Brust, Steven - Yendi

Umm... yes, this is the first Taltos book I've read. I think I just skirted around them for a while, largely because the one Brust book I read (To Reign in Hell) drove me crazy and I never managed to finish Agyar.

But I was in the library and flipping through them, and the back of Yendi said something like, "Hi, I'm Vlad Taltos, assassin. [Something something something jhereg war something something]... and this is how I fell in love with the woman who killed me."

"Oooo!" I thought. "OOOOOO!" (I am SO predictable.)

Unfortunately, aforementioned female assassin is not as cool as I'd like, but there are so many other cool and kickass female characters in the book that I don't care.

As far as I can tell, Vlad is an Easterner (human) in a land of Draegarians. There's a whole lot of stuff about class in the book, as Draegarians can be one of seventeen different classes. Sometimes it seems as though these classes are like race; i.e. people go on about pure Dragon genes or something. But then, you also have classes like jheregs, where you can buy your way in.

Or something. I'm not really sure what's going on with the world right now, except that dragons are all noble and violent and jheregs are assassins. Or thieves? Or underworld creatures? Or something?

Anyway. Vlad the human jhereg manages to get himself in a jhereg war, which seems to be a lot like a gang war, only with assassins and sorcery involved. Along the way, he gets assassinated and falls in love with said assassin and finds that his little jhereg war is a little larger and more political than he previously thought.

I wasn't particularly interested in the plot, and there were a few too many expositiony bits in which Vlad must expound upon all his theories as to what the grander plot is. And as you all can probably tell, I have no idea what's going on with all the worldbuilding. But I like Vlad, and he's got a fun, hard-boiled detective voice, and more importantly, Aliera and Sethra Lavode and really freaking cool. I mean -- two long-lived kickass powerful women! (Have I mentioned how predictable I am?)

So is it ok if I just sort of randomly read the other books? I have figured out that there is an important chronology in place for the Khaavren books, but the other Vlad books seem to skip around the internal chronology, and I am too lazy to track down everything in order via my library.

Urasawa Naoki - 20th Century Boys, vol. 07-11

For once, I am actually posting these manga write-ups in real time; aka, this is not a couple of days or weeks after I finished the volumes.

Sadly, this means that everyone can tell that I have read 11 volumes of this series in just two days, and five of those were read in a frenzied rush yesterday night after I got home from work.

It's a good thing school is not starting until April!

Urasawa does plot incredibly well, unlike many other shounen series (*cough*Bleach*cough*). I get a sense that he knows where the story is going, and he has no problem dropping huge plot twists in every chapter, which makes everything move very quickly. But he's not just good at plot. I love his characters as well, and he does a very good job of fleshing out supporting characters in just a few pages so that I actually care about what happens to them. And I already adore the main characters.

The other thing I like is that while the story is about saving the world from an evil cult, it's also about normal people finding the courage in themselves to be heroes and to fight back.

Urasawa is also doing very well with the multiple flashbacks and skip-forwards in time; part of this is because of how well he ages his characters. I had a little difficulty telling Kenji's friends apart in the first few volumes, but I figured them out fairly quickly. The more amazing thing is, I also managed to figure out what they looked like at separate ages, just because of Urasawa's character designs.

( Giant spoilers )