betty reviewed Orca by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos, #7)
Review of 'Orca' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The Orca are the Empire's mercantile class, so this had a lot to do with banking and trade. Bits of it seemed almost like a thinly veiled-- It's not an allegory, I guess, if it's a story about banking describing banking, is it --critique of current affairs, but I checked the publication date and it's from before I started paying attention to current affairs, so I guess some things are eternal.
In this book Vlad is on the run from the Jhereg. I can't remember if I read the book which explains why this is so, but luckily Brust's books are fairly self contained. Vlad has grown since his earlier appearances; he permits himself much less self-deception, which I like.
There is a phenomenon where an occurrence, repeated, oscillates between annoying and funny at an increasing rate until, generally, you can't tell between the two at which point whomever is …
The Orca are the Empire's mercantile class, so this had a lot to do with banking and trade. Bits of it seemed almost like a thinly veiled-- It's not an allegory, I guess, if it's a story about banking describing banking, is it --critique of current affairs, but I checked the publication date and it's from before I started paying attention to current affairs, so I guess some things are eternal.
In this book Vlad is on the run from the Jhereg. I can't remember if I read the book which explains why this is so, but luckily Brust's books are fairly self contained. Vlad has grown since his earlier appearances; he permits himself much less self-deception, which I like.
There is a phenomenon where an occurrence, repeated, oscillates between annoying and funny at an increasing rate until, generally, you can't tell between the two at which point whomever is doing it for comic effect hopefully leaves off. Brust has a habit of having Vlad make pronouncements like "I've figured everything out! It's-- No, let me tell you what happened and we'll see if you can figure it out." This was annoying to me for the first half of the book, and funny for the last half. I think I will leave enough of a gap for myself before reading the next that the wave is reset, though, because otherwise I don't know if I'll end the book on amused or annoyed.
