The Phoenix Guards / Steven Brust

The Phoenix Guards
by Steven Brust

copyright 1991
read in May 2013

rated 9/10: really, really good

28mar24: I have finally read The Three Musketeers.

Brust copies, as he says, that style. He also steals characters and plot. Reading Dumas, I could better understand the main characters because I almost knew them -- from Phoenix Guards.

Brust refers to the style of Dickens and Dumas and prefers Dumas. Brust himself... adds fun and humour. And makes his characters far more likeable.

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Brust tells the reader that this book -- and its sequel -- are written as an homage to Dumas' Three Musketeers. With that in mind I rushed off and began to read the musketeers sequel, Twenty Years After.

What a mistake.

Brust has characters who are loyal, intelligent (or, at least, skilled) and very, very likeable. D'Artagnan is a cunning schemer. He uses trickery to get his "friends" to join him. But enough of Dumas !

Phoenix Guards is a lot of fun !

It is also long-winded, rambling, totally over-the-top... Exactly as Brust intended.

So yes, it can be a little difficult to read. Until you get into the flow of the style. Yet the effort is most worthwhile.

There are complex plots and clever plans and deadly duels. Action and adventure, wrongs righted and justice summarily dispensed. This is the world of Vlad Taltos in a less serious era.

Take a deep breath, clear your mind -- and enjoy the read :-)

early 2023: read it again, enjoyed it again, want to re-read the sequel

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Problems ? Solved

Taltos the Assassin / Steven Brust

Taltos the Assassin

category: fantasy, author:

Steven Brust

a three novel omnibus of the Dragaera series:
book 5: Jhereg, original copyright 1983
book 3: Yendi, original copyright 1984
book 6: Teckla, original copyright 1987
read in March 2011 (and before, several times, from about 1999)

Agamedes' opinion: 9 out of 10

Nine out of ten -- "really, really good" -- for all three books? Let me explain.

I read Jhereg and thought, Wow! that was a lot of fun! With occasional touches of humour, likable characters, complex plot in a well-rounded world... Sure, the hero kills for gold. But he's a nice guy. Nine out of ten...

Then there's Yendi. All of the above, plus a plot which -- by its depth -- expands on the "reality" of the fantasy world of Dragaera. Yet there's something not quite right... Is it the casual way in which the hero kills one of his henchmen for doing something just a bit stupid? Sure, the henchman will be brought back to life. But still... the hero is just a bit less "fun"... Perhaps this is worth just eight out of ten, purely on the grounds of loss of gloss for the hero.

Finally, Teckla. Each book is based around one of the seventeen "classes" of Dragaeran society. (Well, eighteen. If you count the lowest class of "Easterner", or "human".) Teckla are the peasants. The ignorant, the uneducated. The downtrodden masses who -- in this book -- are yearning to be free.