Steven Brust’s Iorich is his latest Vlad novel, and something of a return to form. After the cosmic, series-shaking events of Issola, Brust wrote the decent but light Dzur and the disappointingly insubstantial Jhegaala, and... well, it’d been a long time since Brust wrote a meaty novel with the traditional virtures of the Taltos series.
But now he has. Before you get too excited, I’ll say that these are the traditional virtues of the Taltos series — lots of scheming and sneaking and investigating and what-not — and it still doesn’t advance the larger-scale story of Issola. But even so, scheming smart-ass Vlad is something we haven’t really had too much of lately; the previous books have been much more somber and slow.
If you’ve been reading the series but been disappointed in the last few, there’s a reasonable chance this one might satisfy you. If you haven’t read the series, you absolutely need to.
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