Lyorn by Steven Brust
Vlad Taltos No. 17!
Vlad Taltos is back in Adrilankha. No dream, this, nor a flashback; no, after last year's wonderful jaunt in the early, demonic days of assassin Vlad Taltos at his most feral in the novel Tsalmoth, veteran author Steven Brust at long last writes a homecoming story about our assassin errant. Is it everything I wished for?
A book replete with humorous depictions of Vlad reclining in Castle Black, exchanging jabs with Aliera and Morrollan? Alas, no such idyllic scene. Vlad has one last obstacle to overcome before he can hit up Valabar's and meet his kid: the Left Hand of the Jhereg. These nasty, illegal sorceresses have given Vlad a run for his money before. Their vendetta is of a very personal nature this time around: an argument against a life of assassinating, if you ever needed one. In search of safety, Vlad ends up in a setting at once unexpected and delightful: the theater.
Lyorn, then, is about the setting up of a play--sorry, musical--as much as it is about figuring out a way out of this latest magical mess in which Vlad has found himself. The historical musical gives Brust an excuse to come up with a diverse cast of eccentric characters (well, yet more of them) who will teach Vlad about directing, producing, and even acting. Like most of us weird thinking bipedals, he'll be finding parallels with his own life and former vocation throughout this theatrical experience. But why does a theatre make such a good hiding spot for Vlad? By some stroke of luck, they are some of the most defended places in the city, magic-wise…and that's exactly what Vladimir needs.
A part of me has to wonder why he wouldn't just hole up in castle Black under Morrollan's protection, in the vein of a certain high-placed Jhereg traitor in the first Taltos novel of the same name. Another part (the reasonable one) notes that Brust would never pick the route of least resistance, covering familiar ground. The series has always had a streak of boldness, as has its author. It is why these novels never grew stale for me, despite Lyorn being the seventeenth in Vlad's saga; Brust always tries for new things, always mixes up the formula. Plus, it wouldn't be in character, would it? Vlad so hates to drag his friends into messes of his own making, and he's gone to considerable effort to avoid jump-starting any wars between the Dragon and Jhereg houses before.
Lyorn, for example, opens each chapter with a spoof of a famous musical number from all the classics you might know, and a good few more you don't. These are of course rewritten with a distinctly Draegarian flare. That's not all; unlike most of the first-person Taltos books Brust has written, Lyorn isn't afraid of venturing outside of Vlad's head on occasion. These scenes serve both to set up the culmination of Brust's series over the next two books and to thicken the plot with the Left Hand and the House of the Lyorn. Then there are sections on history of the last Lyorn rule, which is both the driving force behind the musical and the biggest stumble to its realisation on the stage. As is always the case with Taltos novels, the climax of the novel rests with the nature of the House whose title the novel carries. Despite knowing this and trying to figure out what angle the assassin would take, I was once more surprised by Vlad's solution to his problems. Rather than the fire and brimstone that some of these novels end with, this one's climactic sequence is likely to produce a chuckle of disbelief at the extent of Vlad's cleverness. I tip my hat to the author.
But perhaps the most strongly resonant part of Lyorn is to be found at the very last page, when Vlad at last heeds a lesson that's too often passed him by. Excellent use of a historical document to force the assassin to draw some powerful conclusions. The relevance of these conclusions will be felt through the last two novels in the series.
On a personal note, it's been a pleasure to read this novel. Note that I got an advanced copy e-book version of Lyorn thank to NetGalley and Tor; note, also, that if the book was bad, I'd have thrashed it without any great remorse or hesitation. My review is largely unaffected by receiving this book for free. Though I'm tickled pink by getting to read for free the latest instalment in a series that I've been reading since I was a pre-teen, that delight wouldn't have made me speak about the book with any enthusiasm if it wasn't actually good. Fun times, though - give this novel and the entire series a spin, if you haven't yet.