Five Hundred Years After

Five Hundred Years After Steven Brust Date: 15 March, 1995   —   $7.99   —   Book product page Rating:

Fiction, Fantasy

This is that good old story , "Let's get the old gang together and save the world." Except that they don't. This is the story of the fall of the Dragaeran Empire, the creation of a new sea of chaos where the capital used to be, and the beginning of the Interregnum. Not, shall we say, a happy time.

This is set five hundred years after the previous novel, which in Dragaeran terms is equivalent to fifteen or twenty years of useful human lifespan. Khaavren's just thinking of getting married, for example. He'd be the emotional equivalent of a guy of thirty or thirty-five.

This book is as florid as the previous novel, though thankfully nowhere near the turgid prose of The Man In the Iron Mask (which should more accurately be titled The Four Musketeers Get Old and Die.) It is not as engaging as the Phoenix Guards though it is a good continuation of the story. It even introduces an enemy of the four friends, one whose identity is cleverly concealed behind a pseudonym. This is clever because the pompous author (the fictional one, Paarfi, not the real one, Brust) does not have enough conversational quirks or description for us to tell who this is, because we have met this person before.

And holding a grudge for 500 years is not beyond Dragaerans, who are a bit petty sometimes.