This is a review of my first reread:
Brust knows how to close a narrative! While he has yet to conclude the Vlad adventures (at the time of this writing, Vallista is still the most recent but not at all lately published), one has only to look to his prolific body of works to confirm this notion. In Sethra Lavode, the swashbuckling epic tale he set forth upon in Paths of the Dead has finished with a wild battle involving gods, demons, necromancers, elves, witchcraft and wizardry and sorcery (yes, there are differences, but don’t ask a sorcerer to explain these to you), historians and literary contemporaries, petty grievances and concerns of empire! While one may be more or less disappointed by the role Sethra has to play here, there’s much glimpsed by way of observing machinations of the players in Vlad’s time. So the reader is gifted with a compelling tale of tragedy and humor while asp delighting in compelling details that satisfy curiosities while allowing for new questions! Truly, the Khaavren Romances do not stop being fun!
You could almost take off half a star because I don’t think this novel could be a standalone, but I haven’t so neither should any of you. If you didn’t or won’t have fun reading this with the others, that’s your own failure, and not Brust’s.
Aside: huge points to this book for securing an Afterwords by the late great John M. Ford!