So, thanks a lot for the recommendation :)

There’s a bimbo on the cover of my book,
There’s a bimbo on the cover of my book,
She is blonde and she is sexy,
She is nowhere in the text, She
is the bimbo on the cover of my book

There’s a dragon on the cover of my book,
There’s a dragon on the cover of my book,
He is big and green and scaly
He is nowhere in the tale, he
Is the dragon on the cover of my book.

There’s a castle on the cover of my book,
There’s a castle on the cover of my book,
It is strong and fit for battle, though
the settings in…..Seattle?
There’s a castle on the cover of my book……

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/06/14/

I feel like I’m a fast reader, but there’s no way I could simply see a new book from a favorite series on the shelf, pick it up and read it ASAP. I have a 50 book backlog to work through first.

I took an online reading speed test – Google for one, there are a million of them. It told me that I read in the 250 wpm “normal” range.

I think the fact is that I *can* read faster, but I don’t absorb as much or enjoy it that much.

Anyway – what’s normal for Cory and others here?

I discovered Brust in the early 90s when my dad left a copy of Jhereg laying around our house, and I’ve been reading everything I could find by him ever since. Like some of the other commenters here, my favorites were The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years After, but I also love the Vlad Taltos books.

The Vlad series is plain great as is all Steven’s books, I especially like ‘To Reign in Hell’.

Also, don’t forget the other series that takes place in the same world – The Khavren Romances. Heavily (very, very heavily) inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s D’Artagnon series. It’s a very, very cool series.

My favorite author is Roger Zelazny, and Brust garnered Zelazny’s recommendation right out of the gate:

“Watch Steven Brust. He’s good. He moves fast. He surprises you.” -Roger Zelazny

I liked the sound of that, and Roger was right—Brust was all of those things, in spades.

Brust has a unique way of looking at things, and I love his voice. He has an economy, a lyric intensity, that most reminds me of Roger. While Zelazny loved poetry, Brust loves song, but what are songs but poetry put to music?

For my money, the two experimental novels that simulated and honored the Dumas Three Musketeers series are two of my all-time favorites. Based in the same Dragaeran world of Jhereg, “The Phoenix Guards” and “Five Hundred Years After,” the adventures of Khaavren, the D’Artagnan of Dragaera, are told with a signature voice and comprise some of the most interesting sequences and characters in my literary memory. The scene in which Pel, the clever Yendi, gets the attention of the royalty when our heroes are cast into a dank holding cell is just sublime and oh-so-very clever.

If you haven’t yet been buying Steven Brust’s books, you are in a for a treat. He not only has great current releases, but a back-catalog which is a treasure trove of rollicking storytelling.

Since yer askin.

BTW, “There’s A Bimbo On The Cover Of My Book” should be credited to Maya Bonhoff, who performs with her husband Jeff when she isn’t writing books herself. (And there’s a lot more of it, finally reaching the conclusion that if they bring in the readers maybe those tenuously-connected covers are acceptable after all.)

And aside from Red Harvest, the opening excerpt for each chapter was a Dragaeran take on The Thin Man, one of Hammett’s other great works.

Good words for Brokedown Palace and Agyar as well.

The “dragon” and “castle” verses were Maya’s.