‘Iorich’ – Steven Brust (Tor)

Way back in August 2008 (seems like such a long time ago now...) I picked up a copy of Steven Brust’s ‘Jhegaala’ on the basis that I’d heard a lot of good things about Brust’s work and it was way past time that I gave him a go. ‘Jhegaala’ had been sent to me as an unsolicited review copy and I figured it was as good a place to start as any but I was taking a bit of a risk starting my ‘Vlad Taltos’ reading here as ‘Jhegaala’ was the actually the eleventh book in a series where I hadn’t read the previous ten. I got lucky that time round as ‘Jhegaala’ was self contained enough for it not to matter too much if you hadn’t read the other books. Seriously, check out my review here.

Having enjoyed ‘Jhegaala’ as much as I did, when I saw that ‘Iorich’ had been released I knew that I had to read it. No hanging around waiting for a random copy to drop through the door though; this time I actually asked the publisher for a copy as I was so eager to get reading. ‘Iorich’ is the twelfth volume in a series where I haven’t read the first ten but I figured that wouldn’t be too much of an issue. After all, ‘Jhegaala’ stood up very well on its own so I was sure that ‘Iorich’ would be a similar kind of deal. I can be so naive sometimes...
Onetime crime boss and assassin Vlad Taltos has a price on his head from organized crime syndicate House Jhereg; they want him dead and, as such, it would make pretty good sense for Vlad to stay well away from Dragaera City where the House bases its operations. So what is Vlad doing strolling the streets of Dragaera looking like he doesn’t have a care in the world?

Only disturbing news could bring Vlad home and it doesn’t get a lot more disturbing than finding out that an old friend is facing the death penalty on the charge of practicing elder sorcery. Not only disturbing but also intriguing, everyone knew that Aliera practiced elder sorcery so what is the big deal now? Why aren’t Aliera’s friends coming to defend her and why won’t she defend herself? All of these questions are just the kind of questions that will get a man like Vlad to stroll into the jaws of danger looking like he knows exactly what he’s on about. Even if he doesn’t have the slightest clue what’s really going on...

So there I was thinking that I could pick up the twelfth book in a series having only read the previous book and none of the others... What was I thinking? Well, I thought that ‘Iorich’ would be much the same as ‘Jhegaala’ in terms of the story standing well on its own but it’s very much the other way round. The bottom line is that ‘Iorich’ draws extensively on relationships and past history that has built up over a number of books. If you’re not grounded in the setting that you’ll be floundering in no short order and that’s what happened to me with characters popping up whom I’d never met before and references made to events that I’d never heard of, let alone seen. Now, I’m going to blame book twelve in an ongoing series for not being all that accessible to the first time or casual reader because that would be pretty daft really. It’s worth highlighting though for those of you wondering if this is a good place to jump on board for the adventures of Vlad Taltos. It isn’t. ‘Jhegaala’ works but you would be better off going right back to the beginning and starting off with ‘Jhereg’.

Once I managed to get my head round all this new stuff (no mean feat) I was able to concentrate on the story itself and it’s certainly an interesting premise with a mystery to be solved and questions raised over why no-one is actually attempting to solve it. Everything is dealt with very methodically and Brust throws up enough curve balls to keep things fresh and moving forwards at a decent pace. If you can get your head around the minutiae of Dragaeran legal practices (again, no mean feat, there was so much this that it made my head hurt...) you’ll see that everything fits together very neatly at the end and what looked like a simple case at the beginning was actually hiding something far larger and with serious ramifications for the Empire.
Like I said though, there is a lot of legal stuff to wade through on the way. If Brust was trying to say something about the convoluted process behind the wheels of justice then he certainly succeeded but it’s almost a case of him having succeeded all too well. The legal process is so detailed that you will sometimes have difficulty working out where the story is in amongst it all and that’s not a good thing. There’s also an infuriating sense that not a lot is actually happening (other than a couple of bursts of action at the beginning and end of the book). Vlad goes to see his legal advisor, Vlad then goes off to find stuff out and reports back to his legal advisor who then asks more questions and the process begins all over again. Things seem like they’re about to happen and then proceed not to and by the time things really did happen I’d almost stopped caring...

It was fun though to spend time with Vlad Taltos as his slightly acerbic, world weary character is more than good for a few chuckles along the way. If he can’t be sarcastic about something then Vlad won’t say anything at all and this sarcasm never got old for me. Same deal with Loiosh, Vlad’s tame Jhereg.

As was the case with ‘Jhegaala’ though, the reader will find themselves at the mercy of Vlad’s first person account and his annoying tendency to decide that the reader doesn’t actually need to know particular bits of the story as they’re not important. Maybe I don’t need to know and maybe I do; what I’m not keen on though is having that decision made for me in such an open manner. That probably says a lot more about me than it does the book but there you go...
I’m not going to give ‘Iorich’ a score this time round as the main issue that I had with the book was not it’s fault at all. Suffice it to say that ‘Iorich’ is not a book to be tackled unless you’ve read the others first. The story itself keeps you reading but could have done with being allowed to not only surface for air, from time to time, but also with being allowed to run around and do its own thing for a bit.

Having said that though, both ‘Jhegaala’ and ‘Iorich’ have left me sorely tempted to search out ‘Jhereg’ and see how it all began...