Iorich by Steven Brust
Sep. 24th, 2009 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrissaDisclosure: review copy provided by Tor, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skzbrust is a friend of mine.
This one isn't out until January, according to the printing on the back. I generally try to be careful of spoilers in book review posts, but I think more so in this one because you can't run out and buy it and read it right away. What you can do, though, is if you have friends or family who give you money for Christmas, or Hanukkah gelt, or gift cards to brighten your Solstice, or...you get the picture.
Anyway. In any long-running series, one is bound to like some books more than others, and this is one of the "more" for me. I'm glad that the entire series wasn't set in Adrilankha--I think that compressing the range of setting would have compressed a lot of the rest of the range as well, indirectly--but I was still pleased to return there for this one. Vlad has people. Even when your people want to shake you until your teeth rattle, they are still your people*. And his people are fun.
The house of Iorich do the law and justice, sometimes concurrently but quite often consecutively. So the trick in this book is for Vlad, who is much more keen on the one, to make it line up with the other. Which he mostly accomplishes, and there are various schemes thwarted and others brought to fruition, and there are Easterners handling out leaflets, and there is a bit with Kragar, and at one point Aliera gives testimony.
Also there is a person who has mostly been an idea and is now very much a person, and seeing this person in person is, um, good. If you're a person who likes that sort of thing.
I suspect that this is a better entrance point to the series than Jhegaala, which is the one before it, but if I was giving advice I'd tell someone to go back to Jhereg and start there, because Iorich will not only make more sense but be much, much funnier when you've done all the others in order first.
The endnotes worry me, because I fear someone tookskzbrust and boiled him and then smeared the concentrated version on the pages, except that I've seen him since then, and also the book didn't smell like it. So that's something of a relief, and I can go back to being amused by the endnotes instead of gruesomely concerned.
*Some of you should go back and read that sentence again, and possibly copy it out for posting above your monitor, I'm just sayin'.
skzbrust is a friend of mine.This one isn't out until January, according to the printing on the back. I generally try to be careful of spoilers in book review posts, but I think more so in this one because you can't run out and buy it and read it right away. What you can do, though, is if you have friends or family who give you money for Christmas, or Hanukkah gelt, or gift cards to brighten your Solstice, or...you get the picture.
Anyway. In any long-running series, one is bound to like some books more than others, and this is one of the "more" for me. I'm glad that the entire series wasn't set in Adrilankha--I think that compressing the range of setting would have compressed a lot of the rest of the range as well, indirectly--but I was still pleased to return there for this one. Vlad has people. Even when your people want to shake you until your teeth rattle, they are still your people*. And his people are fun.
The house of Iorich do the law and justice, sometimes concurrently but quite often consecutively. So the trick in this book is for Vlad, who is much more keen on the one, to make it line up with the other. Which he mostly accomplishes, and there are various schemes thwarted and others brought to fruition, and there are Easterners handling out leaflets, and there is a bit with Kragar, and at one point Aliera gives testimony.
Also there is a person who has mostly been an idea and is now very much a person, and seeing this person in person is, um, good. If you're a person who likes that sort of thing.
I suspect that this is a better entrance point to the series than Jhegaala, which is the one before it, but if I was giving advice I'd tell someone to go back to Jhereg and start there, because Iorich will not only make more sense but be much, much funnier when you've done all the others in order first.
The endnotes worry me, because I fear someone took
skzbrust and boiled him and then smeared the concentrated version on the pages, except that I've seen him since then, and also the book didn't smell like it. So that's something of a relief, and I can go back to being amused by the endnotes instead of gruesomely concerned.*Some of you should go back and read that sentence again, and possibly copy it out for posting above your monitor, I'm just sayin'.
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-24 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 03:42 am (UTC)Forwards, I mean.
After the previous most recent bit, this is more recent than that.
I hate trying to make sense of time when I'm getting ready for bed, so I hope that coheres.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 06:48 am (UTC)Speaking of guffaws...
Also, *is jealous*.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 10:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 02:38 pm (UTC)(Haven't read it yet. But I've just emailed Patrick to say that if there are ARCs of this, why haven't I got one?)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 09:00 pm (UTC)But like most people who trained as physicists, I find that the things I do find magic are very nearly bullet-proof. So I don't know whether I'm typical or not.