A very interesting book. It is my first one written by Steve Brust and my dad gave it to me. Looking at the other comments people either hated or loved the writing style and as someone who loves linguistics I have to say I am definitely with the latter, even if it made the entire thing slow to read in some places.

I also have to say that, even if I love these kind of D&D styled classic Fantasy stories (we meet at the bar, get a quest, go and stab people), I also love stories that are deep, and just have to note that I find the depth lacking here. Due to the writing style the friendship seems less interesting to me and the tension between Khaavren and Illista at least in my eyes is barely there at all.

Still an enjoyable read and I look forward to reading the rest. ( )

I am doing a reread of the books by Steven Brust set in the Dragaeran universe, and started with this one. I read this book a long time ago when I was just a lowly teenager. And, I completely missed the point, including all the jokes that were wrapped in over the top speech.

On a reread, I found it to be a completely different book, one with depth that is incredibly funny. However, I found myself at times wanting to throw this book at the wall due to just how...... annoying that Paarfi of Roundwood writes. However, don't let that keep you from reading it- its all part of the fun. ( )

If you love the Dragaera books/Vlad Taltos books, and especially if you haven't read "Tiassa" yet, you should definitely pick up the Khaavren Romances (a few of the characters from this series show up in that one). Also, numerous references are made to events that take place in this series, as well as characters who come up here. We finally learn about Aliera's backstory, the story behind Adron's disaster, the Empress' backstory, Morrolan's backstory, Morrolan's castle's backstory and really not much about Sethra Levode except we see how she and Morrolan first met.

The first novel only involves a few faces we're familiar with (Adron among them), and mainly concerns events some time before Adron's disaster. It mainly serves as build-up for the next book, which is a little more relevant for fans of the Vlad Taltos books. Of course, these novels are laced with Brust humor, so they're all fun.

Be warned: each novel is LONG (as in a) thick, b) thin pages, and c) tiny, close lined text), and there are FIVE of them. Also: Brust modeled these after Alexandre Dumas' "d'Artagnan Romances" (which includes "The Three Musketeers"). The series share many things, including book long, writing style, thematic elements, and plots. Brust himself has called these a blatant rip-off of Dumas' series. So if you've read any of the ones from Dumas, you know about what to expect. But it's Brust, and it's Dragaera, so it's a lot better than that.

These are worth reading, the others more so than this one. But if you want to read the others, I highly suggest you start with "The Phoenix Guards", because things will make a LOT more sense. ( )

I picked up this one after reading all currently available - 15! - books of Vlad Taltos. I'd obviously grown to be very fond of this world, and seeing a bit of an earlier period in the Dragaera world.

Uhhh...

The thing is - I really enjoyed the Dumas-inspired 3rd section of [b:Tiassa|8705465|Tiassa (Vlad Taltos, #13)|Steven Brust|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1441504889s/8705465.jpg|13578278] . The archaic dialogue patterns and different writing style was a lot of fun. For the 1/3 of a book. Having that style filling up an entire book is a bit too much. I've looked ahead and I see that the remainder of the Khaavren Romances series is all written in the same way.

So I'm done. I'm eagerly awaiting more Taltos books. But I can't bring myself to read any more of this one. ( )

The first time I read this book, I hated it. I couldn't get past the style.

Then a friend pointed out that the florid, long-winded, purple style was part of the joke. I reread it with that in mind and quite enjoyed it!

It's a delightful comedy of manners, politics, intrigue, and honor in the world of [b:Jhereg|133454|Jhereg (Vlad Taltos, #1)|Steven Brust|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328204364s/133454.jpg|1521838], set hundreds of years before Vlad Taltos comes on the scene. I doubt it would work for people coming to that world cold: not that you need to know any specific information from those books, but they do a better job of introducing the world to a new reader. This book assumes you already know about humans (Dragaerans), Easterners (humans), the Seventeen Houses, and so on and so forth, and proceeds to play out the elaborate tale within that world.

(It's also an homage/sendup of Dumas' Musketeers, but you can definitely appreciate it without having read them.)

( )