bloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooog.akho

This is book 17 of a 19-book series, with at least 7 books published in companion series, so no one should read this as a first taste of Brust’s Dragaera setting. There is no exposition on the lore, or anything like that. I think I missed a few volumes, and it’s been a while, so some of the context was confusing.

To add to that confusion, this novel is about how Vlad Taltos, the series’s protagonist and unreliable narrator, hides from his criminal colleagues in a theater; the theater’s trying to present a musical, which one of the noble houses is trying to censor through a legal challenge; the reason for the censoring attempt is that the musical is about how, in the past, an emperor from this noble house tried to censor a play, and about the legal proceedings around that; the reason for the emperor censoring the play is that it describes his attempt to censor information about a war crime.

That’s it, in simplified form. There’s also a bunch of fantasy stuff.

Structurally, there’s an unreliable first-person narration from Vlad; the songs he overhears from the musical (chiefly introductions of various theatrical professions); and a history book he’s reading, describing actual events.

As usual with Brust’s novels, this is all great fun.

Though, of course, ugh. Musicals. Apparently, Dragaeran musicals are three-day affairs.