Today’s links Steven Brust’s “Tsalmoth”: Swords, sorcery and swooning romance, in a series that is tantalyzingly close to completion. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Steven Brust’s “Tsalmoth” (permalink) They say “the Golden Age of science fiction is 12” – that is, the thing that makes “the good old stuff” so good is its suitability for preteens, and rereading that stuff as an adult (much less continuing to read it in adulthood) is a childish regression. It’s not true. Or at least, it’s not always true. Sometimes, the reason a novel sucks us in at 12 is that it is amazing, and, moreover, full of layers that make the book get better with re-readings, as new layers are revealed by our own maturity. Let me tell you about one of those books. Actually, not just one of those books: sixteen of them, with three more to come. I’m speaking, of course, of Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels, which started with Jhereg, published in 1983 – the year I turned 12, and devoured this book, rereading it four or five times in that year alone. The titular character, Vlad Taltos, is a wisecracking assassin in a sword-and-sorcery world called Dragaera, where most of the inhabitants are extremely long-lived beings (“Dragaereans”) akin to elves. Not Vlad, though: he’s an “Easterner” – a human being, like us – who is part of a…Pluralistic: Steven Brust's "Tsalmoth" (27 May 2023)