Eventually,
Steven Brust appears ready to publish nineteen novels about Vlad Taltos,
the anti-hero first introduced in Jhereg in 1983.
One of the interesting aspects of this series, of which the most
recent novel, Jhegaala, is the eleventh, is that Brust feels
comfortable moving backwards and forwards in time, to look at Taltos’s
life at different stages. Jhegaala,
for instance is set several years before its immediate predecessor, Dzur,
shortly after Vlad’s separation from his wife, Cawti and the need to
get far from the Jhereg crime organization.
Jhegaala
is a search for roots, as Vlad begins by visiting his grandfather, Noish-pa,
who provides him with clues as to the identity of Vlad’s long dead
mother, Noish-pa’s daughter-in-law. With the Jhereg potentially on his
trail, Vlad decides to visit his mother’s native town in Fenario and
try to learn something about his past. Naturally, things don’t go
smoothly for Vlad and he finds the village of Burz interesting, with its
strange triumvirate of rulers: The Coven, The Guild, and the Count.
His interest is intensified when he learns that nobody will tell
him how the relationship between the three powers works.
Being
away from his home turf in Adrilankha, Vlad must do his detective work
himself, although he is aided by the jheregs Loiosh, and Rocza. The
time, shortly after he found himself on the outs with the Jhereg and
bereft of his organization in Adrilankha, means that Vlad isn't as
smooth as he would become in the novels which are set later, and Brust
does a good job of showing a more immature Vlad than the one he has been
describing in recent novels.
Despite
Vlad being laid up for a significant portion of the novel, and the fact
that he is responding to events as often as he is initiating them, Brust
makes sure that his character is central to all the activity in Burz
after his arrival. If he
isn’t initiating action against the Coven, the Count, or the Guild,
they are responding to the threat they perceive Vlad to be. Furthermore,
Vlad is more on his own in Jhegaala
than in most of the novels. Not
only is he separated from Adrilankha, but also from his vast variety of
Dragaeran allies.
One
of Brust’s strengths is his ability to depict Vlad at various times of
his life, showing his insecurities and strengths as they wax and wane as
the dictates of the story’s period necessitate.
At the same time, Vlad remains a sympathetic and likable
anti-hero throughout the books. Jhegaala
presents him as an anti-hero alone against the world, but even when he
is acting less than honorably, the reader still roots for him and the
characters he comes into contact with have a tendency to like him, on a
personal level even if their professional needs require that they not
strike up a camaraderie with him.
Perhaps one of the most fish-out-of-water novels in the
Taltos cycle so far, Jhegaala
returns Vlad to his roots in more ways than one. The most obvious is his quest for his kin, but also by
looking back in time, Vlad is not yet aware of the Jenoine, putting him
in a world still complex, but a simplified version of that world, and
allowing Brust to focus on his character.
