Yendi (1984) was published a year after Jhereg but is set a year or so before it. If I hadn’t read them bound in one (phenomenally ugly) volume I’d have assumed I’d picked them up in the wrong order. But indeed, Brust’s plan in writing a series was to chose immediately to go back and fill in a volume of earlier events. That’s risky, as the reader who reads in publication order knows how it’s going to come out. Brust doesn’t rely on suspense for tension, but rather on the interest of the twisty plot. You know Vlad’s going to survive and win and get the girl—but there’s a general expectation of that anyway in the kind of book this purports to be.
Vlad’s voice, hard-boiled and cynical first person, has been compared to Zelazny, and also to classic American hardboiled detective fiction, but Vlad isn’t a detective, he’s a criminal. Nevertheless, in both Jhereg and Yendi he solves mysteries. The plot in Yendi is complicated and twisty, as you might expect—yendi the animal are kind of heraldic poisonous snakes.
I think Yendi would be a perfectly reasonable place to start the series.
Spoilers for Yendi start here. Actually, a general spoiler policy on these posts. I haven’t read Iorich yet, and neither have most other people. Please don’t spoil it. When I read it, there’ll be an Iorich review, and it will have a spoiler section. Until then, no spoilers in comments please. However, spoilers for any of the other Dragaera books are fine. I’m going on the general assumption that you’ve either read them all or don’t care.
Vlad in Yendi is notably younger, brasher and less confident, but still himself. That’s quite impressive. Not all writers can make that work. Apart from the fact it’s set before Jhereg and has Vlad’s meeting with Cawti, Yendi doesn’t play games with time. We know Vlad’s going to be married to Cawti the second we see her—even before we hear her name, because we were told about how they met. We know Vlad’s going to win the Jhereg war and get an enlarged area. What keeps us reading is finding out how, which is itself a twisty Yendi thing to do.
As for Cawti, the whole “killing him first and then falling in love” is done very well. Here we do see set-up and warning signs for the relationship and for the situation as of Teckla—most noticeably Vlad thinking of Cawti as a female version of himself, and Vlad leaping to conclusions about her and about himself. They fall in love awfully quickly and with really insufficient thought—but that’s how people do. We see Noish-pa for the first time here, though he was mentioned in Jhereg. There couldn’t be a nicer happy ending. Everything is still upbeat and light, even with the hardboiled tone.
With the plot, re-reading, it’s obvious that every time the Sorceress in Green is mentioned Vlad assumes she’s an Athyra and Morrolan doesn’t get the chance to correct him. She is in fact the Yendi of the title—and as well as her long plot, Vlad spends much of the book plotting and trying to figure out plots. The whole situation with Norathar is interesting—and it’s also interesting that Brust doesn’t really make much use of Norathar in the series. She’s been Cawti’s partner, but she’s very much kept in the background.
I like Yendi, it’s sufficiently like Jhereg that it satisfies my “give me another cookie” craving and sufficiently different to be interesting.
On to Brokedown Palace.
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
I agree with everything you say, except that instead of “doesn’t make much use” I would say “hasn’t yet made much use.” She’ll be important when Zerika steps down (or otherwise stops being Empress).
Perhaps my memory is faulty—I’m using this as an excuse to re-read everything myself, too—but hasn’t Zerika actually stepped down by the time of Dzur?
Has she? Oops. Time to drop everything and start reading!
One of the reasons I really like Brust is because he doesnt feel tied down to the conventional time frame in writing his books, but his prequel novels dont feel like they were set up just to make an extra buck (not that I mind someone doing that if it is entertaining but so many prequel novels and movies just feel like they were add-ons and not really a part of a plan).
Brust’s books feel like a part of an extended plan.
Johntheirishmongol: They totally do — it seems as if it’s all part of one composition. That’s part of the delight of these books for me.
Zerika hands over the Orb to Norathar in an orderly transition, sometime later than 309 PI. Dzur take place in 248 PI, at least 61 years before that.
I agree that Yendi was a great follow-up to Jhereg. It gave you the background for Vlad’s position and relationshop with Cawti.
But for me, the best writing of the book were separate but related themes to have a different Warlord appointed and the war Vlad had to fight to keep (and ultimately enlarge) his area. The details of these two fronts on the war (Morrolan/Kiera financing Vlad, attacks on various establishments, multiple assassination attempts, etc) was very well done.
@6 AlexxKay: Do I dare ask where you got that info—is there some reference I’ve missed in one of the books, or are you getting it from some extra-textual source?
Michael Alan Dobman: The dedication of Five Hundred Years After gives the date in cycle terms and in terms of the reign of Norathar. I noticed that it would therefore be possible to do lots of complicated arithmetic and figure out the date of her accession, and this, I venture, may be what Mr Kay has done.
@6: Thus implying that Vlad would have to live to be quite old (by Easterner terms) to witness (let alone be somehow involved in) the turning of the Cycle — but IIRC, it’s already been established that witches are long-lived. (Assassins, on the other hand, are notably not, and people who inform on House Jhereg even more so.)
Of course, there’s also the possibility that he could become undead, but with a name like Vladimir, how likely is that?
Ye Gods, I hadn’t even considered that he might become undead! There’s been Sethra all along, so much a character that you forget the undead bit… Hm!
To clarify, the Introduction to _The Phoenix Guards_ is written in the 309th year of Zerika’s reign. So we know Zerika reigned at least that long.
There in fact isn’t (yet) enough information to know exactly when Zerika handed the Orb to Norathar, but the above gives us a minimum.
Brust doesn’t rely on suspense for tension
I think you’re making an important mistake here. The thing Brust isn’t relying on is not suspense, it’s surprise. He is relying on suspense. I’m using the terms as Alfred Hitchcock used them; I figure he’s a pretty good authority on the matter.
Surprise is when the story-teller hits you with something you weren’t expecting. Suspense is when you, the audience, know something that characters in the film don’t know.
Hitchcock used the example of a poker game with a bomb under the table. In the Surprise version, we see four men playing poker around a table for fifteen minutes, and then suddenly the bomb goes off, giving the audience a few seconds of excitement. In the Suspense version, we’re shown the bomb at the beginning of the scene, so we’re tense and excited through the whole fifteen minutes, wondering when it’s going to explode.
The fact that you know in advance that Vlad and Cawti are going to try to kill each other and fall in love means you get to start the book waiting for it to happen.