#khaavren
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It fuckin breaks my whole ass brain that Steven Brust's Dragera novels aren't wildly popular.
Like, the Khaavren romances are written for a Very Specific type of person, i.e. one who read Alexandre Dumas and said "I like that, but I want that authorial voice dialed up to 17 and also for there to be magic and shit". Paarfi can be a challenge (it's worth it, because ultimately it's part of the whole). But they're so goddamn good. You can see what the books are going for, and they nail it.
And Vlad? Vladimir Taltos gives you 19 easy to read, action-packed novels full of snark and magic and angst and goddamn it there's social commentary to boot. And holy shit, these breezy, funny, quippy books that are fun to read are also building to something incredible that's going to see its end soon - there are two novels left before the series is complete. The last few published have left me in a daze after reading them, trying to wrestle with The Implications.
If you like Murderbot, but kind of wished there were swords and sorcery instead of guns and hacking, Vlad is your lad.
If you've ever asked yourself if it's possible to have a series of epic fantasy novels without casual sexism, then Dragaera is the place to go.
It's got Enemies to Lovers. It's got Found Family. It's got character deaths that mean something. There are reveals, both overt and subtle, that left me stunned (there was one book in particular that had me racing back to my collection to flip through older books because I KNEW I RECOGNIZED THAT NAME WTF HOLY HSIT).
The books are so re-readable, and honestly I would advise rereads because there's a ton of stuff layered in that adds so much to the overall series. You can read them in publication order (starting with Jhereg), or chronological order (I put Brokedown Palace at the front myself, but others might skip that one and go right to The Phoenix Guards). Or you can start with the chronological first book in the Taltos series (Taltos - makes it easy) and dip into the Khaavren romances when you're comfy and want to shake things up a bit.
FYI - the Taltos books will probably also make you hungry. IDK what a kethna is supposed to be, but I want to eat one so damn bad.
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Hello again to the Alexandre Dumas shitposting side of Tumblr! Aramis is a weasel and also my favorite!
#I am also slowly working my way through Steven Brust's Khaavren Romances#which is a fantasy Dumas pastiche and gives us Porthos But Girl. She is incredible#(his version of Aramis is just as far as I can tell... Still Aramis. No notes)
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List Your Top Five Favorite Books or Series and Tag Five People!
Tagged by @diapasondame
The Taltos series by Steven Brust (also the Khaavren romances, which are wildly different and if you like reading Dumas you'll love these, but since they're set in the same fictional universe I'm going to put them here
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce
The Summoner (and sequel The Blood King) by Gail Z Martin. There's more in this series but these two form a solid duology)
The Laundry Files by Charles Stross
Tagging.... @bluemaskedkarma, @norcumii, @araceil, @caemdare, and @knitmeapony
And anyone else who wants to join in ^_^
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Every so often I think about the fact that there really isn't a fandom for the Dragaera novels by Steven Brust on here, and it kind of makes me sad that they they're apparently so unknown. If you're reading this, please read Taltos by Steven Brust, and then the rest of the series and also the Khaavren romances. One thing I have heard said about them is that they get a bit depressing in the middle of the series, but I promise things get better.
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sometimes people think "i should write a sequel in which the characters from the original book are parents!" and they are always* wrong. and for me it's not even because i don't want to see my favorite characters be bad parents, it's because i don't want them to be generic Parents Of A Main Character. is there anything more heartbreaking than seeing your favorite character tell their child they shouldn't go adventuring because it's Too Dangerous?
#*ok 95% of the time#GENEROUSLY#@brust ilu but fuck Khaavren in paths of the dead is boring#(ok MAYBE i would have been more ok with Khaavren being boring#if Piro weren't ALSO boring)#trope corner
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Might fuck around and reread the vlad taltos series
#haven't read most of those books since high school#tine to see if khaavren is still a major literary crush#crap#nanrea rereads dragaera
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A missing scene set sometime during _The Phoenix Guards_, but originally inspired by a single line in _Sethra Lavode_. It didn't look like anyone else was going to write it, so I decided to do it myself.
Another piece for a tiny fandom that hardly anyone will read, but it was fun to write.
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Can you suggest some good fantasy series? Not obvious ones like LOTR, ASOIAF or First Law.
Sure thing. Let’s go to the bookshop:
Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch. For my money, the best urban fantasy ever, because Aaronovitch is one of the few authors who actually nails the urban side.
The works of Guy Gavriel Kay. Beautifully lyrical fantasy series deeply informed by a love of history. Renaissance Italy? Justinian’s Constantinople? Moorish Spain? Song and Tang Dynasty China? He’s got it all.
Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities trilogy and Foundryside, whose works all avoid the usual Standard Fantasy Setting pitfalls, they’re all post-medieval, the world-building is very clever, the characters are well-drawn, and their politics are in the right place.
Steven Brust’s Dragaera novels. The Khaavren Romances are great Alexandre Dumas-style swashbucklers, the Vlad Taltos are noir mysteries, and they’re both set in the same world!
Scott Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards series. The adventures of a bunch of con-men pulling off heists in various magical Renaissance city-states.
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glueblade replied to your post “I was all set to finally sit down and read The Count of Monte Cristo,...”
As an aside, do you recommend that people read the Dumas Pastiche with magical elves?
The books in question are the Khaavren Romances by Steven Brust. It’s been a long time since I reread them, so I can’t make the most informed recommendation right now, though I can warn that the worldbuilding is pretty impenetrable if you go into them blind. They’re spin-off prequels of the author’s preexisting fantasy series with a much more conventional narrator who’s aware that he’s explaining the nature of the world to someone from outside it, while these books are in-universe historical fiction that takes for granted that, for instance, the in-universe audience knows what species most of the characters are.
On the other hand:
#glueblade#reply#i'm also extremely fond of the bit where a terrible and feared sorceress with a 6-digit age#argues with a bunch of quotes from her past self because she doesn't remember saying them#and has changed her mind a bunch of times over the last hundred thousand some years#also the bengloaraford derail#dragaera
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Ten Fandoms!
Tagged by @hellomynameisandiam
Rules: List ten of your favorite characters from ten different fandoms.
1. Hanzo Shimada (Overwatch) -- I flipped a coin.
2. Ravi/Lavi (D. Gray-man)
3. Highlord Darion Mograine (World of Warcraft)
4. Kid Loki (Marvel Comics Universe)
5. Nebula (Marvel Cinematic Universe)
6. Serra Teresa di’Marano (The Sun Sword Series)
7. Sethra Lavode (The Vlad Taltos series/The Khaavren Romances)
8. Soulcatcher (The Black Company Series)
9. Ahsoka Tano (Star Wars)
10. Cathak Cainan (Exalted)
@doomhamster @melissaknowsthings @gnomeicecream @exmachinus
And anybody else who wants to play along. ^_^
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fuck marry kill, men of Paraafi's Phoenix Guards
ok thanks
1. kill Pel, sorry, he's kind of a douchebag
2. fuck Khaavren, he's probably the best in bed, if a little puppy-ish
3. marry Aerich even though i kno he's ~in love~ with Tazendra because for one thing i'm actually in his House, it's actually possible
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Favorite Female Characters Meme
Favorite Female Characters meme
Rules: write your 10 favorite female characters from 10 different fandoms and tag 10 different people
tagged by @curiousthimble
1. Kushiel’s Legacy- Phedre
2. The King Killer Chronicles- Denna
3. The Khaavren Romances: Tazendra
4: The Vlad Taltos Chronicles: Aleria e’Kieron
5: Friday: Friday Jones (by Robert Heinlein)
6: Incarnations of Immortality: Niobe Kaftan
7: Lazarus Long stories: Maureen Johnson
8: Oz stories: Glenda the good witch of the North
9: Marvel comics X-men: Katherine “Kitty” Pryde
10: DC comics: Dr. Doris Zeul
I’ve realized I need to read more stuff with female characters.
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As President of the KJ Parker / Steven Brust fanclubs, can you talk a bit about why you've joined these illustrious organizations and also what you would suggest reading as initiation materials (if one didn't want to read all the books in a big series).
Hm, so, both of them come with a lot of qualifiers.
I love K.J. Parker for being very dark, but never without humor, and a sense of absurdism. His characters aren't, honestly, great, but their relationships are - so many of his books are about what people will do in the name of love, often familial love, and how "I'll do anything for my family" isn't always a good thing. I also love how real and tactile his world (I think, at this point, that I can confidently say that all the books are set in one world) is – it's pretty much the Late Antique world, but in a way that's just slightly off. I love the magic in the Fencer trilogy - it is a plot-driver, but also no one actually knows if it works, and the Academy goes through great pains to say it doesn't. But also, no one in his books is nice, or selfless, or honestly, even kind, and that's something that might very reasonably put one off.
So, for a single book recommendation, I'd say that Sharps, about a fencing team sent to a former enemy's country as a peace gesture, gives you a pretty good idea of what he's about; if you don't mind a trilogy, I'd say the Fencer trilogy, his first, is pretty good (Colors in the Steel is the first one).
And the problem with Brust is that the Vlad Taltos series has been going on for 37 years (Jhereg, the first book, was published in 1983), and he's changed his mind about the tone and the overall plot a whole bunch of times over those three and ¾ decades. Also, I love the world and the characters, and Brust's style, but I don't know if I'd say that any single Vlad book is a knockout.
So my Brust recommendation is actually the Khaavren Romances, the first being The Phoenix Guards. It's a little weird as an entry-point, because Phoenix Guards is a pretty much point for point fantasy retelling of The Three Musketeers, fully in a very good pastiche of Dumas' style, set in the same world as the Taltos series, with an in-universe frame (the author tried to get PG published as history but no one would take it, so he's publishing it as a novel), and assumes you have some knowledge of the world, but it was the first one I read, and while I had some confusing moments, they weren't enough to put me off the book or Brust as a whole.
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Tagged by @persephinae
Rules:
1. Post the rules
2. Answer the questions given to you by the tagger
3. Write 11 questions of your own
4. And tag 11 people
1. what is your favorite fairy tale? I’m a big fan of the Nixie in the Pond, tho the Old Woman in the Woods is pretty great too
2. what is a song that resonates with you strongly?
youtube
3. what is your favorite quote or poem? a short poem from the novel Ecotopia (I’m like 90% sure that’s where it’s from):
Sun,
Here we watched you go down,
As if for the last time.
Thank you for the morning.
4. what is your favorite book or movie? the Fifth Element and the Left Hand of Darkness are generally my go to answers because I’ve loved them since basically forever
5. what is your favorite game series? it’s really hard to choose, but probably Ratchet and Clank for sheer fun factor
6. where is a place you wish you could travel to? I’ve always wanted to see Antarctica before it melts
7. who is your favorite character? fuck, probably Dave Strider I guess, though I have a hard time picking favorites overall tbh
8. what is your favorite drink? alcoholic: cement mixer, nonalcoholic: ginger ale
9. what is your favorite season? Winter
10. what is your favorite holiday? I don’t really have one. probably thanks giving or christmas, I guess
11. who is a character you admire? Khaavren, especially during 500 Years After. What a great book, I need to reread that series.
ok, my questions:
When you get to customize a character, do you make it look as much like you as possible or as different as possible?
Expanding on question 1, are you able to verbalize why you make those choices?
Gotta have blue hair?
Bread preferences: White or wheat?
Do you think raccoons have creepy hands or adorable hands?
What song is playing on loop in your head lately?
Would you buy a piece of granite debris as a souvenir should you ever get to visit the Crazy Horse Memorial?
What are some common character traits that attract you to your favorite characters?
Do you need complete silence when you sleep or do you need some sort of white noise or music?
Cyberpunk or steampunk?
Dumbest impulse purchase?
tagging, hmm. @persephinae because I’m cheap like that, chat of doom peeps if you’re up for it as always, maybe @sekritjay @anthropwashere @nachttour if you’re in the mood, idk, and anyone else who wants to, you can @ me if you want me to do yours, too, it’s cool
#11 questions#especially if you make up interesting questions I'd love to answer some weird questions#also raccoon hands are adorable in my eyes they're so fuckin cute
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Khaavren looked at his master, as if seeing him for the first time, and, in a sudden return of the youthful loyalty that had been all but eradicated by the heartless years, dropped to his knee, took His Majesty’s smooth, manicured hand into his own sword-callused one, and said, “Sire, only the fates know the final outcome of the battle, but surely there is glory in knowing one has not surrendered, and surely there is comfort in knowing one is not alone.”
The Emperor nodded, and the Orb turned to a soft, gentle green as he straightened his back. “Yes,” he said. “That is a kind of glory, and that is surely a comfort.”
Steven Brust, Five Hundred Years After
#when is a second book in the series my favorite????#i weep#also has lots of My Boyfriend Adron being Hot#and Not Evil#the things i choose to read
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