This one was a great read - using a McGuffin device, Vlad Taltos recounts the story of how he recieved the Silver Tiassa, It also involves a con of breaking the legitamacy of a tracing spell that merchants are using to track stolen money. It involves Kaavren, Captain of the Phoenix Guards, Devera doing Devera things, and Vlad, who tells the story to a mysterious Easterner.

Well written, very intricate, lots of parts, lots of dead ends, and generally a lot of fun to read. This one is probably in my favorite list of the Vlad Taltos Novels. ( )

Not bad, not great, as Steven Brust works at unifying his narrative arcs set in Dragaera. There was a reason why I gave this series a rest for a few years, as it seemed to be drifting into pot-boiler territory. ( )

Tiassa is book 13 in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series, which is set in the fascinating world of Dragaera, and centers on a wisecracking assassin and crime boss (or, depending on where you are in the series, former assassin and crime boss). At least, it usually centers on him. This is an odd one, though. It's told in a series of different sections set at different times, each featuring different characters and a different style, with only the first section and a brief epilogue being in Vlad's usual first-person POV. Most of the rest of it he's barely in at all, even if he is important to the plot. All these story pieces are connected, but in a weird, disjointed sort of way that left me with a lot of unanswered questions at the end. And, I have to say, I had extremely mixed feelings about the overly detailed, overly literal narrative voice that a good third of the novel is written in. There's a lot of droll humor to it, but it's also genuinely annoying. I'm not positive, because I haven't read them yet, but I have the vague sense that this same voice is used in Brust's Khaavren novels, which are set in the same universe and with which this one is a crossover of sorts. And if that's true, it might well answer the question I've been musing on of whether I should give those a read when I'm finally done with Vlad, because while it's a gimmick that's funny enough to work for twenty pages or so, a hundred pages' worth of it is way too much. ( )

I love how the author keeps changing up the narrative types between the books in this series, and for this one, he changes up for each distinct part. The last part featuring Khaavren was hilarious, as I hadn't been exposed to Parfi's writing style yet. I don't know if all of the Khaavren Romances series is written the same way, but I'm looking forward to finding out! ( )

This was rather interesting in that the main thread of the tale was in a little god-made figurine with incidental characters handling it throughout a space of ten years, including a young Vlad, an older Cawti, his estranged wife, and, oddly enough, the Captain of the Phoenix Guards, of which apparently has his own series, so I just got to enjoy *his* strong voice, which was a pleasure and quite different from either Vlad's or Cawti's.

Suffice to say, strange things are afoot. There could be a horrendous invasion on its way and only stoppable by this little artifact, or it could be just some rather desperate and complicated attempts on Vlad's life. Who knows? I mean, it's not like Vlad has ever given anyone reason to dislike him or anything.

No. Not him. He's as sunny as the Demon Goddess is explicable.

Fun tale, split up quite a bit differently than any others that I've read by Brust, but that's only natural if the main character in focus doesn't actually have a voice. :)

Still loving the series! ( )