Book completed

[eve_prime]

Five Hundred Years After, by Steven Brust. Khaavren Romances #2. As the title says, it’s 500 years since the previous book, and our characters based on the Three Musketeers have matured. Paarfi’s overblown writing style has matured too. Now Khaavren is a captain of the guard for the emperor, and the emperor is not doing a great job. Adron, a nobleman whom our four main characters like and respect and consider a friend, is the heir to the throne and suspects the cycle may have turned, entitling him to take over. He brings his army to the capital and waits. Khaavren urges his friends to come and help with the crisis at hand. Brust is something of a Trotskyite, and this story may be his way of addressing the great man theory of history, because Adron is a man of a great many virtues – and knows it – but doesn’t seem familiar with the concept of hubris. This is an excellent story that tells all about what happened in a major event that everyone still knows a great deal about 500 years later, in the era of Brust’s main series.