I was shocked by how dark Steven Brust’s Yendi is. I had forgotten. Reading it now, I wish I could remember what I made of it when I was a teenager. I suspect I was completely confused by anything that didn’t involve Vlad “working.”

What I find most impressive is the way this book refuses to present moral or political disagreements as simply problems of knowledge or of framing. They are also problems of love.

In this novel, people believe things strongly, but the best of them decide what to do based on whom they love and on the ways they find to keep loving them even across substantive disagreements.

You wouldn’t know that’s what the book’s about from the blurb on the back cover but it is. Honest.