The Devil's Gun - Cat Rambo

The Devil's Gun is the sequel to Cat Rambo's You Sexy Thing, which I would characterise as a space opera in which an ex-admiral turned restauranteur has to save themselves and their found family from an ominous nemesis and their own feelings. Occasionally, they blow stuff up!

The Devil's Gun serves up a lot of the same dishes as its predecessor, but with some interesting new flavours. The crew, fresh from their defeat of Tubal Last - space pirate and general do-babder - are trying to settle into themselves after a fairly hectic period. They've had losses that they need to deal with. They've brought new members into their little family, including a sentient, star-hopping bio-ship with a bit of an attitude. They've lost people. too, and need to grieve. And even as they're doing that, new stormclouds are gathering, threatening to tear away at all they've built. 

The team on the Thing are on a mission, a mission to find an old love, an old friend. And while they're doing that, they're still trying to rebuild themselves, physically and mentally. Most of the book feels like a character piece, in a good way. An ensemble cast, whose views we get to see, whose weaknesses and fears are laid bare on the page, even while their actions set up their strengths. Some of them, like Atlanta, one time Imperial heir, now occasional mushroom-chopper are feeling insecure and looking for purpose. Some of them, like the Thing itself, are reaching out, trying to define their boundaries. Understand their feelings, and what provokes them, what makes them happy, and why, sometimes, you might need to do the harder thing. And some of them are deep in their grief. You can feel that roiling off them, a miasma that infects everything they do, and tries to define what they are. In some ways, large parts of the story are meditations on that grief; the way that loss shapes people, the way it makes them do things they wouldn't normally do, for better or worse. The way that living it can be horrible and hurtful and healthy, and clutching it too tight can be poison. 

Which all sounds very dramatic, and in some ways it is. But the crew of the Thing spend a large amount of the story working alongside each other, a story in a bottle over a flame, slowly simmering away. There are, for those of you who were wondering, more twists, more betrayals, and more revelations in the world of Niko and her gang. Some of them are potentially galaxy-spanning in their impacts. Others are quieter - the click of a kitchen knife chopping vegetables, the fierce strength of someone digging in raw soil for their purpose.

I won't spoil here beyond saying that the Thing will run into enemies and friends old and new. Some of them are charming and rougish and e a delight to read; others are petty tyrants, with a sense of turgid malice about them that makes you grit your teeth, and feel catharsis when comeuppance occurs. This is The Devil's Gun, another story about the family that is the crew of the Thing. It's their stories, the complex notes of tragedy and joy over the base of action, adventure, and really wild things, those stories that make the meal. It's a slow burn, building context and emotional investment layer by layer, page by page, but the final product deserves, well, whatever a Michelin star is for stories. If you're new to the series, it's probably worth going back before you go forward, the story works better that way, has more weight, more depth to it. But if you're fresh off the first book and looking for more, don't worry.

The Devil's Gun does not disappoint.

The Hunters - David Wragg

Alright, The Hunters. I've had a good time with Dave Wragg's books in the past, so I went in hopeful, but without much idea of what I was getting into. And you know what? What I got was a smart, funny, heartfelt story of a family trying to navigate around each other and the way they saw each other. I saw a woman with a chequered past trying to make something better, and a young woman looking for something better than that, pushing back. I saw some absolutely delightful chase scenes in a fantasy-western motif. I saw a few stark moments that felt like magic and made me go "Huh!". I got some twists and turns in the story that kept me on my toes, and I got some unpleasant villains to rail against and some delightful heroes to cheer along.

This is a good book, is what I'm saying to you here.

Perhaps the book is called The Hunters because everyone in it seems to be looking for something. The central duo are Ree and Javani. Now Javani. Javani is a smart girl, a simmering bowl of resentment of where she is now, in a mining town in the armpit of nowhere. Someone trying to make something of herself and work out what that something is, while trying to define her own identity. She's fast and thoughtful, someone always trying to put a plan together, someone pushing back against a world which seems destined to give her nothing but a provincial quiet life. And one of the main architects is the other half of that duo, her aunt, Ree. Javani is looking for identity and purpose, for parentage and truth, and working out who she wants to be. Ree. Ree knows who she is. Sometimes it seems like she wishes she didn't. Quite what's led her out into a dead-end farmstead in the middle of nowhere is something of a mystery. But you can feel the edges to Ree, the ones rounded away, a sharp blade kept sheathed, both metaphorically and physically. What Ree is looking for is that quiet life Javani rails so hard against - that life of safety, a space to let the girl come into her own. A space where Ree can perhaps walk away from the past, and what it did to her, and what she did, too. Their interactions are fierce and awkward, poignant and perilous in equal measure, and the energy of the space between them sparks with every word struck. It's a good time, this. 

On the lighter side, of sorts, are the siblings, Anashe and Aki. Them? They're hunting for information, and they're hunting for history. They're looking to know about their family, about those who died, and why, and what they were like, before the two were born. And that trail has led them to a farmstead in the middle of nowhere. They have a different vibe to Ree and Javani. Aki, in particular, is an effervescent, endlessly positive delight, who assists that disposition by running a full speed motormouth, with a lexicon that would make a thesaurus blush. He's just fun to read. Anashe is the quieter, more contemplative, with a ground down patience for her brother and a vituperative tongue that she wields like a lash (mostly at Aki, which he mostly ignores). They're ruthless enough, and determined, and passionate, and trying to be better. There's a poignant undercurrent to their rare, quieter moments, as they work out what they're doing, and why.

And then, well, there's the others. Lazant and Kahlida are also hunting something. Something more, or less abstract perhaps. Power. Influence. A place of safety, security. The approval of a parent. But they're willing to wade in blood to get it, to grind their way through dust and lightning, blasting powder and blades, to grasp what they feel is theirs. Relentless, entitled, bloody and, at the core, contemptuous of these little towns and their little lives, they're a duo who you can feel festering behind golden smiles on every page where they appear.

This is a story about stories, too. About the stories we tell each other and ourselves. How Ree looks at herself. What she tells Javani about her past. What Javani tells herself about her future. What Aki and Anashe think they know and want to know about their family and why. And what the world tells itself about itself, a mining town slowly being absorbed by a guild with tentacles deep in more urban places, where they don't care about the miners, just the bottom line. Like the people, the place is a liminal space, a place on the edge of things. Straddling the wilderness and what insists on calling itself civilisation. What it's been is a place of safety, but what it might be is somewhere between a thriving town, and a desolate wasteland. I loved the way the quiet desperation of a marginal mining town was evoked, the core economic certainties behind the crossbows and charms, the gold behind the blood and steel.

And it's this blend of a vividly realised world, a world of grit and blood and love and tears, vengeance and joy, along with the strong characterisation, the tightly written, complex, human relationships, filled with simmering tensions, explosions (literal as well as metaphorical), the quiet moments, the drawn breath in the dark. That there's chases and swordfights and banter and, yes, more than one big explosion, is helpful, of course. But it's these things, these human moments that make this a book you want to read, and read again right after you're done. 

Anyway. Bloody good book. Give it a whirl.

Outlaw Mage - K.S. Villoso

Outlaw Mage is the start of a new series for Villoso, whose Annals of the Bitch Queen series was a delightful, bloody, character-driven read that dovetailed complex human relationships with a desire to explore the ideas and issues that make people, well, people. And, you know, also stab people a lot. On balance, I think this new book has similar strengths; the character work is top-notch, the world-building is at once intricate and organic, so it never feels like you're being infodumped, and the story certainly kept me turning pages long after I should've been in bed. There are, I think, fewer stabbings. On the other hand, there's quite a few messy magical demises in there, so it probably balances out. So that's the capsule review. Magic, cynical, smart protagonist who is slightly too jaded for her own good, an immigrant story, a family story, a story of expectations and reality, a story of fighting against a system from inside and outside it, a story with more than a few explosions. It's a great time, and you should read it. 

Now, a little more in depth stuff. Full disclosure, I backed this one on Kickstarter, so I was primed to enjoy it, given Villoso's record. And, well, I did. So lets talk a bit about why.

First, I like Rosha. The protagonist of the book, she's a woman with talent. Magical talent to be precise. The sort of talent that lets you teleport around the place, or turn your enemies inside out. She's fiercely intelligent, and deeply uncompromising. She is also, at least in my view, someone who has a lot of wards up against a system that is designed to hurt her. She struggles, sometimes, to relate to people. In many ways, she wants to be left alone. But oh, is she proud. A woman who knows she's the best in her class, at the pre-eminent magical academy. Surrounded by sycophants, try-hards and political scions, all of whom will end up better positioned than she does, because of where she came from. Because Rosha is from a little-loved late-acquired portion of a fantasy Empire, a place nobody thinks about much, a place where the people are othered, not worth the time of those folks who go to, say, elite magic schools. But Rosha is definat and competent and knows what she's about.  I love that for her, about her. And seeing her struggle, to try and make something of herself out of the expectations other s have set for her, and that she set for herself, that's a joy, too.; As is the life and energy and passion you can see in her when she's talking about her family, with her family. As an aside, it's lovely to just see a family like this. They're a sprawling net of squabbling, loving, hurtful, silly, murderous, wonderful people, and honestly I'd go to dinner with all of them. The dynamics there are perfect, the prodigal daughter with one foot out the door and one foot teetering over the edge of the frame, one way or the other, trying to find acceptance and herself in equal measure. Honestly, I'm doing Rosha a disservice, because there'#s so much going on beneath the surface of her story, as the book slowly unpacks he rmotivations, her past, and that of those around her. But I'm struggling to convey to you what a complex, thoughtful, fiercely angry, even more fiercely talented protagonist she is, how shaped by her past, and how huiman she is because of that, and the pain and love that those experiences encapsulate.

Also, she is, I must confess, sometimes a bit of an acid-tongued take-no-shit kind of person, and I do appreciate that.

Then there's the world. This is a world with, I'm not going to say problems, but problems. It's a world whose story is, at least currently, centred on an Empire with a capital E. An expansionist, hungry Empire. One that considers itself to be the centre of everything, that reaches out to the people and cultures around it on a self-imposed mission to civilise. Well, in between mining and logging and, you know, resource extraction from those Other places. Villoso builds up the splendor and decay of that empire wonderfully. From institutions riven through with factional infighting, to functionaries trying to get on top of things, but still trapped by their entrenched cultural biases, to a visceral, virulent, quietly hideous disdain for those who come in from the outside, couched in a language of grudging, back-handed acceptance. This is imperialism writ large, and small, a pervasive influence that you can feel coming off the page and seeping into your bones. Then there's the distant wilds, the places where an airship run by magic rolls by once a month or so, and everyone is out on the edges of what is called civilisation, trying to make a life for themselves and stay out of the way of everything that abides in liminal spaces, as well as the ever approaching boots of the local Authority. And as you're washing through the clear streams and rude log cabins and neighbours with a pie on the window sill and just a little casual racism in their heart of hearts, you're off to the towering ivory spires of an elite institution, which happens to train people to use magic, while also helping them learn how to run an empire. As long as they don't forget their place, their constraints, the system that put them there and could remove them if it felt the impersonal need to do so - or a personal one, come to that. The empire is a facade of institutions wrapped around power and wealth and a set of lies it tries to tell itself in the dark of night about who it is, and, wow does that all feel very familiar to me in terms of lived experience. This is how things used to be, not that long ago, out here off the page - and you can feel the same energy here, building a world that's rich and exploitative and violent in the abstract and the practical, even as it manages to be the biggest, nearly the only game in town. This is a world that feels real, and Villoso is unafraid to explore what that means.

The story...well, I don't want to spoil it, honestly. Because there's moment sin there that made me laugh out loud. And twists that made me blink, and mentally rearrange my idea of what was going on. And quiet moments of honesty and intimacy and pain that come off the page at you like knives and kisses in a roll of words. Suffice to say, it's a story that has a lot to say, and tells itself well. You should read it, because it's one of the best things I've read this year, and I want everyone else to get the chance to feel how this made me feel. Do it.

Translation State - Ann Leckie

Translation State is a new standalone from Ann Leckie, set in her Imperial Radch universe, which many readers may be familiar with from her earlier work. But if not, don't worry - this one works perfectly well as a standalone. It's one part mystery, one part legal thriller, with a dash of fast-paced action swirled in for flavour. And, not to give the game away, it work very, very well. Leckie is one of the best contemporary writers of thoughtful, high concept science fiction, and it shows in this story which is both gentle and angry and clever all at once.

The story revolves around a tripod of characters. Enae, who is out on her own for the first time after a lifetime of living in the shadow of a grandmother who was less than a positive role model Reet, living on a space station, doing unpleasant jobs for little in the way of recognition, an adopted son who struggles with his place in the world and his identity - especially since the latter seems to come with an urge to literally take people apart. Which is, obviously, frowned upon. And then there's Qven. Qven was created by and to serve as a translator for the alien Presgr. Qven has always been told what their role is to be, but Qven is also starting to wonder if that path is something to actually pursue. 

One of Leckie's strengths is that she can give her characters a voice. All three people are just that. People. And they sound and feel different on the page because of the lived experiences that we hear about and are shown. Enae's fear of living a little bigger, of breaking out of the confines of a life that enveloped like a hermit crab's shell, is palpable. As is the pressure Reet feels building up inside himself, the vivid horrors of his dreams and needs. And Qven, Qven is strange and wonderful and horrifying and joyful, and trying to find and become who they want to be and not who they're expected to be. And each of these people have a voice that resonates with who they are, and we can feel their passion and weakness and delight and smaller terrors and flashes of joy coming right off the page to hit us right in the gut. I...ironically, I don't want ot talk about them too much, because each of them grows so much from who they are into someone new through the story. And it's that journey which matters.  I will say that Leckie does a great job at making the strange and horrific and wonderful feel prosaic t the characters embedded in it, whilst still letting us have a sense of strangeness and discovery even as we come to accept these things alongside the characters. Honestly, I don't think anyone writing today captures that sense of different but people as well as Leckie has done here. We can get into these characters heads, into their lives, and be somewhere completely familiarly strange. From the first page I was catching up on social context, cues, who meant what to who and what events actually meant...but it all fit together and it all made sense to the people on the page, even while I was unpicking who they were. Suffice to say, Leckie has brought us some fantastic people on the page, who it was a pleasure to follow along with, even when what they were up to was....rather odd.

Speaking of rather odd. The universe is sprawling, filled with, ha, different places. Or, to be more specific, places that feel different. The cloistered halls of Enae's existence, filled with the artifacts of a grandparent who lived seemingly forever, have a sense of age and claustrophobia and potential denied. While the claustrophobia of Reet cleaning station maintenance tunnels is more literal, the grime more practical, the cramped space for hope remains the same, even as they both find burgeoning change is making all the difference. There's little touches in both places, from the detail on folding sideboards to the curious community meetings of Reet's station that help them feel like places, help them feel lived in. And then there's Qven. Always Qven. Qven's world is as physically bounded as Enae's is by psychic boundaries. Qven's world is as constrained in its day to day activities as Reet's is by huis position and opportunities. Qven is wrapped in a straitjacket made to measure by the society that has embraced them, and they get to live comfortably in it, as long as they follow the rulkes, do what they're told, step through the motions. It's a world where eating fellow members of your cohort isn't the strangest thing going on, and Qven is locked down, locked in, and struggling against shackles they don't evne know are there. And here we see an environment which feels plausible, just normal enough to be inside our experience, and strange, strange enough that every so often I had to go back and check I'd actually read what I had. There's hints here of something broader and stranger and more alien and what we have, a soupcon of weird, is wonderfully drawn. And as all these worlds and conceptual spaces converge, they make a big old setting gumbo that's filled with fascinating flavour.

As much as I don't want to say too much, you know I don't want to , don't dare to, spoil the story for you all. It begins cosily enough though, showing us our new friends, letting us see them in their own heads, how they seem themselves, how they live their lives. It watches them as they try to reach out, to put their arms up and soar. This is a story with mysteries abounding, about life and identity and who and what people are. And it's a story about people looking for inclusion, trying to find a place where they feel at home, and find a place where they can be themselves and find out who they are. It's a story with extremists and a story with explosions, and a story with authorities that try and be Authorities, and about overreach and the dangers of definition by category and the joy of self-categorisation. It's a thriller, its a courtroom drama, it's a sci-fi adventure story, its a mystery, and above all, it's an absolute triumph of high-concept sci-fi married to the personal, the immediate, the real, backed by real emotion and real truths. This is Leckie on top form, and it's well worth the read.

Back next week!

 We've got medical stuff this week, so reviews will resume their regular schedule next week. Sorry!

The Book That Wouldn't Burn - Mark Lawrence

As long time readers will know, I'm a huge fan of Mark Lawrence's work. So I met the announcement of a new series, in a new world, with exhilaration and  dread. Because a new book, a new series, from an author I really enjoy reading, that's great news. Dread, because...like all of us, I can get comfortable in the familiar. What if this new series wasn't up to snuff? We went round on this already with Red Sister and Prince of Fools, and here we are again.  In short: I need not have worried, this book is great.

I'm happy to report that The Book That Wouldn't Burn is both really entertaining, and also, you know, just generally a really good book. Lawrence has pulled out all the stops to make a new, interesting, compelling story, in a rich, vibrant world. It got me to keep turning pages long after I should've been in bed, and, more importantly, I didn't regret that choice when I dragged myself out of bed in the morning. Because this is, simply put, a good time, and if you don't take anything from the rest of the review, take this: go buy this book, go read this book, go enjoy this book. 

Incidentally, for those of you wondering, the rest of the trilogy is already written, so you may as well start now.

Anyway. Appropriately for a story about books, much of it takes place in, well, a library. I say a library. It's more a cavernous complex, housed in the bowels of a mountain. Where travel times are measured in days. Where index systems for the contents are marks of power.. Where dross and society-changing concepts sit cheek-by-jowl, if you could manage to sort one from the other. The library is, I am saying, large. Maybe not quite large enough to have formed its own black hole, but I'm also not going to bet against it. And credit to Lawrence, he makes the library feel real. Indeed, it's almost a character in its own right. Filled with little rituals, day to day complexities, and of course, bureaucracy. Also filled with eldritch tomes, that researchers are trusted to go dig into the veins of, to find intellectual gold. You can feel the weight of history in the library, the way it changes hands between warring entities, from shifts in signage and doors that open one way or another. In the drifts of scattered paper and ash from old fires. The story excels at giving the library both a sense of place and a sense of age - a timeless ancient, a seeming rock before the ravages of time, it persists and changes on every glance. 

If the library is the central rock of place in the book, it's worth mentioning the city that has accreted around it. And the scattered steadings outside it, all of which huddle against the rock of all the knowledge in the world. The politics of the city are driven by the necessity of defence against an implacable enemy outside the walls, and by the need to dig into the guts of the library to try and find a way to make the city safe. There's centuries worth of myth and legend there, structured around the gain and loss of knowledge, and centuries worth of treatises on war, successful and otherwise. The one who rules the city can decide how what they find is dispensed to the inhabitants, and that gives rise to its own tensions - as does the current staff of the library deciding quite how much it's going to hand over to the city government. Which is to say that there's a bigger world out there, outside the confines and claustrophobia of the library, and Lawrence manages to keep us aware of that around the edges of awareness. The world is real, even the parts we don't see, or see less often.

Anyway. There's people here too! Livira and Evar are our protagonists, our windows on a world wrought by and distorted by knowledge, and by the certainty that outside the city is an enemy that would happily tear everything down. Livira...oh, I have a lot of time for her. Literally and figuratively, as we follow her from a childhood escaping from the enemy seeking to destroy the city, into an adulthood within the library. Livira is smart, witty, and unafraid. If she's not going to be able to bludgeon an enemy to death with a novel, she'll be able to figure out a way to make them regret crossing her path anyway. Watching her grow, and move out of isolation into a space where people care about her, and she cares about them, is a delight, and also allows for some thoughtful meditations on the nature of loneliness, social expectations, and ways to deal with both. A woman with a penchant for risks, and for doing what she thinks is right, Livira is driven to succeed, to rise above a society that wants to keep her in her place. And she works on doing that by being competent, by being lucky, and by having friends. She genuinely is a lot of fun to read, as she tried to fit into a space that is built to hate her, and drives forward, trying to shape the world to avoid being shaped by it. How she does that, and the costs...well. Read and find out.

Evar, by contrast, is never really alone. someone with a handful of siblings, he's constrained more by geography, unable to leave the same space where he's spent his entire life. Evar is the second best at everything, and if he doesn't resent it, is perhaps frustrated by it. Evar is charming, and manages to be knowledgeable and deadly whilst also being so self effacing that he remains rather fun to read along with. In this he's helped by a trauma which has shaped his understanding of who he is, and by his siblings, all of whom are both ferociously competent in their own areas of expertise, and quite obviously struggle in doing anything else. They're all struggling to survive, trying to understand the mystery of where they are and why...which is how they intersect with Livira. I don't want to touch on this in detail, except to say that this is a story which travels through time as well as space, and challenges our assumptions about how those things impact on each other. Suffice to say that Evar is, if a little naïve, definitely likeable, and if his life has been blighted by the enemy that would devour everything he holds dear, he manages to keep that down to a dull roar. 

Anyway. Our protagonists aren't the only people out there, of course. Though the focus on their intertwining fates, their isolation and loneliness, their passion and sense of truth and justice, are all vital to the story. But Evar has his siblings, rough and ready as they may be, and Livira has her gang of library colleagues and their superiors, some of whom are odd, some of whom are mysterious, some of whom are lethal, and some of whom are...all of the above. Its to the author's credit that every person we see actually feels real. They're alive and out there in a world that exists for them, where we just happen to be, strolling their stage for all the world like it's, well, all the world. There's a depth and flavoir and texture to even the most incidental characterisation that gives each individual more heft, more depth, makes them concrete and real.

Anyway. As ever, I don't want to spoil the story. But I will say it manages to be both sweepingly epic, and intimately beautiful. Occasionally it does both of those things at the same time. And it's really very clever, and emotionally affective and effective. It will make you Feel Things, friends. Be ready with the tissues.  And be ready for twists, turns, and revelations, a couple of which definitely made me go "Ha!". This is, no doubt, Mark Lawrence at his best. It's a beautiful world, with some wonderful characters, and a story that keeps you turning pages until it's done, and then makes you want ot re-read it right away so that it isn't over yet. 

Which is a very long winded way of saying, this is another great book from Mark Lawrence - go get a copy right now.

Tsalmoth - Steven Brust

Full disclosure, I've been a fan of Steven Brust's work for a long time. Especially his "Vlad" series, centred on the eponymous Vlad Taltos, one-time assassin, one time husband, now on the run and dealing with what we might charitably call "relationship issues". Tsalmoth is the latest in that sequence, which has hop-skip-and-jumped throughout Vlad's personal timeline over the years, showing us a young man trying to make a name for himself, through to an older, possibly wiser one trying to deal with the consequences of that reputation. Tsalmoth is mostly focused on the former, following a younger Vlad as he investigates a mystery, trying to recover a small amount of money owed, which snowballs until it becomes something else entirely. Something with wider ramifications.

I will say that this story works beause of its protagonist Because Vlad is smart until he isn't, and because he is, largely, honest with himself while we sit alongside his inner dialogue. He can be a lover, a killer, a man searching for redemption or a quiet life, a hero of sorts and a villain of same. And wearing all of those many hats, he's thoughtful, interesting, wry, slyly funny, and very human. There's a sense of immediccy, of energy, of reaching out toward a future he imagines as a bright one, shrotly before it explodes in his hand. Because if Vlad is the star of the show, Cawti, his soon to be wife, is a close second.  I rather like Cawti. She's no-nonsense, witty, a little bit romantic, and as willing to comment on the quality of a restaurant dish or the politics of equality for workers as she is to put a knife through someones eye. WHich is to say, very.  It's interesting to compare this pair of young lvoers, as they take their first steps of marital bliss, to what we know comes later in their lives - the joy and tragedy of knowing a little of how things will shake out before they do themselves. In any event, they're a vivacious pair, and one that captures every page they appear on. Brust's dialogue is a strong point, always able to raise a chuckle, or a gasp, or a tear - and his characters enable that by being fast talking, hard-feeling rogues, with hearts on their sleeves as well as swords at their belts.

And we're back in seaside Adrilahnka again. Over double-digits of books, Brust has managed to make the city as much of a character as the people which inhabit it, from the bustling nighbourhoods whose propserity is seemingly linkd to their place on the rotating caste-wheel that is Dragaeran life, to the glowering orange cloud that blocks out much of the light of the sun, to the sneeing, matter-of-fact prejudice by Dragaerans against "Easterners" like Vlad, there's texture and flavour in every morsel of description. When they sit down at a restaurant to hash out a business proposition, or skirt the edges of an abandoned house looking for trouble, or stand on the cloffs, looking at a sea which, in this case, isn't an amorphous murder-blob crated by runaway sorcery...well, you can feel the place, the years pressing in around, the drifting scents on the air and mutter of background dialogue. Adrilahnka lives, and in its life and depth and weight, it helps keep us grounded, and gives the characters a solid stage on which to set themselves against the forces that oppose them.

And what forces they are. I won't spoil it, but you know what, this one is a lot of fun. There's the snowball, the way that Vlad's injecting hoimself into a situation in a relatively minor way just propels him further and further through a chain of consequences until things are, perhaps, a little out of hand. And there's the way that each step in that chain has real stakes, has drama and passion in it, sure, but also consequences, which make sense to all parties. And then there's the way that there's also other stakes, hidden hands pushing thigns around, trying to serve an agenda which Vlad is, at least initially, ignorant of. Quite what's going on and how Vlad ends up in as much trouble as he does, well, you'll have to Read And Find Out. But I will say that this is a fun journey. In a sense it's a tragedy, seeing the younger Vlad again, before life...happened with him. But at the same time, it's a joy, and an absolute firecracker of a story, one I don't hesitate to recommend to all you long term Taltos fans. Brust remains on top form here, and you'll have a lot of fun coming back to Dragaera, and to Vlad.