Abby Wu's Reviews > The Book of Jhereg

Jhereg follows the life of Vlad Taltos, a human assassin that has worked his way up in a mafia type organization in a fantasy setting. The book starts out exciting as Vlad acquires his dragon familiar. Even though this dragon sounds like it is going to an exciting addition he ends up just a wisecracking sidekick. Although the banter can be entertaining, I was slightly disappointed.

The version I read consists of the first three books, Jhereg, Yendi, and Teckla. As many others have complained, this book order is confusing as the 2nd book is a prequel. Why this isn't ideal is that there are no stakes in Yendi at all. We already know what will happen to all the characters so nothing is really on the line.

In general this series has been a bit of a let down. For some reason, it took me a really long time to even get into the story. I don't feel particularly invested in any of the characters. Also, anytime someone is killed they can and are almost always revivified again making the stakes non-existent. I know there are a lot of fans of this book, but I just wasn't very into it.