The Paths of the Dead: Book One of the Viscount of Adrilankha - Hardcover

Brust, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312864787 ISBN 13: 9780312864781

Verlag: Tor Books, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

The long-awaited sequel to The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years After

Two hundred years after Adron’s Disaster, in which Dragaera City was accidentally reduced to an ocean of chaos by an experiment in wizardry gone wrong, the Empire isn’t what it used to be. Deprived at a single blow of their Emperor, of the Orb that is the focus of the Empire’s power, of their capital city with its Impe-rial bureaucracy, and of a great many of their late fellow citizens, the surviving Dragaerans have been limping through a long Interregnum, bereft even of the simple magic and sorcery they were accustomed to use in everyday life.

Now the descendants and successors of the great ad-venturers Khaavren, Pel, Aerich, and Tazendra are growing up in this seemingly diminished world, con-vinced, like their elders, that the age of adventures is over and nothing interesting will ever happen to them. They are, of course, wrong . . . .

For even deprived of magic, Dragaerans fight, plot, and conspire as they breathe, and so do their still-powerful gods. The enemies of the Empire prowl at its edges, in-scrutable doings are up at Dzur Mountain...and, unex-pectedly, a surviving Phoenix Heir, young Zerika, is discovered—setting off a chain of swashbuckling events that will remake the world yet again.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and raised in a family of Hungarian labor organizers, Steven Brust worked as a musician and a computer programmer before coming to prominence as a writer in 1983 with Jhereg, the first of his novels about Vlad Taltos, a human professional assassin in a world dominated by long-lived, magically-empowered human-like "Dragaerans."

Over the next several years, several more "Taltos" novels followed, interspersed with other work, including To Reign in Hell, a fantasy re-working of Milton's war in Heaven; The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, a contemporary fantasy based on Hungarian folktales; and a science fiction novel, Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille. The most recent "Taltos" novels are Dragon and Issola. In 1991, with The Phoenix Guards, Brust began another series, set a thousand years earlier than the Taltos books; its sequels are Five Hundred Years After and the three volumes of "The Viscount of Adrilankha": The Paths of the Dead, The Lord of Castle Black, and Sethra Lavode.

While writing, Brust has continued to work as a musician, playing drums for the legendary band Cats Laughing and recording an album of his own work, A Rose for Iconoclastes. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada where he pursues an ongoing interest in stochastics.

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“Steven Brust Might Just Be America’s Best Fantasy Writer!” —Tad Williams

Praise for Steven Brust

“Splendid!” —Kirkus Reviews on Dragon

“As always, Brust invests Vlad with the panache of a Dumas musketeer and the collo-quial voice of one of Zelazny’s Amber heroes. This is a rousing adventure with enough humor, action, and sneaky plot twists to please newcomers as well as longtime series fans.”—Publishers Weekly on Issola

“Brust is an indubitable master of swashbuckling high fantasy, and this book is an un-doubted treat.” —Booklist on Five Hundred Years After

“Filled with high adventure, intrigues, a great deal of good humor and moments of genuine hilarity, this is easily Brust’s most mature and entertaining work to date. It’s rare for a book over hundred pages to seem as short as this one. It’s even rarer to find one that seems likely to satisfy such a broad range of reader expectations, humor, adventure, in-trigue, and wit all in the same package.”—Science Fiction Chronicle on Five Hundred Years After

“Powerful and impressive.” —Locus on Five Hundred Years After

“Brust isn’t afraid to break the boundaries of contemporary commercial fantasy.” —Newsday

Rezensionen

Two centuries after the event known as Adron's Disaster deprived the Dragaeran Empire of its emperor and its stability, the descendants of the Empire's greatest heroes set off on their own voyage of discovery, despite the fact that their diminished world contains little in the way of adventure. Their fortunes change when they encounter Zerika, a young woman who carries the lineage of the Phoenix within her and who provides the impetus for a revival of the old days of glory-provided she survives her journey along the Paths of the Dead. Continuing his swashbuckling epic fantasy (begun with The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years After) with a new series and a new generation of heroes, Brust, with his arch humor and quasi-archaic narrative style, pays homage to Dumas, Zola, and other masters of swashbuckling adventure. A good choice for most fantasy collections.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In his latest chronicle of the Dragaeran Empire, Brust (Issola) conjures the spirit of Dumas (the subtitle evokes the Viscount trilogy that includes The Three Musketeers), though he less successfully captures the panache of those classic swashbucklers. The mock historic narrative follows Khaavren and other heroes from the author's earlier books (The Phoenix Guards; Five Hundred Years After; the Vlad Taltos series) and gives the origins of later ones in the course of the epic restoration of the Dragaeran Empire. Piro, son of Khaavren and heir to his father's role of protector of the Emperor, seeks to help a childhood friend achieve her destiny. With polished manners and courteous speech, he must maneuver his way amid a number of similarly equipped folk to escort his friend to the Paths of the Dead, entryway to the Halls of Judgment (where sit the gods), so that she may retrieve the Imperial Orb, linchpin of empire. After that, the real work begins. Brust strives hard to recreate Dumas's charm, including a mix of humorous and tragic elements, a romantic tone, intersecting plot lines, themes of vengeance and return, slightly effete nobles and somewhat clownish (if sensible) commoners. The author might have done better to ascribe comic verbal ticks to only a few characters. Also, since much of the character interaction depends on knowledge of previous books, casual readers will be occasionally puzzled.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This sequel to Five Hundred Years After (1994) continues Brust's exuberant, if somewhat sprawling, fantasy pastiche of Dumas. The survivors of the fall of the Dragearean Empire are limping along without magic or capital city or emperor. They retain their taste for plot, counterplot, and general skullduggery, though, and the descendants of adventurers in earlier books of the saga are up to their teeth in all those activities. The stakes mount higher when Zorika, a surviving Phoenix heir, turns up, and the possibility of recreating the empire becomes excitingly real. But a great many more swashes must be buckled before that resolution can arrive, and this book apparently launches a new trilogy. Readers unfamiliar with Dumas need not retreat to Brust's inspiration to enjoy this yarn, though those who have read The Phoenix Guards (1991) and Five Hundred Years After may enjoy it somewhat more. Still, Brust is incapable of writing a dull book, and most fantasy collections should add this un-dull volume. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Tor Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312864787
• ISBN 13: 9780312864781
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: PILOT CORPORATION OF EUROPE; https://www.pilotpen.de/; ; PAE DE LA CAILLE; ALLONZIER LA CAILLE; Frankreich