Dragaera (Journaling January)
Jan. 19th, 2019 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kraitMy prompt from hamsterwoman was "Dragaera," and I was supposed to post about it on the 17th. Sorry I'm late. (If there was a 34th of January, I would have pushed it back till then, but alas.)
Have you ever encountered a canon that really drew you in and held your interest over several years? One that stacked up the tropes/character types/plot twists you like into a big pile of enjoyable action?
One that you couldn't for the life of you figure out why there just isn't a fandom?
That's Dragaera.
The Dragaera novels take place in a fantasy world with sci-fi underpinnings (it's heavily implied to be a human-colonised planet) and three main sapient species.
Dragaerans are tall, generally frail of build, live for hundreds or thousands of years, and often have pointed ears. In the Empire, where most of the stories take place, Dragaerans are divided into 17 Houses with different traits and values.
Easterners are shorter, have lifespans generally equivalent to ours, and have some direct cultural counterparts with Earth nationalities. Some have psychic or magical abilities.
Serioli are the native sapient species of the world; they're shorter than Easterners, mostly solitary, and don't interact much with either of the other species.
The longest series under the Dragaera umbrella, and currently unfinished (we're three books away!) is generally known as the 'Vlad books' or 'Vlad Taltos series'; the first book is Jhereg. The main character, Vlad Taltos, is a hitman for the organised crime assocation known as the Jhereg. As an Easterner living in the Empire, Vlad is a second-class citizen - in fact, he's only a citizen at all because his father spent a ridiculous amount of money buying a Jhereg title - and he has a chip on his shoulder the size of a mountain. He becomes an assassin because it lets him vent his hatred, and he works his way up the Jhereg ladder until he's the crime boss of a sizeable territory.
Things begin to change when his wife joins a rebel organisation and begins questioning both the Empire and the Jhereg. Vlad has to confront his own prejudices, and eventually violate his principles, which starts him down a new path. At the current point of the series, Vlad has been on the run from the Jhereg for almost two years, and is trying desperately to find a way to appease them so that he can live a normal life again.
The other series under the Dragaera umbrella is a series of five (or three) books known as the 'Khaavren Romances' or 'the Paarfiad'; the first book is The Phoenix Guards. Set a thousand years before Vlad's birth, they detail the Musketeer-esque adventures of a group of characters during the period of the Empire's Interregnum. They're delightful fun, with lots of swashbuckling, fancy prose, and a narrator, Paarfi, who's a character in his own right (there are 'interviews' with him and Brust sniping at each other!) Since the characters are Dragaerans and thus have long lifespans, some of them are still around to show up as minor characters in the Vlad books.
Beyond the two series, there's also a standalone novel, Brokedown Palace, set in a kingdom of Easterners, and some short stories.
With that out of the way, on to the specifics! I mentioned that this series if a perpetual case of "why isn't there any active fandom!?" for me, and at risk of repeating myself, I really don't understand why there isn't a fandom for this!
It seems to be absolutely stuffed with tropes that fandom loves: the wisecracking Vlad and his talking animal sidekick, the anti-hero with a heart/slow reformation of Vlad's character from amoral assassin to something more principled (though I don't think Vlad's morality will never be "normal," and that's a point of appeal as well!), the Dragaeran culture that makes Vlad an outsider and an underdog, the amazing descriptions of food that will leave you hungry after reading... :D There are 17 Houses for all your Sorting needs, and a gender-neutral society that means female characters can do anything the male ones can. There's plenty of opportunities for angst around Dragaeran prejudices (the Houseless, inter-House romances or the offspring thereof, Dragaeran/Easterner conflict, bias against the Jhereg and Teckla Houses...) and a wide-open playground of unexplored regions where Dragaeran prejudices don't apply (the East, the Isles).
There are plenty of options when it comes to relationships, too, whether you're into Vlad and his wife Cawti struggling through the breakup of their marriage, or Vlad's intense foe-yay with his Dragaeran friend-and-sometimes-boss, or the deep loyalty between Vlad and his secretary Kragar, or Cawti building a new life with her (female, Dragaeran) former assassination partner Norathar. The Khaavren romances feature two forbidden inter-House loves in addition to a successful romantic pairing.
If you've read them, talk at me about them! If you have questions, hit me with them - I am always willing to pimp this series to people to see if I can't build a little fandom for it. :D
hamsterwoman was "Dragaera," and I was supposed to post about it on the 17th. Sorry I'm late. (If there was a 34th of January, I would have pushed it back till then, but alas.)Have you ever encountered a canon that really drew you in and held your interest over several years? One that stacked up the tropes/character types/plot twists you like into a big pile of enjoyable action?
One that you couldn't for the life of you figure out why there just isn't a fandom?
That's Dragaera.
The Dragaera novels take place in a fantasy world with sci-fi underpinnings (it's heavily implied to be a human-colonised planet) and three main sapient species.
Dragaerans are tall, generally frail of build, live for hundreds or thousands of years, and often have pointed ears. In the Empire, where most of the stories take place, Dragaerans are divided into 17 Houses with different traits and values.
Easterners are shorter, have lifespans generally equivalent to ours, and have some direct cultural counterparts with Earth nationalities. Some have psychic or magical abilities.
Serioli are the native sapient species of the world; they're shorter than Easterners, mostly solitary, and don't interact much with either of the other species.
The longest series under the Dragaera umbrella, and currently unfinished (we're three books away!) is generally known as the 'Vlad books' or 'Vlad Taltos series'; the first book is Jhereg. The main character, Vlad Taltos, is a hitman for the organised crime assocation known as the Jhereg. As an Easterner living in the Empire, Vlad is a second-class citizen - in fact, he's only a citizen at all because his father spent a ridiculous amount of money buying a Jhereg title - and he has a chip on his shoulder the size of a mountain. He becomes an assassin because it lets him vent his hatred, and he works his way up the Jhereg ladder until he's the crime boss of a sizeable territory.
Things begin to change when his wife joins a rebel organisation and begins questioning both the Empire and the Jhereg. Vlad has to confront his own prejudices, and eventually violate his principles, which starts him down a new path. At the current point of the series, Vlad has been on the run from the Jhereg for almost two years, and is trying desperately to find a way to appease them so that he can live a normal life again.
The other series under the Dragaera umbrella is a series of five (or three) books known as the 'Khaavren Romances' or 'the Paarfiad'; the first book is The Phoenix Guards. Set a thousand years before Vlad's birth, they detail the Musketeer-esque adventures of a group of characters during the period of the Empire's Interregnum. They're delightful fun, with lots of swashbuckling, fancy prose, and a narrator, Paarfi, who's a character in his own right (there are 'interviews' with him and Brust sniping at each other!) Since the characters are Dragaerans and thus have long lifespans, some of them are still around to show up as minor characters in the Vlad books.
Beyond the two series, there's also a standalone novel, Brokedown Palace, set in a kingdom of Easterners, and some short stories.
With that out of the way, on to the specifics! I mentioned that this series if a perpetual case of "why isn't there any active fandom!?" for me, and at risk of repeating myself, I really don't understand why there isn't a fandom for this!
It seems to be absolutely stuffed with tropes that fandom loves: the wisecracking Vlad and his talking animal sidekick, the anti-hero with a heart/slow reformation of Vlad's character from amoral assassin to something more principled (though I don't think Vlad's morality will never be "normal," and that's a point of appeal as well!), the Dragaeran culture that makes Vlad an outsider and an underdog, the amazing descriptions of food that will leave you hungry after reading... :D There are 17 Houses for all your Sorting needs, and a gender-neutral society that means female characters can do anything the male ones can. There's plenty of opportunities for angst around Dragaeran prejudices (the Houseless, inter-House romances or the offspring thereof, Dragaeran/Easterner conflict, bias against the Jhereg and Teckla Houses...) and a wide-open playground of unexplored regions where Dragaeran prejudices don't apply (the East, the Isles).
There are plenty of options when it comes to relationships, too, whether you're into Vlad and his wife Cawti struggling through the breakup of their marriage, or Vlad's intense foe-yay with his Dragaeran friend-and-sometimes-boss, or the deep loyalty between Vlad and his secretary Kragar, or Cawti building a new life with her (female, Dragaeran) former assassination partner Norathar. The Khaavren romances feature two forbidden inter-House loves in addition to a successful romantic pairing.
If you've read them, talk at me about them! If you have questions, hit me with them - I am always willing to pimp this series to people to see if I can't build a little fandom for it. :D