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Steven Brust

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The Baron of Magister Valley (Dragaera Book 2) Kindle Edition

by Steven Brust (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Related to: The Khaavren Romances

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From the vaults of Dragaeran history and the mind of master fantasist Steven Brust--a tale of betrayal and vengeance that is not at all a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo

Reader, you will undoubtedly have had the misfortune of consuming the rotten fruit of fallacies that we—Paarfi of Roundwood (esteemed historian of House of Hawk and exquisite artisan of truths)—“borrow” our factual recount of Dragaeran history from some obscure fellow who goes by the name Al Dumas or some silly nomenclature of that nature.

The salacious claims that The Baron of Magister Valley bears any resemblance to a certain nearly fictional narrative about an infamous count are unfounded (we do not dabble in tall tales. The occasional moderately stretched? Yes. But never tall).

Our tale is that of a nobleman who is betrayed by those he trusted, and subsequently imprisoned. After centuries of confinement, he contrives to escape and prepares to avenge himself against his betrayers.

A mirror image of The Count of Monte Cristo, vitrolic naysayers still grouse? Well, that is nearly and utterly false.

Also by Paarfi of Roundwood:
The Khaavren Romances
1. The Phoenix Guards
2. Five Hundred Years After
3. The Paths of the Dead (The Viscount of Adrilankha I)
4. The Lorde of Castle Black (The Viscount of Adrilankha II)
5. Sethra Lavode (The Viscount of Adrilankha III)

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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438 pages
Language

English
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Tor Books
Publication date

28 July 2020
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3528 KB
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Praise for Steven Brust

"Surprisingly resonant...another solid entry in the series." --RT Review, 4 stars, on Vallista

"Clever....Brust's signature wit and narrative voice keep the action flowing and entertaining." --Publishers Weekly on Vallista

"Brust is one of those natural caper writers, a pulp writer in the Hammett tradition, someone with what William Gibson calls 'wheels on his tractor'.... A writer who can spin a yarn that keeps you guessing until the end." --Cory Doctorow on Hawk

"Wonderful...Like most of Brust's books, this witty, wry tale stands alone and is very accessible to new readers." --Publishers Weekly on Tiassa

"Watch Steven Brust. He's good. He moves fast. He surprises you. Watching him untangle the diverse threads of intrigue, honor, character and mayhem from amid the gears of a world as intricately constructed as a Swiss watch is a rare pleasure." --Roger Zelazny

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From the vaults of Dragaeran history and the mind of master fantasist Steven Brust, a tale of betrayal and vengeance that is not at all a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07LF623JS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books (28 July 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3528 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 438 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1250311470

Best Sellers Rank: 518,747 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 1,080 in Collections & Anthologies Fantasy
- 1,561 in Fantasy Anthologies
- 3,113 in Historical Fantasy (Kindle Store)

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Steven Brust

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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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P A DEWS THOMSON

Good Tribute

Reviewed in Australia on 27 August 2020

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In the same vein as 500 Years After and The Viscount of Adrilanka. In the style of Dumas, and the world of Brust. Neatly told and, once you get used to the pace, quite engrossing.

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Patricia Pointing

not Brust's best, but engaging and funny once it gets going

Reviewed in Canada on 30 November 2020

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Honestly I'd buy the phone book if Brust wrote his own version of it... and probably like parts of it. This book is better than *that*, but not one of his best, for sure. It takes a looong time to get going, and while Paarfi is funny (if that phrase means nothing to you, you probably don't want to read this book anyway) he is not AS funny as Brust seems to think he is here. There is an awful lot of Paarfi-style padding. Some is funny, some is EXTREMELY funny (and some non-Paarfi parts are pretty funny too, to be honest), but still. It gets loooong. Read it if you've read all his other books (or at least all the Paarfi-authored ones) and want to collect them all; but if you are new to the Dragaeran series, I would not recommend it.

Davy Krieger

By the horse, I nearly think it's perfect!

Reviewed in the United States on 5 September 2020

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We are told, in Shetwil of the House of Dzur's introduction to this history by Paarfi of Roundhill, that the one word review "perfection," while wholly accurate and sufficient, didn't include enough words for the liking of the publisher. Shetwil's review is, however, accurate and sufficient, but at the risk of gilding the lily, I will add to it.

Long have I been a fan of Brust's "Viscount of Adrilankha" series, so much so that my best friend and I can fall into "Paarfi-talk" effortlessly, rattling on in the style of the many heroes, scoundrels, scalliwags and maestros to whom we're introduced in the series. Long have I waited for more in the same vein, if not the same characters, and at long last that desire is satisfied. Brust's pastiche, homage and "stan" of Dumas is masterful and enjoyable, with lively characters, a complex plot in the tradition of stories like The Count of Monte Cristo and The Man in the Iron Mask, and sparkling yet subtle wit throughout.

As a writer, Brust gets better, year after year - rarely resting on his laurels, and evolving his craft. His other series may revisit the same characters again and again, but never the same themes or styles, always fresh and reinvigorated by a ceaseless, restless imagination in service to an increasingly talented writer. Even if I didn't personally know that Brust dearly loved Dumas, it would be plainly evident in this series, and nowhere more obvious than in The Baron of Magister Valley. But it happens I do know for a fact that Brust is passionate about Dumas - I once had the pleasure of dining with the gentleman in his home, an anecdote I will now share not just to name-drop one of my favorite authors, but also to illustrate the sincerity of his admiration for one of his own.

Mr. Brust had a broken linux PC, which he needed in working order for professional reasons. I happened to have a fair amount of expertise in linux, and also planning to be visiting near where he lived, so offered to fix it for him. In exchange he put my girlfriend and I up for the night and cooked us one of Noish-pa's specialties. I brought a good bottle of Tokay for dessert, and the meal was excellent. I suppose it might have been stronger than I expected because I was in a flood of perhaps excessive good cheer when I related that my best friend and I would natter at each other Paarfi style for hours. He told me that it was Dumas style, not Paarfi style ... to which I replied, foolishly, that surely it was an exaggeration of Dumas? And then Stephen Brust, sitting at his dinner table, reached behind and picked up a volume of Alexandre Dumas without even standing up - and turned immediately to a page in which it was amply demonstrated that, indeed, it was no exaggeration of Dumas. The man had a copy of Dumas literally to-hand, apparently at all times. I was astonished and remain impressed.

"Baron of Magister Valley" is no less a loving tribute than the previous works. It follows a star-crossed couple, Eremit of Cryden, and his fiancee Livosha. Both their respective families are ruined by a complicated plot by a cabal of villains, and both go about first surviving the attack, escaping, and returning for revenge in entirely different ways. Livosha, particularly, is endearing; her indifference to danger is matched only by her love and loyalty to her brother (another key character, Kefaan.) Both characters have a multitude of adventures, setbacks, victories and hard lessons as they endure the vagaries of fate.

Needless to say, I enjoyed this book from cover to cover, every word; every preface, introduction, footnote and editorial aside. My only disappointment was when the book ended. I devoutly hope there are more works of Paarfi of Roundhill that are yet to be uncovered and submitted for publication; many more.

13 people found this helpful

Marshall Lord

Brilliant rewrite of "The Count of Monte Cristo" in a fantasy universe

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 August 2020

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"The Baron of Magister Valley" is a highly amusing and exciting stand-alone adventure novel set in the Dragaeran Empire fantasy universe in which Stephen Brust has previously written two series set several hundred years apart.

It is in many ways the best of all the two dozen or so Steven Brust books I have read, but also in some ways the most infuriating.

Unlike most of the stories in the Vlad Taltos/Khaavren universe, this one is a stand-alone novel and there is no reason you could not start with this book whether or not you may wish to read any of the other novels set in this universe.

Should you wish to read about the other characters Stephen Brust has created in the same universe as "The Baron of Magister Valley, they comprise two series. The first is about an "Easterner" (e.g. human) assassin called Vlad Taltos, and the best place to start reading about Vlad is either the first published book in his series, " Jhereg ", or the chronologically first one, " Taltos ."

The hero of the other series set in this world, Khaavren, is an approximate contemporary of Eremit, as the hero of this book is initially known.

The best to place to start reading about Khaavren is in Brust's first book about him, which is not at all a parody of Dumas's The Three Musketeers , called " The Phoenix Guards "

Well Ok, actually "The Phoenix Guards IS a parody of "The Three Musketeers," with Khaavren as D'Artagnan, and it is set in a timeframe which overlaps "The Baron of Magister Valley." Although Khaavren himself does not appear in "The Baron of Magister Valley," his love interest and later wife Daro, Countess of Whitecrest, does have an important role in this book.

I don't think it is a spoiler to add that at the very end of "The Baron of Magister Valley" the central character adopts yet another new name: he is known by about five different ones in the course of the book. The final name he adopts at the very end is also the name of a major character in the Vlad Taltos novel "Hawk" set many years later.

There is good reason to think we are meant to assume that Eremit, "The Baron of Magister Valley" and the main adversary of Vlad Taltos in "Hawk" are one and the same.

In the world of "The Baron of Magister Valley" there are quite a few intelligent species including two types of men and women.

Eremit and all the characters of this book, though they call themselves human beings, belong to a race whose normal life span is thousands of years. They refer to the kind of human who lives on Sol III and may be reading this review (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) as "Easterners" while our kind of human refer to Eremit and his race as Dragaerans or occasionally as elves.

Dragaerans are taller than homo sapiens sapiens, live much longer (two to four thousand years or so), and then after death are eligible for reincarnation if they have not annoyed a God too much or had their soul destroyed by a "Morganti" weapon or a "Great Weapon."

All Dragaerans belong to one of seventeen "Great Houses" named after animals of the fantasy world in which the novels are set.

Each of the animals for which the great houses are named epitomises two characteristics, and the houses tend to have a preferred occupation to which those characteristics are relevant. For examples Dragons symbolise war and conquest, Dzur (which look a bit like tigers) represent heroism and honor, hence Dragaeran members of House Dragon and House Dzur (known as Dragonlords and Dzurlords) tend to be soldiers. "Tecla" look like mice and symbolise cowardice and fertility: members of House Tecla are peasants. "Chreotha" represent forethought and ensnarement, and members of that house are merchants. The Hawk symbolises Observation and Perception, and at least some Hawklords are powerful sorcerers.

Most of the characters in "The Baron of Magister Valley" are members of the houses of the Iorich, Orca, or Jhereg.

"Iorich" epitomise justice and retribution, and members of that house, including several of the main characters of this book, tend to be judges or lawyers. The Orca (Killer Whale) represents brutality and mercantilism: members of that house are sailors, pirates or bankers, and "Jhereg" representing Greed and Corruption are gangsters or assassins.

Like all the "Khaavren Romances," "The Baron of Magister Valley" is supposedly written by "Paarfi of Roundwood" whose style and plots are definately not a parody of those of Alexandre Dumas.

Well, OK, yes they are. And this one is "The Count of Monte Cristo."

It is a story of betrayal and revenge.

Possible mild spoiler alert: if you are even slightly familiar with the story of the Count of Monte Cristo, the next two paragraphs of this review won't tell you anything about the plot which you won't already have guessed. If you're not, they will give away the opening.

At the start of this book the hero, Eremit, proposes marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Livosha. Both are young adult Iorich (e.g. about a hundred years old,) studying for careers in the legal profession, and belong to the provincial nobility.

Within 24 hours of Eremit proposing to Livosha all their plans are dashed by a vile conspiracy against their families, most of the people both of them love have been murdered, and Eremit finds himself in the most secure prison in the universe, one which it takes hundreds of years of dedicated effort to escape from.

The writing style, a parody of Dumas, which often meanders all over the most extraordinary side-tracks to get to the point, can be quite entertaining at times and at others absolutely infuriating. So much so that I agonised over whether to give this book the fifth star. But it's strengths - it can be very funny, I found it hugely exciting and absorbing - persuaded me to do so.

To list the other books in this universe:

The chronological sequence of the "Vlad Taltos" series jumps about all over the place, both between books and within most of the books. I personally think it is best to read these stories in the order they were published.

Here is the list of Vlad Taltos novels in publication order, with the chronological place of the main action of each book in brackets after:

1) Jhereg (4th)
2) Yendi (3rd)
3) Tecla (5th)
4) Taltos (1st)
5) Phoenix (6th)
6) Athyra (8th)
7) Orca (9th)
8) Dragon (2nd)
9) Issola (10th)
10) Dzur (11th)
11) Jhegaala (7th)
12) Iorich (12th)
13) Tiassa (13th)
14) Hawk (14th)
15) Vallista (15th)

The five Khaavren romances, in sequence, are

1) "The Phoenix Guards" (equivalent to "The Three Musketeers")
2) "Five Hundred Years After" (equivalent to "Twenty years after")

Then a trilogy "The Viscount of Adrilankha" (equivalent to "The Viscount of Bragelonne") which comprises

3) The Paths of the Dead
4) The Lord of Castle Black
5) Sethra Lavode.

Written in the same style as the Khaavren Romances, by the same supposed author "Paarfi of Roundwood", and set at about the same time as the first of them, is this book, "The Baron of Magister Valley,

Overall I found this very much worth reading and would recommend both the Taltos novels and the Khaavren Romances, and this book.

2 people found this helpful

Brett L. Schuchert

Great back-story on important person in Vlad's world

Reviewed in the United States on 16 November 2020

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I am a biased reviewer. I have read Khaavren Romances maybe 5 times in total, and the Jhreg series above a dozen times. So take that for what it's worth.

Also, I have not read The Three Musketeers nor The Count of Monte Cristo, so I came to these books via Brust/Vlad. I mention this for 2 reasons:

First, I read several reviews coming from Dumas rather than Brust, so they don't have the same context I do.

Second, I already love Paarfi of Roundwood's (sometimes irritating) voice, so that was never an issue for me (yes it takes getting used to but I easily jump back in to reading his voice).

My initial experience reading this book was: Where was this in the overall world timeline? This is well established early on. I *did not* know whose backstory it was, but assumed it was for someone. I won't say who, I'm trying to avoid spoilers. Turns out, I forgot to figure out who it was at the end of the first read, because I was simply enjoying the story.

Talking about the book with a friend shortly after reading it, it all of a sudden clicked and then in retrospect, it was quite obvious (with all the hints).

I've read that the other books in the series are "stand alone" - I disagree. They are all part of a larger story that is hinted at in the Vlad books. While each series might be considered stand-alone, the back and forth between the series as they are written together makes an overall richer reading experience.

For example, my first read of Jhreg was wonderful. On my second and third read (years apart), I forgot just how much happens in that book and how much backstory into this series there is. I think it was my 9th reread where I didn't notice anything new in Jhreg. Vallista is a great book in the series, but if the other books aren't fresh in the mind, it might seem like "little" happens. I don't agree with that, but again, see above (biased reviewer).

If someone comes to this book not reading any of the other books in the Khaavren books, I assume it's an enjoyable story. I read as such in other reviews.

IF you have read the other books, there are many gems. I want to give some, but I don't want to spoil the experience. I'll mention two categories: "throw-away" details that are NOT throw-away, the source of events mentioned in Vlad's time that started in this book.

There are many things to love about these two series. If you enjoy Brust, get this book.

If you are not familiar with the other books in the series, I suggest reading this book, then reading the earlier 5 books, then reading this book again. To get the full experience, read the Vlad books as well (I recommend publish order, though it's fun to read in chronological order, but complicated).

I have not yet re-read this book. I will. I'm waiting for the end of the year and I'll end up reading both series again over the holidays.

14 people found this helpful

Marc Tassé

Always entertaining

Reviewed in Canada on 1 September 2020

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Interesting attempt to replicate the style of Dumas, follows in line with the count story but brings interesting twists that make it uniquely enjoyable.

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