From archive (archive) Subject: _Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille_ review (some SPOILERS) Keywords: Steven Brust no Vlad good book From: seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan) Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. Date: 29 Dec 89 11:32:30 GMT CFSBaG starts out, it seemed to be, as a fantasy / science fiction. A poor-man's clone of Hitchiker, kinda like what A. D. Foster did (can't, fortunately, remember the title 8-)). After a few chapters, however, it turned into hard science fiction (assuming you consider time travel to be science fiction and not fantasy), and a damned good book. Not surprisingly, I guess. I give it a +3.5 on the IMMLSoMFtPF (Infamous Modified Mark Leeper Scale of -5 to +5). A good book by a good author, and well worth an evening's diversion (well, that's how long it took *me*, but I read quickly). Some small spoilers below Well, I will try not to give away more than you could get by reading the back cover and inside cover blurbs. Anyway, the plot is, basicly, about a Bar (and Grille, obviously) that hops around time and space, from one nuclear war to another. How it manages to survive, or go to just the right place / time is a mystery for the first few chapters, but, even after the explanation, it doesn't make a great deal of sense for a few more chapters. As is to be expected from Brust, the book has 17 chapters, and this *might* be a shortcoming. The only problem I really had with it was that the main character couldn't really be who he was by the end of the book, at least in my opinion (ok, ok: after a few nights of sleeping about it, I thought, "Ok. Artistic license, and it could go like that, I guess"), and the last chapter or two seemed rushed (maybe it was, and that was to fit it into 17 chapters, or it could have been me, knowing that the book would only have 17 chapters). Again, a worthwhile read. Maybe it will stir up some Brust interest again (on the net, that is). -- Sean Eric Fagan | "Time has little to do with infinity and jelly donuts." seanf@sco.COM | -- Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck), _Magnum, P.I._ (408) 458-1422 | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'. From rec.arts.sf-reviews Sat Jul 27 03:16:13 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!news.funet.fi!fuug!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!ig!pws.bull.com From: wex@pws.bull.com (Alan Wexelblat) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: Review of Brust's PHOENIX Message-ID: Date: 25 Jul 91 00:49:47 GMT Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Lines: 40 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (SF-REVIEWS acting moderator) PHOENIX by Steven Brust review Copyright (c) 1991 Alan Wexelblat I finally discovered why I've been liking the Vlad Taltos books less and less as the series went along. This was rather unexpected, as I really liked JHEREG and YENDI, and I've liked Brust's other books quite a bit (especially TO REIGN IN HELL and the underrated COWBOY FENG'S). But the Taltos books have one major difference and that, I think, is what's killing them. The Taltos books are following one major character as he grows and changes. And they're doing it from a first-person point of view. Vlad narrates his own adventures in all the books. That is Brust's undoing. When Vlad was a snappy, exciting young assassin, it was interesting and fun to ride his shoulder as he went from one hair- raising encounter to the next. Now that he's an older, more mature character introspecting about why he makes his living killing other people -- it's *boring.* Unutterably boring. It's like watching one of those godawful self-indulgent films the French churned out during the 50s and 60s. You know - the ones Monty Python satirized by having two morose people sitting in a garbage dump smoking cigarettes and muttering meaningless phrases over a head of cabbage? I wish someone would sit Brust down and make him watch that skit. It might make him realize how uninteresting Vlad has become. Not that a little introspection is bad. The COWBOY FENG'S characters introspect and do it well. But how many times can we listen to someone assert "I've changed - boy I've changed" without becoming physically ill? Yes, the plot line continues from the previous books. I won't tell you what happens because I don't want to mess things up for people who haven't read previous books. If you haven't read this one, don't bother. %A Steven Brust %T Phoenix %D November1990 %G 0-441-66225-0 %I Ace Fantasy From rec.arts.sf-reviews Sun Sep 8 20:25:18 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!kth.se!eru!bloom-beacon!gatech!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!know!apollo.com From: betsyp@apollo.com (Betsy Perry) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: Review of Brust's *The Phoenix Guards* Message-ID: <31636@know.pws.bull.com> Date: 26 Aug 91 13:46:03 GMT Sender: wex@pws.bulL.com Reply-To: betsyp@apollo.com Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-lovers Lines: 87 Approved: wex@pws.bull.com THE PHOENIX GUARDS by Steven Brust Review Copyright (c) 1991 Betsy Perry %A Steven Brust %T The Phoenix Guards %I TOR Fantasy %C New York %D August 1991 %E Terri Windling %G ISBN 0-312-85157-X %P 331 pp. %K Heroic fantasy %O hardback, U.S. $19.95 In her excellent essay "The Language of the Night", Ursula Le Guin complained that works of high fantasy seldom were written in English as epic as their subject matter. She noted, in particular, that modern works of heroic fantasy tend to dip into American slang when they wish to be humorous, then return to formal English for moments of drama and passion. *The Phoenix Guards* is an exception to LeGuin's complaint. It is written in supple, elegant English that can be humorous and formal at the same time. Its characters are Great Lords who behave like Great Lords: they are subtle, quick to anger, proud, conscious of their standards, and brave. They hold their enemies' lives cheap; but they are equally cavalier with their own. Not only is *The Phoenix Guards* well-written, it is also a gripping adventure novel. It is hung on some of the same pegs as its model, *The Three Musketeers*, but is not a point-for-point imitation. That is to say, the protagonists are Guardsmen in a court with a weak King and two contending militias, both nominally responsible to the King; they do not, however, hare off in search of the Queen's missing studs. Let me quote a small sample, from p. 166: "...The Serioli, who departed the area to avoid any of the unfortunate incidents that war can produce, left only the name for the place, which was 'Ben', meaning 'ford' in their language. The Easterners called the place 'Ben Ford,' or, in the Eastern tongue, 'Ben gazlo.' After ten years of fierce battle, the Imperial Army won a great victory on the spot, driving the Easterners well back into the mountains. The Dragonlords who had found the place, then, began calling it "Bengazlo Ford." The Dragons, wishing to waste as little time on speech as possible, shortened this to Benglo Ford, or, in the tongue of the Dragon, which was still in use at the time, 'Benglo Ara.' Eventually, over the course of the millennia, the tongue of the Dragon fell out of use, and the North-Western language gained preeminence, which rendered the location Bengloara Ford, which was eventually shortened to Bengloarafurd. The river crossing became the Bengloarafurd Ford, which name it held until after the Interregnum when the river was dredged and the Bengloarafurd Bridge was built. Should anyone be interested in finding this delightful city, it still stands, and the bridge still appears with the name we have cited, but the city was renamed Troe after the engineer who built the bridge, either because the citizens were proud of their new landmark, or because the engineer's name was short." Although this book is set in Brust's Dragaeran milieu, it can be read with enjoyment by those unfamiliar with *Jhereg*, *Yendi*, *Brokedown Palace*, et al. First-time Brust readers may encounter some difficulty disentangling the various Dragaeran clans (Dragons are fierce fighters, Yendi cunning, Alphas wear green... whoops, sorry, wrong book), but they are at no great disadvantage over committed Brust readers. (I kept referring back to my copy of *Yendi* to remind myself of the salient characteristics of, say, Tsalmoths.) First-time readers will also be baffled by the great significance attached to the birth of a baby; the child in question is a major figure in the other Dragaeran books, but not terribly germane to *The Phoenix Guards*. My only complaint with the book lies with its copyediting. As I read, I kept noticing small important words ("to", "but") were missing. "You're" appears once as a possessive; pp. 329 and 331 are reversed (every author's nightmare; fortunately, these pages are in the Afterword); and the chapter title for Chapter Twenty seems to have been garbled. Brust congratulates copyeditor V. Fleming for excellent work. Perhaps the errors above were introduced late in the production cycle. This book belongs on the same shelf as E.R. Eddison and James Branch Cabell, two master stylists. Lovers of Rafael Sabatini, Dumas, and Hope will also find much to enjoy in *The Phoenix Guards*. Elizabeth Perry betsyp@apollo.HP.com From archive (archive) From: straney@msudoc.ee.mich-state.edu (Ronald W. DeBry) Organization: Michigan State Univ., Engineering, E. Lansing Subject: Re: Taltos by Steven Brust Date: 7 Mar 88 05:08:53 GMT I just finished _Taltos_ (which certainly didn't take long, it's an "Amber series" sized book - not so much a problem, since they at least priced it at the low end of the current paperback price structure). I enjoyed it, but... IMHO it is the weakest of Brust's work that I've read (I noticed the "mystery book" listed on the title page - I've never heard of it either). Now, don't get me wrong, Brust's weakest is a damn sight better than many other writer's best. Why did I think it was weak? In part, it's just a feeling that the unarticulated history behind Vlad accounted for much of the of completeness that the world had. Brust had done quite a good job in the first three books - unlike many other worlds, we learned about Deathsgate Falls and the Paths of the Dead and such from Vlad and Morrolan and the other characters, rather than from Brust. Having it all laid out leaves much less to wonder about. A fantasy world really comes to life when the pieces that are described explicitly are vivid enough to allow you to fill in the pieces that are only hinted at. Brust had done that. It's not that my personal version of the Paths of the Dead was better than Brust's, its that the ambiguity about the place provided much of its credibility. The plotting was also a bit weak. I felt manipulated by the scene-shifting. The "early Vlad" story-line affected the "Paths of the Dead" story-line, but only in an ultimate sense. The two could be read separately, and each would as complete as they are with Brust's presentation. In fact, several times I was tempted to do just that. Once you linearize the book, you get a _very_ linear book. Our certain knowledge about the eventual outcome makes the lack of plot complexity even more obvious. I did, however, like the way that the "cast the witchcraft spell" story line was integrated. I still recommend reading _Taltos_, and have already passed the word of its appearance to the several people here whom I turned onto Brust's work. Ron DeBry From archive (archive) From: motteler@umbc3.UMBC.EDU (Howard E. Motteler) Organization: Univ of Maryland Baltimore County Subject: Brust: To Reign in Hell (minor spoilers) Date: 18 Feb 89 07:48:31 GMT Well, just when I was out of Vance and Zelazney, and tired of D. Drake (I was crazy about a lot of his earlier stuff, but that's another story) and into neither cyberpunk nor touchy-feelie nor dork-fantasy, and was ready to stop buying books, and let my Analog subscription run out (payed up until some time in '92, oh my!), as I dispairingly cruised the DAW-offerings and TOR supplies, I happened to recall a remark, I believe by Chuq, something like "or _anything_ by Brust ..." So I picked up Brust's "To Reign in Hell." After reading a ways into it, with or without Zelazny's warning about "he's not going to get away with this," I thought the same: "he's not going to get away with it." The introspectively overwritten first paragraph and the rhyming Owl and the Olde English Beelzebub, and the Deadhead ref's, etc., etc. And yet, why not, give the premise of _everything_ wrenched from chaos. (Or cacoastrum: Is this a really a Latin word? Literally "harshness of the heavens," with a Greek prefix and Latin root, if I can trust my Webster's.) So, I persisted, and about halfway through I was hooked. I liked even more, the second time through. There are so many nice touches: that the the only angel in Heaven who _really_ needed unconditional forgiveness had to have a major hand in Yeshuah's creation; or, one of my favorites, towards the end, "If only Yeshuah were here...." "Yaweh...?" "Yes?" "Well...we could, I don't know if you're going to like this, but, well, we could create him again." "I know." "Well?" "I couldn't take it, Michael. Seeing him again, I--I don't know. He wouldn't *really* be the same. Maybe someday." Oh, ho! and up to now we though this was just a story... Is his other stuff this good? Can he keep the Deadhead references under control? -- Howard E. Motteler Dept. of Computer Science motteler@umbc3.umbc.edu UMBC, Catonsville, MD 21228 From rec.arts.sf.written Sun Mar 7 16:54:31 1993 Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!uunet!pmafire!news.dell.com!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!olivea!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Athyra (Was: Forthcoming Books in 1993) Message-ID: <1993Mar5.232229.14378@netcom.com> Date: 5 Mar 93 23:22:29 GMT References: <1993Mar5.032738.11977@netcom.com> <1n84uo$5rd@cat.cis.Brown.EDU> <1993Mar5.130110.1@iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu> Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Lines: 51 parmentier@iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu: >I picked up a copy at B Dalton 0.5 hour ago. I have checked that is indeed >written in third person. Even after I read it I won't comment on the rest:-) I guess it's up to me then. :) "Athyra", the latest book in Brust's 'Jhereg' series, misses its mark. It's competently written; it's just not very interesting. Part of the problem is that Brust is trying to patch something that either doesn't need patching or can't be patched. The first novel, "Jhereg", was an enjoyable and interesting semi-light fantasy with fantasy-role-playing roots: an urban 'adventure' starring an assassin and featuring thieves and wizards and even the odd vampire. The second novel, "Yendi", was more of the same. There were problems with these books -- if you tried to take them at more than face value. For one thing, the world-building wasn't very realistic, even on its own terms. It was your generic fantasy-world-without-an-economy. For another, the books never did pay much attention to the notion that there might be something odious about being and assassin. Brust could have dealt with these problems by ignoring them, and continuing to chronicle adventures that were fun to read but not meant to be taken seriously, or he could have stopped writing in that world, and gone on to other projects. What he did instead, was try to write more thoughtful sequels set in the same milieu. The worst of both worlds. "Athyra" takes place a couple of years after Vlad's 'retirement'. He's spent those years away from Adrilankha, avoiding the assassins his disappointed ex-colleagues have aimed at him. In this book, he enters a small village, only to find that an episode from his past has caught up to him. And so has an assassin. Most of the story is told from the perspective of a 'young' Tekla boy. The effect is that we only see the surface of the story. Although the book is stretched to novel-length by following the boy as he grows up in a hurry, there are only a few chapters worth of core story. While this story may be the most important thing that has ever happened to the viewpoint character, from Vlad's perspective it's just an episode. And from the reader's perspective it's just an episode. It makes the book feel incomplete, like a short story that's been padded to novel length. I'd rather be reading "Five Hundred Years After". ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com 'T is with our judgements as our watches, none Go alike, yet each believes his own --Alexander Pope From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Feb 17 13:19:24 1993 Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!lunic!eru.mt.luth.se!enterpoop.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!nobody From: sef@kithrup.com (Sean Eric Fagan) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: _Agyar_, by Steven Brust Message-ID: Date: 16 Feb 93 16:41:45 GMT Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd. Lines: 26 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) _Agyar_ is a vampire story. It is also Steven Brust's first (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) horror story. It is also one of the best horror stories I've ever read. The horror comes not from people's deaths, or detailed, verbose descriptions of gore, but from the narrative. The story is told in first person, by the vampire, Agyar, and through the narrative, we learn what it is like, to be a vampire, to need to feed on human beings, to consider people nothing more than beasts -- and to find no reason to treat them with any compassion or decency. Three or four chapters into the book, I hated the vampire. By the end of the book, while I did not like him, I had... some sympathy and understanding for him, which did not make him any less a monster. This is definitely one of Brust's best works. I recommend it, highly, especially if you enjoy vampire or horror stories. I would give it a +4.5 on a -5 to +5 scale. %G ISBN 0-312-85178-2 %P 254 pp. %A Steven Brust %T Agyar %I TOR fantasy %D 1993 From rec.arts.sf.written Wed Jun 16 14:58:39 1993 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!uunet!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: When is a door not a door? Message-ID: Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1993 01:33:20 GMT Lines: 38 I just read "Agyar", by Steven Brust, and didn't much enjoy the experience. It was a waste of $18.95 (plus the fifty dollars or so that it cost the library to order and catalogue it). Reading it was a lot like seeing "My Dinner With Andre" would have been, had Andre been a crashing bore. There's a story tucked away within the book, albeit a short one. Agyar is a vampire, and subject to the orders of the one who made him so. (Is that a spoiler? The word 'vampire' is never used, but the cover blurb gives it away, and the first chapter confirms it.) Now she's ordered him to stay in town until she can frame him for a murder she's committed. He can't disobey, so he stays in town, tramping over people's lives, leaving a small trail of corpses, and writing this story. Except that since there isn't much of a story, about half the word-count is devoted to his thoughts about life, the universe, and everything -- and he's not a very deep thinker. And he's so *small*. For all his powers, his actions are as petty as those of a kid who goes through life breaking windows and defacing subway walls. By the time the story came to its belated (albeit not uninteresting) climax, it was hard to care what happened to him. Do I give the impression that I don't think highly of this book? Good. "Agyar" has received a fair amount of publicity, much of it positive. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because it's the sort of book the reader feels embarrassed not to appreciate. It's the sort of book that's more fun for the author than for the reader. It's the difference between a wittily-told story and a story about someone trying to be witty. ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com 'T is with our judgements as our watches, none Go alike, yet each believes his own --Alexander Pope From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Apr 28 17:01:36 1994 Xref: liuida alt.books.reviews:3210 rec.arts.sf.written:58523 rec.arts.sf.reviews:560 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.intercon.com!udel!news2.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: ibic@sunsite.unc.edu (Internet Book Information Center) Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Newsgroups: alt.books.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: IBIC REVIEW #9--Steven Brust, FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <2pj8r4$10b7@bigblue.oit.unc.edu> Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 00:03:22 GMT Lines: 65 %A Brust, Steven %T Five Hundred Years After %I Tor %C New York %D April 1994 %G ISBN 0-312-81579-0 %P 444 pp. %O hardcover, U.S. $23.95 Steven Brust appears to have positioned himself quite deliberately in the great lineage of swordplay novels that begins with Alexandre Dumas and has descended to the modern day through the Baroness Orczy, Rafael Sabatini, and (with a twist) William Goldman. Brust borrows candidly from his romantic role models, but for several reasons his books have a unique and palatable flavor of their own: % He is a good stylist, as is evidenced by the fact that the words that come to mind to describe his work--"stately", "sardonic", "mannered", adventurous", "panoramic," and "humane"--are not often found together, especially in this connection. % The setting is interesting, from the awesome powers of the Imperial Orb to the strange, long lives of his protagonists. I'd characterize the setting as "always interesting enough"--different enough from our world to be stimulating, but similar enough that the behavior and attitudes of the characters has a distinctly contemporary flavor to it. % He has a great sense of humor and his characterization, although sometimes oblique, is eventually very effective. Brust takes longer to establish character than some authors. But he keeps plugging away at his faux verisimilitude, and over time I began to bond to his characters. He's particularly adept in the way he shows his characters repeating their pet foibles (the dialogues with Tazendra and Pel in this novel are some of the funniest stuff I've ever read in the fantasy genre). It reminds me of the comment that after a certain point in our lives we simply become more and more ourselves. Brust's characters have hundreds of years to become themselves, and they are indeed proportionately stubborn and idiosyncratic, just as we would be. (Some of us manage to get pretty darned stubborn in just a mere handful of decades...) I was skeptical about this book at first, and found the first several chapters slow going. But my patience was rewarded. There was a specific moment in reading this book--page 219--when Brust sold me and I became convinced that whatever he was trying to do, it would be good. The book transformed in my hands from a long, slowly ticking fuse to a long, satisfying detonation. And from that point on, the book just got better and better, until it reached its magnificent and horrible conclusion. FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER is must reading for Brust fans--it's a pivotal book in his metaseries. For those readers who are not familiar with Brust, it is a good introduction to his versatile and offbeat work. --Frederick Zimmerman ========== Previous IBIC Reviews, as well as links to many other Internet information resources related to books, are available via the Internet Book Information Center WWW serverspace (provided courtesy of SunSITE, a joint project of the University North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Sun Microsystems) The URL is http://sunsite.unc.edu/ibic/IBIC-homepage.html. Selected text resources are available by anonymous ftp to sunsite.unc.edu; directory is /pub/electronic-publications/ibic. The IBIC gopher server is temporarily unavailable. E-mail comments encouraged to ibic@sunsite.unc.edu. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Apr 28 17:01:33 1994 Xref: liuida rec.arts.sf.reviews:561 rec.arts.books:84491 alt.books.reviews:3211 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.intercon.com!udel!news2.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: Evelyn.Chimelis.Leeper@att.com () Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books,alt.books.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: AGYAR by Steven Brust Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9404271326.ZM3918@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com> Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 00:08:16 GMT Lines: 47 AGYAR by Steven Brust Tor, ISBN 0-812-51521-8, 1994, 254pp, US$4.99. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1994 Evelyn C. Leeper I greatly enjoyed Steven Brust's TO REIGN IN HELL, and have heard good things about his other books. But I have been unwilling to jump into the middle of the Vlad Taltos novels or other associated books, and COWBOY FENG'S SPACE BAR AND GRILLE seemed probably atypical of his writing style. (Of course, that might also have been true of TO REIGN IN HELL.) So I was pleased to see that at least there was a non-Taltos Brust book available. John Agyar is new in town, and leading a somewhat peculiar life. He lives in a haunted mansion, where he converses in a quite normal fashion with the ghost of the ex-slave Jim. (This isn't Hannibal, Missouri; I doubt there is an intentional reference here.) He is seeing two women, Jill Quarrier and her roommate Susan Pfahl. And he's being pursued by a third woman, Laura Kellen whose intentions are not exactly friendly. Brust manages a style that is modern enough for the setting, yet poetic enough for the feelings and the mystery and the strangeness of what is happening. He keeps the reader just slightly off-balance, delivering a surprise here, a twist there, but never enough to overthrow what has come before. This is a book that slowly unfolds and opens itself, like the roses on the cover. (And by the way, the cover by Jim Burns is an excellent rendering of a painting described in the book itself (pages 219 to 220), and no fair skipping ahead to it!). Agyar, and the town of Lakota, and what happens there all form something you won't soon forget. I recommend AGYAR and I may even brave the Dragaeran series if this is indicative of Brust's writing. %T Agyar %A Steven Brust %C New York %D March 1994 %I Tor %O paperback, US$4.99 [1993] %G ISBN 0-812-51521-8 %P 254pp -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | Evelyn.Leeper@att.com "The Internet is already an information superhighway, except that ... it is like driving a car through a blizzard without windshield wipers or lights, and all of the road signs are written upside down and backwards." --Dave Barry From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu May 12 00:03:50 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: kevin716@aol.com Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: AGYAR - S.K.Z.Brust Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 9 May 1994 19:15:33 GMT Organization: America Online Lines: 50 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9405082252.tn294210-repost@aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu In the '80s the Minneapolis music scene was considered one of the most exciting and innovative in the country. The same might be said for Minneapolis today in the writing of SF and Fantasy. Steve Brust is one of the writers heading a select group of Minnesotans capturing imaginations with fresh and modern fantasies. This isn't a classic fantasy of elves and faeries, but rather a subtle rework of old myths and timeless human values. John Agyar is called to Ohio by an old love. There he takes up residence in an abandoned house reputed to be haunted; it is. And there he begins a journal of his stay. This book is that journal. The journal is written, at least initially, as a form of personal therapy. Later, when John and Jim (the ghost) have settled into an easy relationship, the journal serves in lieu of conversation when events leave John unwilling to talk of them. And, finally, it serves as a testimonial to his love. Love triangles and death are in heavy abundance. In a fashion that is a Brust trademark, `amoral' characters debate moral choices -- all the while denying or questioning that such qualities exist or have meaning. The reader, of course, is forced to follow suit. For some reason while reading this book John Barth's THE END OF THE ROAD kept coming to mind. Perhaps it was John Agyar's aquiescence to letting events dictate his life. This fatalism gives Agyar a `weatherless' emotional appearance similar to that of Jacob Horner, but unlike Horner, John Agyar eventually eschews this fatalism and begins to fight against the fate he imagines awaits him. This makes him a more human and sympathetic character than Horner. The book is cleanly written and well-paced. The story flows naturally and requires no jarring revelations or inventions to reach its conclusion. Brust writes, as always, with humor, a bit of irreverence, and a touch of cynicism. Longtime Brust fans will note, though, that there are few references to food; this main character doesn't eat! Well, he does -- once. This isn't Brust's magnum opus, but it is another in a string of thoughtful, well-written, and thoroughly enjoyable stories. %A Brust, Steven %T Agyar %I Tor %C New York %D March 1994 %G ISBN 0-812-51521-8 %O paperback, US$4.99 [1993] %P 254pp From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 30 23:54:03 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!uunet!tcsi.tcs.com!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca (Aaron V. Humphrey) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Prograde Reviews--Steven Brust:The Phoenix Guards Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 30 May 1994 21:43:04 GMT Organization: The Anna Amabiaca Fan Club Lines: 49 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <2sbvas$hc0@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> Reply-To: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: aaron@cab009.cs.ualberta.ca Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu Steven Brust: The Phoenix Guards A Prograde Review by Aaron V. Humphrey It's not absolutely necessary to have read _The Three Musketeers_ before reading this book, but it would certainly help. Likewise with Brust's previous Vlad Taltos series of books. The book takes place in Dragaera a while before the Interregnum, the time of chaos just ended in the Vlad Taltos books. Dragaeran lifespans being what they are, there's at least one character in common, and also the parents of others. The ostensible 'writer' of the book is Paarfi, a post-Interregnum historian whom Brust deliberately writes in the style of Dumas, or rather of Dumas's translators. He is almost another character in his own right. One might get a bit impatient with his style, but others will probably find it delightful. (The Author's Note at the end he writes about Brust is nothing short of hilarious.) Like in Dumas, the action rarely slows down. Before they go on the mission that takes up the bulk of the book, things get a bit slow as we spend time showing what the villains are up to, but after that it takes off and continues flying. This is the first of a planned trilogy, the other two books also intended to parallel Musketeer books--_Five Hundred Years After_, now out in paperback, and the still-forthcoming _The Viscount of Adrilankha_. A departure from the down-to-earth style of the Vlad Taltos books, that just shows how versatile Brust is as a writer. %A Brust, Steven %T The Phoenix Guards %I Tor %C New York %D August 1991 %G ISBN 0-812-50689-8 %P 491pp %S Phoenix Guards %V Book 1 %O Paperback, USD4.99, CAD5.99 -- --Alfvaen (Editor of Communique) Current Album--Rush:Fly By Night Current Read--Joseph H. Delaney & Marc Stiegler:Valentina: Soul In Sapphire "Thinks again--thanks to brain, the new wonder head-filler!" --Bluebottle Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!newsfeed.tip.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: "John M. Bozeman" Subject: Review: Steven Brust's _Cowboy Feng_ Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=John M. Bozeman Lines: 83 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Intelligent Agents Group X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 16:23:49 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 83 As a graduate student I don't get to read for pleasure a great deal anymore. However, a recent bout of the flu has given me the opportunity to do a bit of catching up ;-) This is a brief overview of the work of Steven Brust, focusing on his book _Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill_. Steven Brust is probably best known for his "Vlad Taltos" series. With good reason; the books in this series, including _Taltos_, _Yendi_, _Jhereg_, and _Teckla_ are generally quite delightful, mixing humor and light irony with, on occasion, more serious themes such as revenge and the meaning of loyalty. Most of the series deals with the adventures and misadventures of one Vlad Taltos, an "Easterner" (i.e., human) working his way up the ladder of the local organized crime syndicate of the regionally dominant Dragerian (i.e., humanoid- reptilian) culture. The stories are told entertainingly and with verve in the first person by Vlad himself, and are made even more engaging by the author's careful attention to idiosyncratic detail and occasional use of throw-away references to other books within the same series. Perhaps less well-know are Brust's stand-alone, non-series books. These works tend appear to be a bit more sober in tone than those of the "Taltos" series. _Phoenix Guards_ (which I have not yet read) is viewed by some as something of a retelling of the _Three Musketeers_ set in the same universe as Vlad, but set an earlier time and using different characters. _To Reign in Hell_ is completely different, a strange allegory based in Christian mythology that I found rather dry, though at least two friends of mine rather liked it. _Brokedown Palace_ is more of a straight fantasy novel, with relatively few comic touches. _Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill_, however, Brust abandons his usual genre of fantasy and tries his hand at science fiction. The reader may find him- or herself with a slight sense of deja vu upon picking up the book, as there is at least a tiny resemblance to Spider Robinson's "Callahan's Bar" series; both are graced--at least in the paperback versions--with busy and largely inaccurate cover art. More seriously, both _Feng_ and the "Callahan" series revolve around a rather curious bar populated by a strange medley of persons who find themselves in even more strange situations. There, however, the resemblance to Robinson's work mostly ends. While the people in Robinson's work are generally working out their own personal problems in fixed location, in _Feng_ the characters are in a most unusual situation: they are unintentional refugees from nuclear conflagration. It seems that the bar and grill migrates from disaster to disaster. In, say, London the bar's denizens will find themselves on air-raid alert, a nuke will land nearby, and the people wake up to find themselves in a different place and time in the same building-- but for no known reason. As per usual, Brust tells the story in the first person. In this case the narrator is a musician whose Irish folk band happened have a gig at the bar around the time of the first air-raid/"jump," and it is through his eyes that the story unfolds: why does the bar jump? Why does it even survive? What is the mission that they are on? And who the mysterious Cowboy Feng anyway? All of these questions are eventually answered, in a more or less plausible fashion, in a book that turns out to be a rather unusual anti-fear-of-AIDS parable. However, as with many of Brust's other works, the main strength of the work comes more from vivid characterizations and attention to detail (in the form of, say, describing life in a folk band and the sometimes self-destructive personal relationships of artists, or talking about how the different characters like their omelets) -- than from the overall story (of all people to chose from, why did Feng choose people with such checkered and dysfunctional pasts? Why do both the good guys and the bad guys seem to be so powerful, yet so poorly organized? Would a society capable of building a time machine issue arm its soldiers with .357 magnums, bowie knives, and similar weapons?). As a result of this combination of strengths and weaknesses, I would give the book a solid "B." It is entertaining, but flawed. Other books would be better for the first-time reader of Brust and/or science fiction, though the Brust/SF aficionado may want to give it a serious look. %A Steven Brust %T Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill %I Ace Books/The Berkeley Publishing Group %C New York %D 1990 %G 0-441-11816-X %O $3.50, paperback Copyright 1996 John M. Bozeman "Raisins used to be plump and juicy . . . They taste sweet, but they're really just humiliated grapes." --Joon, of "Benny and Joon" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!newsfeed.sunet.se!news00.sunet.se!sunic!news99.sunet.se!nntp-trd.UNINETT.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: jim.henry@silver.com (JIM HENRY) Subject: Review _Brokedown Palace_, Brust Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=Jim Henry Lines: 28 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Reply-To: jim.henry@silver.com (JIM HENRY) Organization: Silver Eagle BBS - Smyrna,Ga. - 770-438-0725 - 28800 Baud X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 16:52:48 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 28 Brokedown Palace, by Steven Brust Review Copyright 1996 Jim Henry _Brokedown Palace_ by Steven Brust, his fourth published novel I believe, is an excellent fantasy. It is set in the world of his Vlad Taltos novels (_Taltos_, _Jhereg_, _Yendi_, etc.), but in a different region of that world. Like his _The Sun, the Moon and the Stars_, it alternates between a realistic psychological style, focusing upon character and motivation, and an archaic fairy-tale style. Most of the book deals with intrigue within the royal family of Fenario, a small nation with Faerie (the setting of the Vlad Taltos books) on its west and barbarian hordes upon the north and south. The palace, the spiritual heart of the kingdom, is bit by bit falling to pieces (hence the title), and there is controversy, sometimes with deadly force, about what to do about it. I highly recommend this, especially to those who have enjoyed Brust's other fantasy, but also to those who may have avoided him because they are wary of open-ended series. %T Brokedown Palace %A Brust, Steven %D 1986 (January) %I Ace Fantasy %C New York %E Windling, Terri %P 270 pp. %G 0-441-07181-3 %K fantasy Hungarian fairy-tale * RM 1.31 3176 * This message was typed on recycled phosphorus.