Jhegaala by Steven Brust
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This 11th book takes us back in time to the point where he'd just left his wife and needed a place to hide away from all the hoards and hoards and hoards of people he'd pissed off, long before he became a godslayer.

Wanna move back home, Vlad? All fine and dandy, except these human yokels have never heard of you and the reverse is also true. Oh, Vlad, what are you doing here?

Well, suffice to say, he gets embroiled in a murder investigation, gets tortured, and discovers that going back to the old world is generally never a good idea. Plus, it's smelly. And corrupt. And pretty much just like the place you came from except for the whole short, brutish, lives they live and the witchcraft, but, you know, DETAILS.

I may not really like this novel for the same reasons I don't like most of the Vlad In Exile books, mostly because I think he works best as a city boy, but let's be honest here... Brust writes a better fantasy than most writers out there, with such clarity of vision and interesting characters that it's hard not to just put him in a class of his own. When I say I dislike one of these books, I'm only saying I dislike it for purely personal reasons and preference, not because the book is at all uninteresting, has story-related problems, or that it isn't satisfying.... Because it was interesting, it didn't have any unresolved issues, and it was satisfying. :) It just happened not to be up to the same standards as the REST of his books. :)

And yet, I'm fully looking forward to the next in the series. :)

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