A review by cheezvshcrvst
Teckla by Steven Brust

5.0

We've arrived at the turning point in my reading/writing life: Vlad Taltos # 3, Teckla! This reread has proven a maxim correct, in that a good book does not read the same twice. Nor on the third or fourth go. I've reread Teckla several times in the last 15+ years, and what's most remarkable to me is that the reasons I recommend these books to folks are first revealed in these pages. Teckla is a masterclass on how to implement dialogue to drive a plot without resorting to exposition. If Yendi (VT #2) suffered from anything, it was an overabundance of plotting was neatly tidied up in conversations characters had with one another. Now, VT #3, the proper sequel to #1, boldly goes somewhere you wouldn't imagine a male author writing from a male perspective to go: how would you like to see the hero humiliated and at his weakest, and at an ideological crossroads with himself and everyone around him? Well, here you have it: Vlad is rich, accruing power and territory, and is at the top of the killing-elves-for-money game (well, Mario is but of course Mario isn't playing the game on anyone's level), but when his wife Cawti suddenly chucks their relationship at the proverbial Greater Sea of Chaos to join a band of revolutionist Easterners and Teckla in their less-than-merry struggle against the aristocratic Houses of the Empire our hero Vlad finds himself unable to kill or do violence for control in the ways he's spent his entire life learning to do to protect himself and the things he cares about. Vlad must figure out a way to save Cawti from the Elf Mafia while staying alive long enough to maybe still lose her to a band of idealists he can neither side with nor disagree with except in principle! What we're offered here is a book that doesn't rely on violence or conflict but the effort to seek resolution and understanding to drive the plot. And Brust does this wonderfully and with grace and no flair but plenty of style! VT #3 (found in the 3-book omnibus Book of Jhereg) completed my first go at reading a Steven Brust book teenaged-me purchased with money, and I closed this book and ran as fast as I could to the B&N in Forest Hills, Queens to find, much to my disappointment, nothing further for Vlad. Well, skip over how this led me to To Reign In Hell and then Agyar, and then check up on me at 17 or 18 and I'd discovered Athyra and Phoenix shoved in a stack in a much unloved science fiction/fantasy section at Seaburns Books on Broadway in Astoria, Queens and... well, none of this is the point except to say that Teckla is a quietly and powerfully brilliant novel that always renders me introspective and hopeful for the dude I am and will be. It's not easy to say a book holds different lessons and insights at different times in a person's life (because, quite often, that's only ever said about books that don't but want to) but Teckla does, and I'm incredibly grateful that it exists.