I just read the first five Vlad Taltos novels. . .

[xiphias]

They rock. But then, you all already knew that, didn't you. I now know where undauntra got her name from.

Also, it occurred to me: Vlad Taltos and Spencer: separated at birth? Vlad doesn't quote quite as much poetry, and has a first name, but other than that. . .

Comments

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

I'm not as big a Brust fan as some (not that I dislike his work, just that I don't follow it fanatically), but from what I know of Steve I wouldn't be surprised if the Spencer stories had had some influence on him.

If you like the Vlad stories, I highly recommend you grab a copy of The Phoenix Guards and FIve Hundred Years Later (or After, I never remember which). No Vlad in them, but Mr. Brust retells Dumas quite nicely.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Five Hundred Years After. And he's recently published a new book in that style called Paths of the Dead. We got it in hardcover :-)

(Oh, Ian - we have a number of Brust books at our place - if'n you need more of them. Is the magic not strange?)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

spenser.


(yes, i've read all the books and i still read the new ones even though i've noticed how trite and awful they are but they still suck me in and i love them. ahem.)

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Not Vlad and Spenser, Vlad and Hawk.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Maybe. But, I was thinking, Kragar and Hawk.

I mean, they're the actual badasses of their respective stories.

They do kinda the opposite thing with presence, though.

So, Kragar and Hawk are either really similar, or completely opposite, or maybe both.

Re:

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I think Vlad is more of a badass than Kragar. He's such a badass because he's willing to kill with relative ease. That's something Spenser never does.

Hawk, OTOH, has no problem killing someone he thinks needs to be eliminated.

Plus, you need to read Issola, and *then* tell me, after that, who the bigger badass is.

[kimberly-a.livejournal.com]

I'm lost. Me = stupid. Ah well.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Um, I beg to differ.

Anyway, to explain: Vlad Taltos is the main character in a series of fantasy novels by Steven Brust. He's an assassin and crime lord (at least, up until the end of the last book I've read, although he goes through some changes at that point, and I have no clue what he's going to be in the next book I read), and a member of the Noble House of Jhereg, which is the noble house which is in charge of organized crime.

Spenser is the main character in a series of mystery novels by Robert B. Parker. He's a private detective, and ex-police officer, and ex-boxer, and served in Korea, which mean that he's at least sixty-eight now, so it's starting to get a little difficult to suspend disbelief with him as a two-fisted tough-guy hero.

Anyway, in my mind, the two characters have a lot in common. To start with, they're both two-fisted rough-and-tumble tough-guy heros cast in the Sam Spade mold. They both have rather complex relationships with the women they love, and have had to do a lot of accomodation and mental reshifting to make the relationships work -- if they do work.

Also, they're both excellent cooks, and you occasionally get a couple pages of the tough-guy heroes, in first person narration, explaining what they're making for dinner.

The main differences are that Vlad actually kills people a lot, being an assassin and all, while Spenser rarely kills more than one or two people per book, and Spenser quotes a lot more poetry. Oh, and Vlad uses magic, since he lives in a magical world, and Spenser doesn't, since he lives in Boston.