Vallista

This is also a 3.5 star book, but I am willingly giving it half a star more for the opening line and the chapter titles.

I enjoyed this book, despite it being annoying. Annoying only because the previous book ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, and I desperately want the continuation of the main series. This book, annoyingly, takes us to a time right before the previous book - Hawk. Explaining the manor at the end, and the very specific room they meet in.

I think this book blends a murder mystery with the haunted gothic home tropes really well. It brings back Devara, an absolutely delightful character introduced few books ago, and gives us more about her story. We also get more about vlad's past lives and about Verra.

This book does a fair job of adding few more puzzle pieces to the overall story. It only makes me want the next in the main series even more.

Yes, I know the next book takes place even further past in the timeline, and I'm annoyed at it already. But, I love Vlad Taltos so I will read it anyway.

3 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
When Devera suddenly appears with a request, Vlad finds himself drawn into a puzzle - a house that cannot exist, but does, across hundreds of years, and that can't be escaped.

Review
I said in my review of the preceding book that I'd missed the one before that, but probably hadn't missed much. I had in mind book #13, Iorich, but having now read Hawk and Vallista in quick succession, it sure seems like they got published in reverse order. A building that plays a key role in Hawk is described as one he's seen before. Then a building that sure seems very similar is at the core of Vallista, and we're told he's visiting it for the first time.

Vallista is (in a not very interesting way) all about time travel and its complications, so maybe this is Brust playing a joke. Or maybe it's a different building. Or ... after having meandered around a lot in this series, and as it approaches what I presume will be the final book #17, Vlad suddenly and without much reason or context learns a lot of things about the world at the end of this book, and maybe Brust or his publisher Tor felt this book fit better later in the series, since Hawk doesn't deal with any of it.

At any rate, I found it a bit disorienting. And that feeling remains, because this is essentially a locked door/puzzle story in which Vlad explores a complex house that crosses lots of boundaries, seemingly at random. Toward the end, I had the feeling that Brust was paying homage to old Adventure/Zork/Colossal Cave-style text adventures, as he retraces his steps through the randomly connected spaces. Before that point, I honestly thought he'd just come up with clever chapter titles that reference other books/works, and built a story around those. The long and short of it is that none of it makes that much sense, and Vlad just wanders around wisecracking and threatening people, with long-suffering Loiosh and Rocza tagging along. Until the end, when Vlad suddenly gets brutally judgmental.

It's decently readable on a page-by-page basis, but not one that will stick on your memory long, because there's just not that much to it aside from the world-changing revelations crammed into one short scene.

This one is a lot different from the other Vlad books. Maybe that'll mark it as a turning point. Only Brust knows.

That said, for anyone reading this review, I'm going to assume you've read some previous Vlad Taltos novels. I mean, seriously, does anyone pick up a series with #15? With that assumption, you'll know that most Vlad books are extravagant tales of planning various capers on the part of Vlad, and then usually his various powerful friends coming together to pull him out of the midst of disaster in just the nick of time as all the careful planning falls apart. Only then do they all discover some piece of information that snaps things into perspective and Vlad ends up putting it all together and saving the day.

Vallista has some similar elements. It's essentially a mystery. Almost an existential mystery, at that. And this time, it's Devera who gets Vlad into the mess and Vlad who has to figure everything out and determine what needs to be done to save her. Along the way, he does reconnect with one powerful “friend,” the Goddess Verra. I won't spoil the ending, but it does ultimately make the very odd feel of this book worth it to stick through to the end.

The key take away from this book is you learn some more of Vlad and his role in the whole cycle. Remembering his “relationship” to Aliera revealed in an earlier book, this one brings a bit more to that table and also firms up Vlad's relationship to Verra.