From Publishers Weekly
Brust has concocted a marvelous fantasy, a vampire novel in which the word "vampire" never appears. Jack Agyar is, if not quite immortal, very long-lived. He writes the story of his life on an old typewriter in the attic of an abandoned house in an Ohio university town where he lives with the ghost of an ex-slave named Jim. In Brust's world, vampires don't necessarily kill their victims, but, rather, feed off them for lengths of time. Through one of those victims, Agyar meets Susan, an enchanting young dancer with whom he is shocked to discover himself falling in love. Meantime, the vampire who made Agyar plans to set him up for a murder she commits and he finds himself less and less willing to do her bidding. The plot may seem elementary, but Brust is a master stylist who creates such intricate characters that plot is almost irrelevant. (Brust adds the initials P.J.F. after his name. They stand for Pre-Joyce Foundation, a group whose members, among them Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, and Jane Yolen, believe that James Joyce ruined modern literature.) Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
A mysterious young man appears in a midwestern college town, takes up residence in an abandoned house, and awaits his death at the hands of the woman who controls his destiny. As John Agyar attempts to reconcile himself to impending doom, he discovers another woman whose love for him leads to a dangerous revelation--and his only hope to escape his fate. The author of The Phoenix Guards (Tor Bks., 1991) and the "Vlad Taltos" series offers a fresh perspective on a popular theme of dark fantasy in this penetrating look at an individual caught between life and death. A good choice for fantasy collections.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Review
"Packs more of an emotional wallop than any verbose gore fest served up by less imaginative talents."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Compact, understated, and highly persuasive...Brust accomplishes with a wry turn of phrase or a small flourish what others never achieve despite hundreds of gory spatters."--Kirkus Reviews



Review
"Packs more of an emotional wallop than any verbose gore fest served up by less imaginative talents."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Compact, understated, and highly persuasive...Brust accomplishes with a wry turn of phrase or a small flourish what others never achieve despite hundreds of gory spatters."--Kirkus Reviews



Review
"[Agyar], a suave and mysterious drifter who shares an abandoned house with a compassionate African-American ghost, spends his nights seducing various inhabitants of an Ohio college town. Few can resist him, but he eventually finds himself obsessed with two women, one a beautiful young dancer, the other a harsh taskmistress of indeterminate age. One offers him salvation, the second seeks to destroy him...Packs more of an emotional wallop than any verbose gore fest served up by less imaginative talents." -San Francisco Chronicle

"Steven Burst, in a genre that's mostly done by numbers these days, maintains a hipster charm and originality of mind." -The Philadelphia Inquirer

"The author of the Vlad Taltos series and The Phoenix Guard offers a fresh perspective on a popular theme of dark fantasy in this penetrating look at an individual caught on the border between life and death." -Library Journal



Book Description
A novel of immortality---and its price

Born over a century ago, Agyar was once a frivolous young man, before he found unwanted immortality in a woman's blood-red lips. Now he goes from woman to woman, and decade to decade, finding himself at last in an Midwestern college town, where he must choose between the seductions of salvation--and of destruction.



About the Author
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.

ANNOTATION

A dark, sharp, unforgettable urban fantasy from the bestselling author of The Phoenix Guards. "The eponymous anti-hero, a suave and mysterious drifter . . . finds himself obsessed with two women, one a beautiful young dancer, the other a harsh taskmistress. . . . One offers him salvation, the second seeks to destroy him."--San Francisco Chronicle.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

What if you could live for centuries, and the only price was your soul...? Agyar is a man who has paid this price. Born over a century ago, and once a frivolous young man in search of pleasure, he found instead immortality in a woman's blood-red lips. Now he roams from woman to woman, from decade to decade, and from land to land. Death does not bind him. Only one thing does - and that is a bind he has vowed to break. It has brought him to modern day Ohio and an abandoned house in a quiet college town. Here he plays his familiar role: the handsome drifter, the mysterious stranger, the sharp-tongued and heartless Lothario. But in this town are two women, one young and one as ageless as he. And one of these two women will cost him much more than his blackened soul. Once again author Steven Brust proves himself to be one of the most dazzling new stars of the fantasy field with this dark, sharp urban fantasy of the immortal, amoral Agyar.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

Impressively wrought modern vampire/redemption yarn, from the author of The Phoenix Guards, The Gypsy (p. 641), etc. Arriving in the quiet college town of Lakota, Ohio, Agyar Janos takes up residence in an empty, furnished house—abandoned because it's haunted by Jim, the ghost of an escaped slave. The pair strike up a wary friendship, and it becomes apparent that Agyar, methodical, callous, detached from both life and death, is a vampire. His first victim is artist Jill, but she rebels against his control of her; so when threatened by Jill's shotgun-toting boyfriend, Agyar kills him without compunction. Then Laura Kellem, the ancient vampire to whom Agyar is himself in thrall, orders Agyar to sacrifice himself by allowing the police to capture him, so as to preserve Kellem's own concealment, which she has foolishly compromised. At first, Agyar cares little; but in his developing non-vampire relationship with Susan, Jill's warm, attractive, intelligent flatmate, he finds compelling reasons to stay alive. Poor Jill, meantime, performs a gypsy magic ritual in another desperate attempt to break free of Agyar. But Agyar is no longer the vampire he was. After learning the details of the ritual, he voluntarily releases Jill; then, accompanied by Susan, he prepares to use the ritual himself in a showdown with the merciless Kellem. Compact, understated, and highly persuasive. Brust accomplishes with a wry turn of phrase or a small flourish what others never achieve despite hundreds of gory spatters.