A review by curgoth
Agyar by Steven Brust
5.0
This is probably the best vampire book I have ever read. And as a goth, I have read a fair number.
The word vampire doesn't appear anywhere in the book, nor does any euphemism.
This review is being written after listening to the audiobook, as narrated by the author, probably close to twenty years after reading it the first time. I think the experience of reading it the second time was pretty close to the first, even knowing what happens.
At first, I think "Gosh, this hasn't aged well! Is this what Brust thinks is charming?" Jack Agyar has that way about him of a man now in his 70s or 80s still using flirting techniques from an era when in some circles it was considered simply polite to hit on any unmarried woman you met.
Then it gets... worse. Jack's charm goes from awkward to unsettling and creepy. He's really an awful person. If the word "person" even still applies?
Brust has occasionally been compared to Roger Zelazny, and I think that comparison is very apt here. Brust pulls off that trick Zelazny had of presenting a protagonist who, based solely on his actions, is actually terrible, but somehow has such charisma that you fall into the narrative with them anyway. Corwin of Amber has this, especially in the early amber novels, and so does Brust's Vlad Taltos. With Agyar, Brust starts us off on that path, then pushes the reader off the edge as Agyar does increasingly terrible things.
The ending reminds me a fair bit of Neil Gaiman's Sandman - there's an examination of just how much a person can change in the course of a very long life.
One last observation; I know that the Dragaeran setting Brust spends most of his time writing in is based on a long ago D&D campaign. I cannot help but wonder if Agyar has old roots in a 90s World of Darkness game. I have to say, though, that Agyar delivers on the promise of "gothic punk personal horror" more fully than Vampire: the Masquerade generally did.
The word vampire doesn't appear anywhere in the book, nor does any euphemism.
This review is being written after listening to the audiobook, as narrated by the author, probably close to twenty years after reading it the first time. I think the experience of reading it the second time was pretty close to the first, even knowing what happens.
At first, I think "Gosh, this hasn't aged well! Is this what Brust thinks is charming?" Jack Agyar has that way about him of a man now in his 70s or 80s still using flirting techniques from an era when in some circles it was considered simply polite to hit on any unmarried woman you met.
Then it gets... worse. Jack's charm goes from awkward to unsettling and creepy. He's really an awful person. If the word "person" even still applies?
Brust has occasionally been compared to Roger Zelazny, and I think that comparison is very apt here. Brust pulls off that trick Zelazny had of presenting a protagonist who, based solely on his actions, is actually terrible, but somehow has such charisma that you fall into the narrative with them anyway. Corwin of Amber has this, especially in the early amber novels, and so does Brust's Vlad Taltos. With Agyar, Brust starts us off on that path, then pushes the reader off the edge as Agyar does increasingly terrible things.
The ending reminds me a fair bit of Neil Gaiman's Sandman - there's an examination of just how much a person can change in the course of a very long life.
One last observation; I know that the Dragaeran setting Brust spends most of his time writing in is based on a long ago D&D campaign. I cannot help but wonder if Agyar has old roots in a 90s World of Darkness game. I have to say, though, that Agyar delivers on the promise of "gothic punk personal horror" more fully than Vampire: the Masquerade generally did.