Lyorn is a lot to wrap your mind around, and it does not at first seem like something you should need to wrap your mind around. I am guessing this is not long after the events of Tsalmoth. Vlad has his memories back and knows why he agreed to being mindwiped in the first place. Vlad is still being pursued by the Left Hand of the Jhereg, but has gotten the Right Hand of the Jhereg to back off.
Due to shenanigans involving the Left Hand of the Jhereg, Vlad ends up hiding at a theater. It turns out that Dragaeran theaters are extremely well protected from sorcery. This makes a theater the perfect place to hide, if you are a fan of musicals. (Vlad is not a fan of musicals.) Much to Vlad’s misfortune, the theater company is going to be performing a musical. A controversial musical that turns out to be about censorship, and is extremely unflattering of a Lyorn Emperor.
Vlad is approached to help with a “Jhereg problem,” by the director of the musical. Around the same time a representative from the House of the Lyorn turns up to try and get the musical canceled. This leads to the usual machinations and strategizing Vlad is typically really good at. However, things get increasingly complicated, not only with the Left Hand of the Jhereg, but also on a mysteriously cosmological level. There is some Greater Purpose out there that Vlad would really like to avoid, but might not be able to.
A few notes:
- Lyorn is dedicated to John M. Ford. This is fitting as Ford wrote How Much For Just the Planet, which was the “musical episode” of Star Trek Original Series tie-in novels!
- So, in previous Vlad Taltos books, when the POV shifted to a Dragaeran, the dialog would shift over to “Paarfi of Roundwood’s Histories” style of dialog. This time around, there was no shift. The mode of speech and narrative was pretty much identical to Vlad’s sections. This is somewhat interesting in the context of the Mysterious Cosmological Level.
- Verra is being very weird and that’s saying something, because this is Verra.
- I am honestly very worried about what might happen to Vlad. There is a lot of background stuff going on.
Lyorn is definitely not one of the books you can more or less just jump into. (For that, I suggest Taltos or Jhereg.) In fact, before you start Lyorn you should probably reread Tsalmoth. I definitely enjoyed the book, and found it to be a fairly fast read with lots of quick twists and revelations.
This review is based on a galley received from NetGalley.
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