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Vlad feelings, continued
I slept and read a lot this weekend, and apparently I really needed it. I've now reread Jhereg and Issola, and I'm working on Dragon. (I love that the series can be read in any order. Very handy when you want to read certain books and not others.)
Reading Taltos and then Jhereg, in that order, was really interesting because I did actually find that Taltos is a more sympathetic initial introduction to Vlad than you get in Jhereg, nominally the first book of the series. Jhereg is excellent and does eventually get into the aspect that really sold me on Vlad and his world, which is how much of the book revolves around loyalty and friendship. (I remember having gotten the impression, from what little I had osmosed about the series, that Vlad was a lone-wolf hero type, and he is literally the opposite of that.) But you also spend the first few chapters watching him plan a murder, which admittedly could be a bit offputting if that's the first time you meet the character.
Meanwhile ... my edition of Issola might be missing some lines. It's the omnibus edition with Issola and Dragon, which I hadn't actually read before - I originally got the books from the library and then bought the omnibuses (omnibi?) because I wanted to own them. Can someone who has the non-omnibus version of Issola tell me if there is something missing here?
Click for bigger if this is too small. I'm including the whole page for context, but the place where it appears to skip from one thought to another is after the line that goes "If I told you, you'd just laugh."
Is Vlad's comment about Adron and question about Morrolan really the next thing he says there? Thank you! I'm just curious if there's any useful missing info there.
.... anyway, moving along to stray thoughts ... One thing that is interesting to me on rereading is how many times Brust didn't go for the low-hanging narrative fruit where you'd expect him to. Devera is one example - the obvious thing is that she'd be Vlad's daughter, but she's not. Another is that the friends-reincarnated-across-history aspect of the book is actually really off-trope with Morrolan not being part of the original Dollivar-Kieron-Aliera set when he's so integral to it now. (Or was he? I don't remember what we learn about his reincarnation history, if any ...)
Reading these in the extremely random order that I am, it seems to me that Vlad in Issola is more abrasive toward his friends and more -- obtuse, I guess, or self-deluding, about how he feels about them than he was before he left. Intentional, I wonder - a consequence of being alone so long? Or just the author pushing Vlad's natural sarcasm and unreliable-narrator-ness a little too hard? Anyway, the aspect with Vlad being an unreliable narrator of his own feelings (the discrepancy between what he says about what he feels, and what he is very clearly feeling + what's happening around him) is very blatant in this book. No, Vlad, you're totally not friends with these people for whom you went to fight the people the gods are afraid of, who then performed an impossible feat of magic finding a way to get YOU back. (Which he knew they'd do! It's not "how am I going to get out of this inescapable prison run by evil demigods," it's "I have to rescue myself because it's going to be so embarrassing WHEN Aliera and Morrolan show up to rescue me.")
Though I have to say that perhaps my favorite bit of Vlad's self-deluding inner narration in this book is his "Morrolan was blocking my view of the fight" when it is clear to an outside observer, the reader, and undoubtedly Vlad himself that Morrolan is FIGHTING A GOD to protect him. Vlad, you dope. (I mean, he knows. He's just got to be Like That. Vlad needs no one! Dragaerans are the Enemy! And so forth.)
He's always been like this, but I feel like he's gotten a bit more self-deluding and defensively loner-ish through several years of wandering around in the wilderness, though. He was a little less Like That back in Adrilahnkha, it seems like.
And I still really love Teldra. ;___; You know that feeling when you know the terrible thing is coming because you've already read the book, so you're just bracing yourself, knowing it's going to hurt when you get there? Yeah. That.
Reading Taltos and then Jhereg, in that order, was really interesting because I did actually find that Taltos is a more sympathetic initial introduction to Vlad than you get in Jhereg, nominally the first book of the series. Jhereg is excellent and does eventually get into the aspect that really sold me on Vlad and his world, which is how much of the book revolves around loyalty and friendship. (I remember having gotten the impression, from what little I had osmosed about the series, that Vlad was a lone-wolf hero type, and he is literally the opposite of that.) But you also spend the first few chapters watching him plan a murder, which admittedly could be a bit offputting if that's the first time you meet the character.
Meanwhile ... my edition of Issola might be missing some lines. It's the omnibus edition with Issola and Dragon, which I hadn't actually read before - I originally got the books from the library and then bought the omnibuses (omnibi?) because I wanted to own them. Can someone who has the non-omnibus version of Issola tell me if there is something missing here?
Click for bigger if this is too small. I'm including the whole page for context, but the place where it appears to skip from one thought to another is after the line that goes "If I told you, you'd just laugh."
Is Vlad's comment about Adron and question about Morrolan really the next thing he says there? Thank you! I'm just curious if there's any useful missing info there.
.... anyway, moving along to stray thoughts ... One thing that is interesting to me on rereading is how many times Brust didn't go for the low-hanging narrative fruit where you'd expect him to. Devera is one example - the obvious thing is that she'd be Vlad's daughter, but she's not. Another is that the friends-reincarnated-across-history aspect of the book is actually really off-trope with Morrolan not being part of the original Dollivar-Kieron-Aliera set when he's so integral to it now. (Or was he? I don't remember what we learn about his reincarnation history, if any ...)
Reading these in the extremely random order that I am, it seems to me that Vlad in Issola is more abrasive toward his friends and more -- obtuse, I guess, or self-deluding, about how he feels about them than he was before he left. Intentional, I wonder - a consequence of being alone so long? Or just the author pushing Vlad's natural sarcasm and unreliable-narrator-ness a little too hard? Anyway, the aspect with Vlad being an unreliable narrator of his own feelings (the discrepancy between what he says about what he feels, and what he is very clearly feeling + what's happening around him) is very blatant in this book. No, Vlad, you're totally not friends with these people for whom you went to fight the people the gods are afraid of, who then performed an impossible feat of magic finding a way to get YOU back. (Which he knew they'd do! It's not "how am I going to get out of this inescapable prison run by evil demigods," it's "I have to rescue myself because it's going to be so embarrassing WHEN Aliera and Morrolan show up to rescue me.")
Though I have to say that perhaps my favorite bit of Vlad's self-deluding inner narration in this book is his "Morrolan was blocking my view of the fight" when it is clear to an outside observer, the reader, and undoubtedly Vlad himself that Morrolan is FIGHTING A GOD to protect him. Vlad, you dope. (I mean, he knows. He's just got to be Like That. Vlad needs no one! Dragaerans are the Enemy! And so forth.)
He's always been like this, but I feel like he's gotten a bit more self-deluding and defensively loner-ish through several years of wandering around in the wilderness, though. He was a little less Like That back in Adrilahnkha, it seems like.
And I still really love Teldra. ;___; You know that feeling when you know the terrible thing is coming because you've already read the book, so you're just bracing yourself, knowing it's going to hurt when you get there? Yeah. That.
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You are very welcome! I am now rather suspicious of that omnibus edition.
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INDEED. I would never have known anything was missing if there hadn't been an obvious discontinuity! Hopefully it's a one-off error - I didn't notice anything jarring in the other books I've read from this set, but it does make one a bit cautious of it.