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Agyar by Steven Brust
01/01/2005 . Source: Donna Jones 
pub: TOR. 254 page enlarged paperback. Price: $13.95 (US), $19.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-31023-6. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.tor.com and www.dreamcafe.com
It's almost too easy these days to take a work of fiction and use that as a genre standard of writing. It's even easier to take a genre title and compare it to an established author of that said genre. What am I rattling on about? Well, put it this way people, vampiric fiction does not have a queen as its head of state, you catch my drift? So when reading this book all bets are off, you won't find a mention of any New Orleans style type-cast author. If you are now sitting uncomfortably, then I'll begin!
Agyar is a vampire. An old one with years of experience and years of womanising to aid his forced-upon habit of blood drinking. But Agyar has a problem in the form of his own seductress and sire of Laura Kellem.
She has come back to him because her feeding habits have slipped into the antisocial. Obviously leading to her demise should she not find a loophole to crawl through. This loophole involves Agyar's taking the fall for the whole damn mess.
Only Agyar has come to his own crossroads and found himself falling in love with a woman not of his kind. Whilst he uses a previous female acquaintance for food, she struggles desperately to resist him while he buries himself deeper and deeper into a less than promising future.
Sounds good, doesn't it? A promising read with promising characters and interesting paths to explore? Only it isn't and it doesn't deliver.
Agyar is the most boring sentient being I have ever read about. The story could have been something better had it not been told by this lacklustre idiosyncratic vampire. Rough and unmercilessness, he pulls off a handful of emotions all appearing quite the same on the page. A character you can easily hate, however it's far from easy to feel compelled to read about him for very long. It took me so long to get through this short novelette-length book I almost felt I had entered a night with the living dead, the damn thing just wouldn't roll over and die!
The central players, who seem to ego stroke the main protagonist, are without question unimaginative stereotypes: The Victim: Jill, The Sexy Love Interest: Susan and The Power Crazed: Kellem (first name Laura!). All of which happen to be women.
Jill is Agyar's veritable refrigerator throughout the piece. He wanders in takes a drink, which isn't described as anything more than her feeling worse than when he came and then off he goes to woo her housemate, the female counterpoint to Agyar, Susan. Both have the attitudes of arrogance and unabashed egotism.
Kellem is Agyar's sire. She uses her powers as such to make Agyar do her bidding and 'call' him to her when she so desires it. In one scene, he starts to protest about what she wants him to do this time as she forces him to the floor with the power of her mind. (Can you hear the tacky stage act tone that I said that in?) Apart from a big ego - you can tell that there is a pattern here - she really didn't have many personality traits of note.
The description of people is quite comical in its banality, clothing colours and hair styles seem the order of the book. The prose takes on a rambling quality from the outset, constantly making you look for the key to wind it up.
The story is woefully lacking, emerging more often than not back at a derelict house that is haunted by a ghost called Jim, who I just saw as Agyar's sounding post. It's as if Brust is just going through the motions, lacking imaginative presence throughout.
With A-Team Hero trauma wounds like a .12 gauge shotgun wound to Agyar's gut and a resultant couple of days of feeling 'like a corpse' enough said really on the plotting!
Unreservedly a book that doesn't require a second glance.
Donna Jones
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