Ooh, look, yet another novel I have little to no opinion on.
Which is not to say I disliked Steven Brust’s Jheghaala. The eleventh novel in Brust’s Vlad Taltos series, it’s one with lower stakes than usual (though I’ve only read two others in the series – as with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, you can comfortably duck in and out of without too many problems). Fleeing from the city of Adrilankha after some unspecified diplomatic Event which I shall probably encounter in another novel, our assassin-hero Vlad heads to his home country to find out more about his family. But his questions inadvertently get his kinfolk killed. So Jhegaala is really a murder mystery: who killed Vlad’s family, and why?
There’s a lot of chatting, and a lot of waiting, and a lot of eating. The ending doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and I couldn’t be bothered to flip backwards and work it all out. (It seems Jo Walton had the same problem, so I don’t feel too bad about this.) It’s kind of a meh book, in other words, but on the other hand it’s quite fun hanging out in this high-fantasy world while not very much happens. Vlad is a fun protagonist who doesn’t take himself too seriously, which is also, incidentally, a good way of describing this series.
The English Student 