Taltos

[sholio]

Reread Taltos today because I was in the mood for it, after talking to sovay about characters being rescued from the afterlife made me remember that's the plot of this book. I have a lot of Vlad feels now. Vlad, you are the worst at hating Dragaerans, you just are.

I feel like this book is the platonic ideal of what I want from a book of this type.

- Ancestral enemies forced to work together, reluctantly becoming friends.
- Banter and snark.
- Self-sacrifice as a core element of the plot.
- Awesome female characters (not so central in this one as in some other books in the series, but still excellent and very much not treated differently from the male characters)
- Weird, cool worldbuilding.
- Moral dilemmas.
- Three interwoven timelines that are all interesting, engaging, and related to the current plot in ways that only gradually become apparent in an "oh, THAT'S what that was all about" kind of way. (Seriously, I don't know how the structure of this book works so well. I never found myself skipping any of the sections or getting lost even with the frequent scene and time jumps.)

There are other books in the series I love - most of them, actually, except for a few in the middle - but this one is probably my enduring favorite. I mean, "enduring" given that I only read the whole series for the first time a couple of years ago.

Comments

[sheron]

If I remember correctly, I bounced off the series upon first starting because it was 2020 and I wasn't feeling like reading about assassins (which I gather was the main character's job) but I feel like this is a book I need to go back to this year or at the very least Soon-ish because it seems really fun.

[sholio]

You know, it was really interesting reading Taltos as my reintroduction to the series after not having read it in a couple of years, because I'm now going back and reading the first book, and while I did really love the first book when I read it, I'm actually thinking that - especially if you bounced off the first time - Taltos might be a better introduction. I think you get a better feel for the protagonist's sympathetic side much earlier, and it also focuses less on the assassin aspect. The first book starts out with a few chapters that are basically the hero setting up a hit, and I can see how it would be offputting, especially if you weren't in the right frame of mind for it. I think he comes across more appealing and sympathetic right off the bat in Taltos.

[sheron]

I will consider this! I do think my tolerance for this would be way higher now than it was back then. It feels like one of those books where if I get into it I'll really enjoy it, but at the time I couldn't get past the way he's introduced due to my frame of mind. So yeah, on my "to try again" list for sure :)