Book Review: Jhereg by Steven Brust

Book #82 of 2024:

Jhereg by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #1)

Pretty decent for an authorial debut, though it’s heavier on infodumping exposition than it needs to be, especially with the protagonist repeatedly learning something that he probably should have already known as a denizen of this particular fantasy world. (On the other hand, the genre was admittedly in a different place back in 1983, and this facet isn’t egregiously worse than in many titles of that era.) I think at this point it’s at least the fifth novel in its series chronologically, as author Steven Brust has weaved his way up and down the timeline while writing, but for this reread, I’m opting to go strictly by original publication order. This book initially introduced contemporary readers to the assassin Vlad Taltos and the wider setting of the Dragaeran Empire, and so it’s the spot where I’m diving back in.

It’s a bit of a bumpy journey, and not just because I read these books haphazardly several decades ago and don’t remember them too clearly. This initial volume has a lot that it’s trying to accomplish in terms of character, worldbuilding, and plot, and it’s that middle category that the writer seems most interested in conveying. Briefly: we’re in a land ruled by a people who are basically standard Tolkien elf types, living for thousands of years and possessing a variety of useful magical skills. Humans are here too — okay, confusingly both species call themselves human, but I mean recognizable Homo sapiens — which we’re told is because another sort of being now-vanished but who enslaved the Dragaerans in the ancient past brought some of us over from Earth as control subjects for their experiments. In the present day, the two races live in relative peace, though the ‘Easterner’ Vlad is a racial minority within the empire. He’s also a member of House Jhereg, one of seventeen noble clans and the one that’s specifically structured around organized crime like the real-life Mafia. The Jhereg run illicit gambling dens, thieving rings, protection rackets, and more, and it’s an open question as to how much of their flagrant illegality is officially condoned by the authorities.

Our hero, as mentioned, is a killer for hire, though his guild has firm rules about acceptable cases and conduct. He’s also a practitioner of both sorcery (psychic-based Dragaeran magic, like telepathic communication and teleportation) and witchcraft (a more loosely-defined set of Easterner abilities), the latter of which has gained him a jhereg familiar — the lowercase variant referring to the small but ferocious flying reptile, not the imperial House named after the creature. Vlad can send Loiosh on errands or call on his aid in a fight, but mostly he’s there for private sardonic banter. Further complicating all this lore is the issue of death itself, which is obviously the protagonist’s stock-in-trade. It turns out that a) people can reincarnate, even across species lines, and can sometimes learn to access memories of their former lives, and b) corpses can be magically resurrected if the spells are performed quickly enough, though there are specialized weapons to destroy the victim’s soul utterly and thereby prevent that. Hiring someone in Vlad’s line of work to use one of those costs extra, of course.

It’s a lot to squeeze into what’s overall a fairly slim book, which results in the characters and the immediate storyline alike feeling a bit shortchanged. Vlad is already friends with a surprising number of highly skilled individuals, and while the prequels would explore the origins of those relationships at greater length, it feels a bit easy here for him to be able to call on all the specialists he requires at a moment’s thought. The mechanics of the prose are awkward too — I suppose I don’t mind a fantasy saga using colloquial nouns like “guys” and “stuff,” but it’s somewhat jarring in the midst of the more imaginative concepts, as is the point in the planning-a-heist stage when the assassin says something tropey like “Here’s the plan…” right before a scene break that’s plainly intended to keep readers in the dark for longer.

But generally, this is fun. Fantasy noir is a promising combination, and if the plot is rather basic this first time out — somebody’s stolen a fortune from the Jhereg operating funds, leading the (anti)hero’s superiors to tap him for the retrieval and eventual complications — it’s still an effective showcase for all of Brust’s ideas. My hope is that the subsequent volumes don’t feel the need to explain quite so much, giving more room for the story and cast to breathe (and that the author pulls back from some of the sexism and racial essentialism that’s regrettably on display in this debut). But reading Vlad matter-of-factly describe where his weapons are hidden around his body and then watching him suddenly have to put them to use when an approaching waiter pulls a blade first? Yeah, that’s the good stuff.

[Content warning for torture and sexual assault.]

★★★☆☆

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