Returning to Dragaera

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Vlad Taltos series. Some of my earliest memories of hunting down rare books online involve tracking down used paperbacks of the first seven books. Athyra was particularly hard to find back then, and only the first three novels had been conveniently collected in The Book of Jhereg, and I wasn't much of a fan of trade paperbacks anyway. 

Last year I ended up re-reading everything from Jhereg through Orca. When I first encountered the series, I loved the early novels best—those where Vlad is still firmly embedded in “the organization.” Athyra, at the time, left me a bit disappointed. Coming back to it now, I’m surprised at how strong it actually is. Brust rarely writes the book you expect, but he always writes the book he means to, and on this reread I was far better prepared to appreciate the range he moves through.

Back then, Orca and Issola felt like the high point of the series. Orca in particular contains reveals I absolutely didn’t see coming, even though Brust had planted some subtle clues. When Issola came out, I had finally caught up to publication order—and then waited the long five years for Dzur. I read everything from Dzur through Vallista on release, but never returned to them afterwards, and they didn’t linger in my memory the same way the earlier novels did.

Which is probably why it took me so long to pick up Tsalmoth. When I finally did, and then moved straight into Lyorn, something clicked. Both books brought back that spark from the early days of the series. Maybe they genuinely recapture an older tone—or maybe it’s simply that I’ve changed, given my revised opinion of Athyra. It might be time to reread the later mid-series books as well, just to see how they land now.

As for Lyorn, it was a delight to see Kragar again. For years I had somehow half-believed he’d died in one of the earlier books—very in character for him to slip past my assumptions unnoticed. It’s possible I mixed him up with one of Vlad’s less fortunate associates from his exit from the organization.

What is certain, however, is that with Tsalmoth and Lyorn we’ve clearly entered the endgame. Threads that were merely whispers before are now surfacing, and I’m realizing how much I missed on my first pass through the series.

It’s been a long, winding journey—one I started decades ago with flimsy paperbacks and continues now through audio and e-books—but I’m excited to see Brust bring the Cycle to its conclusion. And a little sad, too. Series like this don’t come around often, and it’s been a privilege growing alongside it.