{"id":407,"date":"2008-05-14T12:01:12","date_gmt":"2008-05-14T18:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=407"},"modified":"2016-11-03T15:10:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T21:10:22","slug":"dzur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=407","title":{"rendered":"Dzur"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure if it’s literally true, but WordPress claims that this is my 400th post here. That’s a nice round number, and for people who care about such things it is fitting that said post be dedicated to one of my favorite authors having written a new book in one of my favorite series. Sure, he wrote it a goodly while ago, and sure, I’ve never reviewed any of the other books in the series (besides a highly allegorical one set in the same world but otherwise wholly unrelated, at least that I’ve been able to detect via my apparently useless English Lit degree), but regardless of all that, Dzur<\/a> is in my possession [again<\/a>] and thusly, here am I.<\/p>\n

The real problem here is that I’m trying to review the 11th book of a series without a) any previous body of work here to rely upon and b) without having read most of the other books in the series in the past 7 years, and not even any of the books in the related series in 4 or more, else there’d be a review of them here. So you see. But it’s cool, because one thing that Vlad Taltos is reliable about is presenting his stories in such a way that you don’t need to have read the previous books. It would be nice to have, both because they’re uniformly awesome and to have a little better idea of how his mind works, but it’s not required. And… although the way the books are written make my summary background more than spoilers, I still feel obligated to put a cut at this point, mostly for people who might be in the middle of the series.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So there’s this guy, Vlad, right? And he’s a human living in an empire of incredibly long-lived people called Dragaerans who look down upon humans both because of perceived cultural differences that accompany the lifespan differences and literally because they’re a lot taller. Vlad has risen about as high as a human can in Dragaeran society by virtue of aligning himself with that society’s criminal element via his talents as an assassin, and in fact he’s risen fairly far within the organization and made some powerful friends. (As one such friend is the current Empress, it’s fair to say that his friendships are not always based on his job.) However, he’s also fallen pretty far too, to the extent where the criminal organization has a price on his head and he’s on the run from them for the past several years. Plus, he’s gotten involved in theological politics recently that have made his life more interesting still.<\/p>\n

As Dzur<\/span> opens, Vlad finds himself enjoying the dinner of a lifetime, meeting one of his personal heroes, and untangling a knotty problem relating to the Jhereg criminal organization, his people, and most significantly his ex-wife, on her behalf if not precisely with her blessing. And… it’s been a long time, but I was immediately able to reacquaint myself with why I like Vlad and why I don’t. He’s an incredibly amusing and interesting person, but at the same time a very unlikeable one. The bright side, to my point of view, is that he’s grown a lot over the past however many books (that I assure you I’ll be re-reading sometime soon), to the point where he’s a lot more likeable than he was, and his unlikeable traits are affectations to keep people at arm’s length rather than completely honestly come by. Another thing about him that is neither good nor bad per se, just frustrating, is that he’s almost the least reliable narrator in fiction. It’s not that he lies to you, because that’s rare, or even that he lies to himself, which used to be incredibly common, but as I say, he’s grown; it’s that he does a bad job of sorting out what’s important to the reader from what’s important to him. I’m willing to admit here behind a spoiler cut that I may also be guilty of this, so I have some sympathy.<\/p>\n

Also, though: the man really enjoys his food. I want to eat at a fictional restaurant more than I want to eat at all but maybe three restaurants I’ve been to that exist. Read the book, and you’ll see exactly what I mean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure if it’s literally true, but WordPress claims that this is my 400th post here. That’s a nice round number, and for people who care about such things it is fitting that said post be dedicated to one of my favorite authors having written a new book in one of my favorite series. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[106,1295],"class_list":["post-407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-fantasy","tag-vlad-taltos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5701,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions\/5701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}