Sethra Lavode (The Viscount of Adrilankha) Hardcover - 2004

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and raised in a family of 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.