My initial reaction to To Reign In Hell was that it was a very elaborate setup to justify the line
"Get thee behind me, Satan"
but it was elegantly done, so I give him all the points.
The Vlad Taltos books are a long series of a snarkily self-aware probably authorial insert assassin with tarnished court intrigue and magic and humans and "elves" written in an accessible style. The Phoenix Guards are set in the same universe, but earlier, and in a much more elaborate style.
And then there's other stuff that I have to think more about to remember.
I like Brust but I admit I stopped reading the Taltos books because I couldn't keep track of what was going on. I did really enjoy The Phoenix Guards, though, for its 18th-century Dumas-ishness.
I remember loving the first four Taltos books but all the details escape me.
But hey, Buffistas would appreciate that Brust wrote a Firefly novel on spec, and then couldn't sell it, so he put it on the web. It's quite good, set between the show and the movie.
I love love love To Reign in Hell (I read a lot of Jack Chalker thinking he had written it, for some reason. I don't recommend going that route). I might prefer the series that's set in the past of his main Jhereg series, but it's been a while since I read them. At some point I got lost in all those one word titles and couldn't figure out what I'd read and what I hadn't, I need to sort that out eventually and get myself caught up. I didn't love Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill, I think that's the only thing of his that disappointed me.
Heh, you're initial reaction was also mine, ita. He has a really elaborate buildup to a Grateful Dead reference/pun in I think the first Phoenix Guard book that I found endearing, as well.
I'm midway through the last Taltos book. He doesn't make it easy. They aren't in chronological order, I don't think, and he doesn't say. I had to resort to wikipedia to sort things out.
Thanks ita, Strega, Consuela & everyone This is where to start research - I've not read anything of his, so I'm curious. Your comments hold a lot of weight.
Brust's To Reign in Hell is great if you like epic tales and huge casts and political intrigue and, well, Milton.
um, yes. ok.
Brust wrote a Firefly novel on spec
orly. ::goes to look::
May have just convinced a friend to use Feed as a supplemental text for his fall social media graduate class.
How cool!
GRRM news:
As for other series, other things, well, I have signed a deal. I just signed a contract with Bantam to do a collection of my Dunk & Egg novellas, which take place in Westeros a hundred years before. We’re going to do a collection of the first four of those (three of which are already written). The fourth one I have yet to write, and that one will appear in the anthology “Dangerous Women,” which I’m editing with Gardner Dozois. And then after “Dangerous Women” it will be reprinted in this collection. And there will be more Dunk & Eggs. Four does not tell the entire story. I want to take these two characters through their entire lives and that will probably require, I don’t know, eight, nine, ten, twelve novellas. Written over the years, I sort of slipped them in between the books so it’ll take me a while. But, you know, that’s more Westeros material. As to what I’m going to write after that, I really don’t know. That’s so many years in the future…whatever I said now, I would probably change my mind whenever I reached it anyway.
Taken from an intervew on the Chapters website - I haven't read the whole thing so don't know how or if it is spoilery for ADWD.
