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From: micah@mit-athena.UUCP (Micah P Doyle)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Steven Brust
Message-ID: <134@mit-athena.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Mar-85 21:49:32 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-athe.134
Posted: Thu Mar 28 21:49:32 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Apr-85 06:58:44 EST
References: <1030@topaz.ARPA>, <384@tekchips.UUCP>
Organization: MIT Project Athena
Lines: 50

>> From: hmiller@mit-speaker (Herbert A Miller)
>> 
>>     I have several friends who, along with myself, have read both
>> "Jhereg" and "Yendi" and we all came away from these books dying for more!
>> 
>>     However, two questions come to mind, concerning these novels:
>>     
>> 	1)  Why was "Jhereg" published first, followed by "Yendi"?
>> 	    The chronological order, should be:
>> 		"Jhereg" prologue, "Yendi", "Jhereg" body.
>> 	    If the books are read in order of publication, then
>> 	    "Jhereg" gives away a lot of the action that should
>>  	    be a suprise in "Yendi".
>> 
>> ...
> From: tektronix!tekchips!kentb (Kent Beck)
>
>Don't believe it for a minute.  These novels were written to be read
>backwards... 						There is
>far more information given away reading "Yendi" first than the other way
>around.  One of the beauties of these books is that "Jhereg" sets up several
>puzzles that are solved in "Yendi," and they are intended to be read that
>way...

I'm have to agree with Herbert Miller.  I read the books in
chronological order and am very glad I did.  Maybe there are some
surprises given away by reading them in the "wrong" order, but I was
much more interested in what happened to the characters than solutions
to puzzles.  I think I would have liked "Yendi" much less if I knew
beforehand which characters survived, who marries who, etc.; that would
have spoiled most of the suspense in the book.

I had never heard of these books until about a month ago when I just
happened to be around our local science-fiction library when someone was
raving about them.  Few people I've mentioned them to have heard about
them either.  Steven Brust has written some of the best books I've read
in a long time, and I just don't understand how such excellent books can
remain so obscure.

Stephen Brust also has a new book coming out in May.  I don't know
whether or not it's a sequal to "Jhereg" and "Yendi", but since Mr.
Brust reads this newsgroup, perhaps he can tell us a little about the
book himself (pretty please?).

						Micah Doyle
						micah@mit-athena.ARPA
						decvax!mit-athena!micah