Hawk

Hawk, by Steven Brust
 


 I got this on Tuesday, and it slowly ate at me how little time I had to sit down and read it. Steven Brust's Dragaera novels have been around since Jhereg in 1983 (that's a link to the later collection of several of them), but I got involved in them due to a bad heat regulator in my old '94 Ford pickup truck, a 40 mile commute, and my first wife. She left it in the car, my car broke down in the middle of nowhere, and I had a bit of a wait, so I started in on Jhereg. Hawk is the 20th novel in that universe, and 14th in the series (Brokedown Palace is a stand-alone, and the Khavreen Romances, starting with The Phoenix Guards, is a stylistically different series, though still wonderful.)

Vlad Taltos is a human assassin in an empire of "elves" (a term seldom used in the series, but evocative). Part of the House Jhereg, which handles organized crime within the empire, he did both freelance assassinations, troubleshooting, and ran an area for the organization, making his profit and passing a fair amount up the chain. But Vlad made some mistakes (that seemed like a good idea at the time) and, in the book Phoenix, had to start running for his life from the Organization. But, one day, he has a plan. A plan that can make the Organization a lot of money... maybe so much as to get the price off his head. The story of him trying to get the price off his head is Hawk.

Brust's style in Vlad draws a lot from crime novels; having read them recently, I can see the influences of Raymond Chandler, but there's also a lot of modern television banter in the dialog; the back and forth between people, sometimes leaving the occurrences that prompt statements to be explained after the explanation happens, as if you're sitting in a room watching, and only become aware of them when someone comments upon them. While Brust spends a lot of time on action, he doesn't revel in the violence quite like Abercrombie does (for better or for worse), and he likes to give you some surprises; while we see a lot of what Vlad is setting up, and get some hints as to what's going on, we don't really get the full understanding of it until everything unfolds. It's enjoyable to reconnect how everything has worked out, frequently more or less as Vlad planned, but usually with a few monkey wrenches thrown in just to prove that Vlad isn't all-knowing, merely that combination of talented, skilled, ballsy and lucky that makes him so much fun to read.

In other books, Brust has said he's got the phrase "And now I'm going to tell you something really cool" in his workspace, and he does just that; he tells cool stories. Sometimes, you're a step or two ahead of Vlad; sometimes, Vlad assumes you're a step or two ahead of him and tells you that it's not that easy. And, sometimes, everyone is lost together. But the books consistently enjoyable, and frequent rereads on my shelves.

Soon: Richard K. Morgan's The Dark Defiles. Preordered them, got them together, and went with Hawk first, since I knew Brust to be a faster read that Morgan, who likes to drag you through the dirt a little.