Low

Low Fantasy deals with the lowlife of the fantasy world, meaning common peasants or serfs, mercenaries, criminals, and the like. Conflicts are usually small-scale and driven by personality rather than politics.

Dzur

Dzur is Brust's long-awaited followup to Issola in the Vlad Taltos series. It's an interesting mix of new material and old standbys of the Vlad series. In terms of series revelations and introductions, I counted at least five or six events of a similar stature to the Lesser Revelation of Orca. And it's worth noting that the Greater Revelation of that novel is not directly revealed but gets enough in-jokes that it becomes tiresome.

In terms of actual plot movement, however, the book is a light one. Although the book is somewhat heavy on new characters, they don't advance the plot a great deal, and in many ways the book more closely resembles the early Vlad novels than the more recent ones. Forced by circumstances to confront the Jhereg (both the Right and Left Hand thereof), Vlad finds himself resorting to older methods and haunting his older territories. In that respect the book was more familiar and somewhat more disappointing. I felt it could easily have taken place earlier in the life of the character and the series, and were it not for the Greater Spoiler of Issola, should have. There's a certain episodic quality since little of long-range import was resolved.

It's hard to say whether this piece of the series is disappointing or just surprising. That's going to depend on how the new elements in the series are used in future novels. This is definitely a wait-and-see-before-judging book. It was, however, a fun read for a longstanding fan of the series. The problem is that Dzur both tastes great and is less filling, and only one of those things is a compliment.

Tehanu : The Earthsea Cycle

Almost 20 years after concluding the EarthSea trilogy, the author looked back on what she had written and discovered that it was a horrible, misogynistic world explicitly dominated by a male patriarchy that excluded women ("weak as women's magic, wicked as women's magic") and dared to present a male character as the hero and a female character in the role of damsel in distress.

In short, it wasn't politically correct. And so Tehanu was written to clarify the matter, for all those who read and loved the original trilogy, by destroying the characters and the world. No stone is left unturned; no way to grind the achievements and sacrifices of the characters into dust is ignored.

Unless you are a rabid man-hating feminist who read the original trilogy by accident and now seeks a way to atone for the mistake, you'll be happier not reading this.

A Time of Exile

I'm re-reading Katherine Kerr's A Time of Exile for a somewhat unusual reason. I've read the whole series before once or twice, at least up to the most recently published book, but on my last reread someone else had my copy of this book. Since I had read it before, I skipped it and picked up with A Time of Omens. When my copy of Exile returned, I figured I might as well reread it, even though I had finished the original reread quite some time before.

If the first three books were a well-defined trilogy, establishing the characters and placing Rhodry as gwerbret, then this one begins to open the series up to new possibilities. There is a great deal of plot movement, with pieces beginning to fall into place that will not be paid off for quite some time.

In this novel, Rhodry is forced to face the consequences of his elven heritage. Although he has ruled as gwerbret Aberwyn for many years, those around him (and especially his eldest son) are beginning to notice that he has aged not at all throughout that time. Rather than have his son grow to hate him for his longer-than-human life, Rhodry makes the difficult decision to enter into voluntary exile, travelling to the Westlands to meet his elven father. There, he faces the consequences of his long attachment, in prior lives, to the blue-haired pixie of the Wildfolk, and (for the first time, but not the last!) comes close to asking the most dangerous question you can ask any dweomermaster.

The past-life segments deal with the history of the Maelwaed clan in their lighthouse during a time of rebellion against the rightful King.

We are introduced to the elusive Guardians of the Westfolk, including the central trio of Evandar, Elessario, and Alshandra. We witness Evandar's acquisition of Maddyn's rose ring, later to return to Rhodry with a mysterious addition. We observe Loddlaen's birth, Aderyn's tragedy, and the beginning of Dallandra's quest.

There's a lot to chew on, and many new threads of Wyrd are opened. In a very real sense, this novel is the first of a "new Deverry" series, although it is definitely not a good place to start reading (you want DaggerSpell for that).

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