Where the Kids Are Alright

The Paths of the Dead by Steven Brust
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Where The Phoenix Guard and Five Hundred Years After are like The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After, respectively, with Khaavren, Aerich, Tazendra, and Pel resembling D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (again, respectively, unless I've screwed up), The Paths of the Dead (book one of The Viscount of Adrilankha) corresponds to the first book in The Vicomte Bragelonne. Like that novel, it deals with the aging original heroes and a new generation of heroes coming up behind them. The connections are increasingly tenuous, with the plot having little in common with those novels, but the echoes of Dumas's romances are everywhere.

The most obvious connection, and the most fun to me, is the over-the-top language. It's sort of a joke, but one I never tire of. The rhetorical excess doesn't work for everyone (I see by sampling some other reviews) but it makes me laugh. (I guess I'm simple that way?) Much of the dialogue goes like this:

"Ah, does Your Lordship wish me to explain?"
"Yes, that is it exactly. I wish you to explain."
"I will then."
"I am listening."

A lot of the verbosity (and direct addresses to the reader) is blamed on the fictitious historian telling the story, and it's a device that I approve of.

I found the plot less direct than in the previous novels, and it made the earlier parts of the story less compelling, but I'm willing to go along with the author because I'm still having so much fun. The empire was shattered hundreds of years earlier, in the second book, and forces are gathering to put it back together in this and the following novels, which is cool, though I'm not tracking the various POV characters very well. I hope it comes together more in the middle book of the trilogy. This all feels like setting the stage, so I suspect it picks up and stories come together. Fingers crossed.

I would read this for the language alone, so it's all good. Looking forward to the next book.

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