The Phoenix Guards & Five Hundred Years After

The Phoenix Guards (1991) & Five Hundred Years After (1994) Steven Brust

Sometimes you just need to read a book that you know is going to make you happy. When those times come upon me, I frequently read Steven Brust.

The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years After are two of the ‘Khaavren Romances’ centered around Khaavren the Tiassa, and written in the style of Alexandre Dumas.

(S)omeone once asked, in all seriousness, which was the best translation of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers into English. The two fastest answers she got were “Learn French, as nobody’s managed to make a translation that’s half as good as the original”, and “The Phoenix Guards.”

Of course these books might not be written for everyone, but they are for people who enjoy reading for the sake of reading. As the author notes say:

Paarfi:…I do not mean that I write for those who simply like a good tale, well told, or for those who use the novel in order to explore what critics are pleased to call “the human condition,” or for those who treat the story as a distraction from the cares of the day, but rather, I write for those who take joy in seeing words well-placed upon the page.

Brust: Typesetters?

And it is an excellent escape from the cares of the day. The story always draws me in, and lets me forget whatever is on my mind.

I have to admit that Tazendra may be one of my favorite characters in the story. Beautiful, and honorable. Not to quick with her thoughts necessarily, but more than quick enough with her sword.

Tazendra, who had been watching the one called Uttrik as he removed his doublet, drew his sword, and began taking practice thrusts with it, said, “Good Khaavren.”

“Well?”

“I do not think this gentleman will give you much sport.”

“You think not?”

“Well, you perceive how, in practicing, he strikes only at the air.”

“That is not unusual, when preparing for a contest.”

“No, and yet he seems to miss with every third stroke.”

I have to admit that I thought that the language, perhaps, was a bit overblown. However after reading Founding Brothers, I would like to tender an apology to Steven Brust. Here is an excerpt of one of the letters from the Hamilton/Burr duel.

“The length to which this correspondence has extended only tending to prove that the satisfactory redress…cannot be obtained…he deems it useless to offer any proposition except the simple Message which I now have the honor to deliver.”

Phoenix Guards: 10/10
Five Hundred Years After: 9/10

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