phoenix Guards first, in the Crown Books store that was between Lowell and my house, so I stopped there nearly every day on my way home. On days when I didn't have as much homework/my classes ended earlier, I'd browse for an hour or so, actually reading some books completely over a series of visits (The Princess Bride was one of them). So, this would've been when I was in high school, between 1992 and 1996. Given that I don't remember seeing Five Hundred Years After on the shelf, I think it was probably before 1994, when that was published, but it's hard to say. Anyway, I picked up the book because of the cover, and the blurb sounded very enticing -- I was going through a Three Musketeers renaissnce around that time. I remember reading the opening scene and being totally lost due to the worldbuilding (I don't think Paarfi is a good first introduction to Dragaera AT ALL, though I do know people whom it worked for without the preparation of Vlad). The Dumas-esque style didn't work for me then, so I gave up on it pretty quickly, but I do remember encountering a line of absolutely random (and not very good) transliterated Russian from Pel, which might've been the final bit of WTF that made me give up on the books.
I remember where I was when I "met" Vlad, too, though not so much when. Though it must've been after 1993-94, probably, since otherwise Brust's name would've rung a bell for me on The Phoenix Guards. It was at the Ortega library, because I remember browsing their sci-fi paperbacks section and finding Jhereg. That one I did like a lot, and eventually read at least Taltos, Teckla, and Phoenix (and maybe Yendi? I cannot remember Yendi at all, from that time, but I couldn't remember Yendi at all even after I had evidence that I's read it, courtesy of LJ. I do know that by early 2004 I came across Issola at Parkside Library. Then there was a long break, until I came across Dzur (at West Portal, I think), in 2007. This reminded me how much I liked the series, and then I wanted more, because Dzur is kind of a tease of a book. So I went back and reread Taltos and Phoenix, and then caught up on Dragon as part of my sabbatical reading the same year. And then something weird happened in 2009, and I went off into my current obsessive spiral. I hardly ever reread books, but I reread Dzur, then the first three books in publication order, then Jhegaala (newly published then). There wasn't quite enough stuff to carry me through until Iorich publication, but Iorich was, I think, the first book I actually bought instead of waiting for it to show up at the library (if not, then it was definitely Tiassa). After I read that at the beginning of 2011, I basically never stopped. I went and caught up on the Paarfi books, which worked much better for me the second time around, especially once I got to Adron ♥ and young Morrolan). Then, once I was out of Paarfi books, I started rereading the series chronological order, and went back and read Orca and Athyra, which I'd previously been missing. This, plus the occasional reread of my favorite bits of Taltos, lasted me until Tiassa came out, and then I sort of continued with the same while anxiously awaiting Hawk. And, well, it's likely to continue until we get Vallista.
This is a very odd trajectory for me, a 15-20 year acquaintance followed by a sudden escalation into obsession. I tend to fall for things right away, or sometimes it takes having a fandom support system for something I like well enough to transmute into something I love -- like ASOIAF. The thing about Dragaera, though, is that it does something very (IMO) unusual: the whole is much more impressive than the sum of its parts, and it takes a certain critical mass of canon to get to the point where you can see that. The early Vlad books are fun noir-ish capers by themselves, the Paarfi books are fun (if you like that sort of thing) Dumas pastiches. But the thing that's really impressive to me is how you can see growth in the Vlad narrative, through the unreliable (and occasionally deeply in denial) narrator, the occasional outsider POV, and the way the interplay of unreliable narrators and their assorted biases bounces across the Paarfi books and the Vlad books. It's hard to know, with Brust, how much is pre-planned and how much he's just making up as he's going along, but however he's built it, I admire the edifice.
I also enjoy the swashbuckling, first person smartass, the exposition-through-dialogue that he does, the way he varies the sub-genres and plays with narrative structure. Not every book in the series is necessarily to my taste -- I definitely prefer Vlad's narration to anyone else's (but it's neat to get an outside look at Vlad through Savn's eyes in Athyra and through Khaavren/Paarfi's in Tiassa), the structure of Jhegaala, however fitting to the house it may be, doesn't work for me very well, and I find the only-loosely-connected novellas of Tiassa unsatisfying -- but I do always find it interesting and admirable that he keeps changing things up, instead of writing yet another Vlad caper. And books like Teckla and Phoenix are not a whole lot of fun -- bitter divorce and doomed-to-fail revolutions generally aren't, but, man, I respect them a whole lot.
And here's another thing I respect: Brust has very strong political views (he's a Tsotskyist, I believe is the correct term), but you wouldn't ever know it from his books. Nothing turns me off an author quicker than finding Authorial Soapboxes in their books, regardless if I agree with their ideas or not. I read a blog post or an AMA or something by Brust where he talked about how he avoids this trap: he says that if he finds it necessary for a character in a novel to express views that he shares, he tries to make sure it's a not-very-likeable character going so, and that a likeable/favorite character holds an opposing view, and lets it be known. This is a really nice trick, and something I really appreciate. At the same time, he is certainly aware of all that stuff in the background, even though he's not putting it out on the mage. Which is an interesting author perspective to have when he's writing about a literal divinely sanctioned monarchy in a world where the privileged and the oppressed truly do have different abilities and the protagonist is somebody whose views are, er, not unproblematic when it comes to the system, oppression, and so on.
Let's talk a bit about favorites!
Favorite Vlad book: Taltos (also my overall favorite)
Favorite Paarfi book: tough call between Five Hundred Years After and Lord of Castle Black. LoCB is really funny, and I love it for that reason, but I find 500YA really moving, unexpectedly so.
Favorite character: Morrolan, duh. But Adron is a close second, and I also love Tazendra and Zerika.
Favorite ship: Vlad/Morrolan, also duh. I'm, to be honest, not entirely sure how certain bits of the book are meant to be read outside of that subtext...
Favorite house: Dragon! All my very favorite characters are Dragonlords, and some of my favorite secondaries, too. And I just love them in general, the pride and military prowess and self-appointed responsibility for people and the world and the way they're quite simple people, really, under all that belligerent posturing.
House I would actually be a part of: I've gotten Athyra on a quiz before, and... quite possibly? I mean, they're callous psychopaths, for the most part, but, like... I can see how I would fit in. (I got Issola as a strong secondary house, and the combination actually feels about right.)
Back when I was answering luckweaver's prompt for day 13, The book/movie/TV show you wish there was a bigger fandom for, and why, I mentioned that my real answer was the Dragaera books, and that I'd answer that part of the question here. So:
Dragaera fandom is essentially non-existent. There are people who have been hardcore fans of the books for AGES, and there are amazing resources like Alexx Kay's Dragaera timeline, Mark Mandel's sadly defunct site Cracks and Shards (link goes to the Wayback Machine), which collects Easter eggs, allusions, and apparent inconsistencies in the books, as well as some collected worldbuilding info. Fandom interaction seems to mainly take place via the mailing list, but even that's been pretty dead lately. Fans comment and interact somewhat on Brust's personal blog, but his posts are more likely to be about history or politics, or a filk, than book discussion. Not that the filks aren't great! His last post has some really great Robert Frost poem filks, especially from others, in comments. But as a fannish hub, it's not exactly. People do various cool things -- there was a Russian get-together an costumed trial at some point, apparently, and maybe even Dragaeran campains? I know captainecchi runs a Dragaeran-based LARP game occasionally. But none of this is happening in ways I can interact with it, which is deeply frustrating!
And as for LJ, well... I've actually done as exhaustive a search of LJ as it's possible to do -- meaning that I searched on "dragaera", "vlad taltos", and other key character names and went through every link LJ (and Dreamwidth) turned up -- mostly RP stuff, as it turns out. But what seems to happen is, some person discovers the books, is obsessed with them, or maybe even specifically with Morrolan -- as is most relevant to my interests -- but by the time I find them across the vastness of the internet, they're years past this and have moved on to a different platform entirely, with no forwarding address. This is even more deeply frustrating!
So, to be honest, I've been kind of shamelessly trying to grow my own fandom. Like, I generally try to rec people books that I genuinely think they'd like, tailored to their specific tastes. But the Vlad books are weird and all different, an acquired taste, I think -- they were for me -- and the Paarfi books are frankly esoteric (though I do rec them to hardcore Dumas fans), so I always hesitate to rec them on those grounds. And yet! After my first couple of recs (for other books) met with success with lunasariel, I brought some Vlad books to her and was like, "I don't know if you would actually like these? But here's a stuck of books anyway! :D?" I know lobolita has read a number, from my endless yammering about them on LJ, and my "let me helpfully point out all the possible reading orders!" I've been VERY SUBTLY pimping them to ikel89 on LJ and in real life, and to pretty much everyone on LJ. And, of course, I have a policy of immediately friending anyone who even knows about these books, and always hopefully listing them among my interests in friending memes for all the good it usually does me
Here are the things I would love to see if it were a bigger fandom:
- Fanfic. There is actually some really good fanfic out there (I love misura's Vlad/Morrolan ficlets, and Edonahana/rachelmanija's The Sword and the Dagger, and < ahref = "http://archiveofourown.org/works/129386">Witchcraft by dhaunea, but... it tends to be either quite short, or unfinished, and it really is the same handful of people ("handful" might actually be overstating it) that have written all the good fic. And there's so much room for really meaty fic in this universe! The books allude to all kinds of Noodle Incidents, the unreliable narrator thing opens it up to very interesting takes on the same events from a different POV, all kinds of characters it would be very interesting to explore without Vlad or Paarfi's filters.
- Swag. There's gift shop, but their selection is actually fairly disappointing. Where I like the ideas behind the swag, I don't much care for the execution, and where I like the images, I don't find the ideas interesting/relevant enough. And it's a fandom that would lend itself splendidly to swag. I mean, T-shirts with (nicely designed!) Cycle critters in house colors are a given. Replica Great Weapons! Plushy hand-puppet Loiosh! There is SO MUCH STUFF I would buy, if it were only available.
- A landcomm. No seriously! I know these are probably passe, but it would work so well! And, like, the Paarfi books basically came about because Brust was talking about which Dumas characters would go in which Dragaera houses. I had this whole game planned out. (There are a couple of sorting quizzes, at least, which were still live when I found them, though I'm not sure they're still around.)
And now: Top ten reasons people should flock to the Dragaera fandom:
1) First person smartass in the Vlad Taltos books. If you enjoy The Dresden Files, chances are this style of narration will appeal to you. (And when Vlad comes across as an ass, he is actually meant to be an ass, which I find refreshing.)
1b) Alternately: Dumas pastiche, if you're into that.
2) Worldbuilding #aesthetic reminiscent of Chronicles of Amber. Brust is a big ol' Zelazny fanboy (he named his firstborn Corwin), and it shows. I don't mean that Dragaera is *like* Amber, but there's intrigue between people with kinda crazy priorities, named magical swords, sorcery, dramatic fights, lots of banter. And the world is big, and complicated, and really interesting to explore.
3) The gender-equality of the setting. The Dragerans are a very gender-equal society (Easterners who have held on to their culture, less so), and it's actually carried through to every level of worldbuilding. The women are at least as badass as the male characters: the ruler of the Empire is Empress Zerika, the legendary general and most powerful non-divine person in Dragaera is a woman, the Porthos analogue in the Paarfi books is female, the highly respected assassin team, the Sword and the Dagger, are both women, many of the competent antagonists are women as well, etc. etc. There are default gender-neutral pronouns in Dragaeran -- they are not used in the English text, because the English text is presented as a translation, but when Paarfi hears about gender-netural pronouns being replaced by "he" in the translation of his writing, he is not happy about that at all. What I like about the way this is done in the Dragaera books is that this is just the way it is. There's none of this stuff that annoys me with Scott Lynch, where he sets up a pretty gender-neutral world and then decides to deliver feminist lectures via Sabetha-as-mouthpiece anyway -- it is quite simply not an issue in Dragaera (but we do get glimpses of other places which are not like that). And the gender equality doesn't turn Dragaera into any sort of utopia -- there are plenty of other kinds of inequality there, which is treated with nuance and thought. But it's definitely a world where one doesn't have to worry about token females or sexy lamps or whatever.
4) Character growth. I have more fun with younger Vlad, when he was just a thug who didn't stop to examine his own motives for very long... but I think his character arc from there is interestingly done: both the kinds of things that bring it about, and the way he reacts to those things, and what realizations he does and doesn't have about said character growth, and how he reacts to that.
5) The unreliable narrator thing. No, really, I've never seen an author so committed to the concept across such a long series. It's disconcerting, because once you stop to think about it, you realize that we don't actually know ANYTHING, but it's something Brust plays with really neatly. And acorss different narrators, too, as mentioned above.
6) Speaking of Brust playing with things, the variation between books. He likes playing with time (alternating strands of timelines in Taltos and Dragon, e.g., interludes in Tiassa which take place out of time entirely), and chapter epigraphs (an in-universe song, etiquette lesson titles, a laundry list), and genre flavors (Dragon the war story, Tiassa the set of heists).
7) Really fun dialogue, and chunks of storytelling through dialogue alone. I realize the latter is not everybody's cup of tea, but I find it really fun, to have even non-verbal actions and happenings revealed through people's verbal reactions to them.
8) Orca is uncannily prescient about the banking crisis of 2008. Like, to a ridiculous degree. My favorite bit on that note is this tweet from (I forgot to note down the author): "Any day now, @StevenBrust will finish his incisive allegory about the 2008 financial crash, “Orca”, and drop it in a wormhole to 1996."
9) Food porn. No, seriously. Vlad is a gourmand and loves to cook, and Dzur, at minimum, will make you hungry. Throughout the whole book.
10) Brust wrote Paarfirotica (pretty much what it says on the tin). It's... you know, porn written in the style of Paarfi, the Dumas expy, which I do not think is everyone's cup of tea, and I certainly don't find it hot, but I'm amused by the fact that such a thing exists. On a similar note, Iorich includes a gag real/outtakes at the end of the book. Pulling a gag real off in a printed medium is something, certainly! He generally loves trolling his readers, but, you know, good-naturedly so.
11) Did I mention I'd love you forever if you read them? :P