The Paths of the Dead Book One of the Viscount of Adrilankha

Two hundred years after Adrons Disaster, in which Dragaera City was accidentally reduced to an ocean of chaos by an experiment in wizardry gone wrong, the Empire isnt what it used to be. Deprived at a single blow of their Emperor, of the Orb that is the focus of the Empires power, of their capital city with its Imperial bureaucracy, and of a great many of their fellow-citizens, the surviving Dragaerans have been limping through a long Interregnum, bereft even of the simple magic and sorcery they were accustomed to use in everyday life.he descendants and successors of the great adventurers Khaavren, Pel, Aerich, and Tazendra, are growing up in this diminished world, convinced, like their elders, that the age of adventures is over and nothing interesting will ever happen to them. They are, of course, wrong. For, even deprived of magic, Dragaerans fight, plot, and conspire as they breathe, and so do their still-powerful gods. The enemies of the Empire prowl at its edges, inscrutable doings are up at Dzur Mountain . . . and, unexpectedly, a surviving Phoenix Heir, young Zerika, is discoveredsetting off a chain of swashbuckling events that will remake the world yet again.

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and raised in a family of Hungarian labor organizers, Steven Brust worked as a musician and a computer programmer before coming to prominence as a writer in 1983 with Jhereg, the first of his novels about Vlad Taltos, a human professional assassin in a world dominated by long-lived, magically-empowered human-like "Dragaerans."

Over the next several years, several more "Taltos" novels followed, interspersed with other work, including To Reign in Hell, a fantasy re-working of Milton's war in Heaven; The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, a contemporary fantasy based on Hungarian folktales; and a science fiction novel, Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille. The most recent "Taltos" novels are Dragon and Issola. In 1991, with The Phoenix Guards, Brust began another series, set a thousand years earlier than the Taltos books; its sequels are Five Hundred Years After and the three volumes of "The Viscount of Adrilankha": The Paths of the Dead, The Lord of Castle Black, and Sethra Lavode.

While writing, Brust has continued to work as a musician, playing drums for the legendary band Cats Laughing and recording an album of his own work, A Rose for Iconoclastes. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada where he pursues an ongoing interest in stochastics.

“Steven Brust Might Just Be America’s Best Fantasy Writer!” —Tad Williams

Praise for Steven Brust

“Splendid!” —Kirkus Reviews on Dragon

“As always, Brust invests Vlad with the panache of a Dumas musketeer and the collo-quial voice of one of Zelazny’s Amber heroes. This is a rousing adventure with enough humor, action, and sneaky plot twists to please newcomers as well as longtime series fans.”—Publishers Weekly on Issola

“Brust is an indubitable master of swashbuckling high fantasy, and this book is an un-doubted treat.” —Booklist on Five Hundred Years After

“Filled with high adventure, intrigues, a great deal of good humor and moments of genuine hilarity, this is easily Brust’s most mature and entertaining work to date. It’s rare for a book over hundred pages to seem as short as this one. It’s even rarer to find one that seems likely to satisfy such a broad range of reader expectations, humor, adventure, in-trigue, and wit all in the same package.”—Science Fiction Chronicle on Five Hundred Years After

“Powerful and impressive.” —Locus on Five Hundred Years After

“Brust isn’t afraid to break the boundaries of contemporary commercial fantasy.” —Newsday