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Steven Brust
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Good Guys Kindle Edition

by Steven Brust (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 out of 5 stars 599
Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy
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A snarky, irreverent tale of secret magic in the modern world, the first solo standalone novel in two decades from Steven Brust, the New York Times bestselling author of the Vlad Taltos series

Donovan was shot by a cop. For jaywalking, supposedly. Actually, for arguing with a cop while black. Four of the nine shots were lethal—or would have been, if their target had been anybody else. The Foundation picked him up, brought him back, and trained him further. “Lethal” turns out to be a relative term when magic is involved.

When Marci was fifteen, she levitated a paperweight and threw it at a guy she didn’t like. The Foundation scooped her up for training too.

“Hippie chick” Susan got well into her Foundation training before they told her about the magic, but she’s as powerful as Donovan and Marci now.

They can teleport themselves thousands of miles, conjure shields that will stop bullets, and read information from the remnants of spells cast by others days before.

They all work for the secretive Foundation…for minimum wage.

Which is okay, because the Foundation are the good guys. Aren’t they?

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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  1. Print length
    307 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Tor Books
  5. Publication date
    March 6, 2018
  6. File size
    3680 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
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  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Good Guys

"Brust fans and admirers of Connie Willis and Jim Butcher will appreciate [Good Guys]."―Library Journal

"Amusing and campy...fast-paced action and witty narration." ―Booklist

Praise for Steven Brust

“Brust is one of those natural caper writers, a pulp writer in the Hammett tradition, someone with what William Gibson calls ‘wheels on his tractor.’ In other words, a writer who can spin a yarn that keeps you guessing until the end, aware of many precise moving parts all meshing in synchrony to drive a magnificent jeweled watch of a story.” ―Cory Doctorow on Hawk

“Secret societies, immortality, murder mysteries, and Las Vegas all in one book? Shut up and take my money.” ―John Scalzi on The Incrementalists

“Delightful, exciting, and sometimes brilliant.” ―Neil Gaiman on Steven Brust

"Watch Steven Brust. He's good. He moves fast. He surprises you. Watching him untangle the diverse threads of intrigue, honor, character and mayhem from amid the gears of a world as intricately constructed as a Swiss watch is a rare pleasure." ―Roger Zelazny

"Steven Brust may well be America's best fantasy writer." ―Tad Williams

“Wonderful…Like most of Brust’s books, this witty, wry tale stands alone and is very accessible to new readers.” ―Publishers Weekly on Tiassa

About the Author

STEVEN BRUST is the author of a number of bestselling fantasy novels, including two New York Times bestsellers, Dzur and Tiassa. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B071DZKPHC
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books (March 6, 2018)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 6, 2018
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3680 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 307 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 599

About the author

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Steven Brust

Steven Brust

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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.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
599 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Margaret Fiore
5.0 out of 5 stars My Favorite Brust Book Yet!
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2020
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I have read a large chunk of Brust’s Vlad Taltos books, as well as several others. I have enjoyed all of them. Brust’s books always have: readable prose with standout details, consistent and believable world-building, tight and swift-moving, twisty plotting, and good characterization. Good Guys has all of these. It also is set in a more familiar modern world. And I love its clearly-drawn characters! Yes, even Becker! And the mention of a suspect whose office contained a full shelf of Anthony Price books sent me running to investigate this hitherto-unknown-to-me writer. The first book of his Dr. Audley series tells me this was probably a big favor! Thank you, Mr. Brust!
Aside from that, I would LOVE to see more of our snarky, self-aware protagonist, Donovan, and any or all of the other characters in further adventures...
I have to return to add that this book is rich enough, and such enjoyable reading, that I have already picked it up again, and - meaning to just look at one paragraph - been drawn right back in to re-read the entire book!
4 people found this helpful
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D. G. Hulan
4.0 out of 5 stars Rather different from most Brust, but a good read
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2019
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The first-person narrator of occasional chapters is a hit man working his way through a list of people to kill, and given some more or less magical tools to do it with. We don’t get his name until very late in the book. The real protagonist is Donovan Jackson Longfellow, an African-American detective working for Upstairs, a group of mages who have trained him in some of their arts and who want assassins and other “bad guys” wiped out. Donovan is the head of a small team, also including Marci Sullivan, a magic-worker, and Susan Coulis, a deadly martial-arts fighter. They’re working on finding the assassin, but as they notice the sort of people he’s targeting they begin to wonder if he’s not a good guy himself. The setting is contemporary this-world, so the magic isn’t usually too obvious. Quite an interesting read, if considerably different from most of the Brust I’ve read.
2 people found this helpful
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M. Goldberg
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent novel with a strong moral focus
Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2018
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I think this is one of Steven Brust's best novels.

I was hooked by time I finished the first page. It took all my will power to put down at 2 AM so I could get some sleep -- I'm too old to pull an all-nighter. I finished it the next morning, almost without pausing to do any of other things I really should have been doing.

On the surface it provides all the good stuff Brust usually delivers: mystery, magic, mayhem, snappy dialog and a fascinating plot, but it is much enriched by its sub-text dealing with moral courage and being a mensch.

The main characters are really well done. Donovan shows more moral courage than any other fantasy novel character I can bring to mind. Nagorski shows the total lack on menschenkeit I would expect from an egomaniac on a revenge spree.

Don't miss this book.
9 people found this helpful
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Books Of Brian
3.0 out of 5 stars Good - But Not Nearly So Good As Vlad
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2018
Verified Purchase
I have two books that I want to post on and this is one. There are authors that instantly move to the top of the Nightstand pile – no matter what I’m reading. Their books are always in my shopping cart, I track the release date and I purchase and download them as soon as they’re released. I feel that way about Jim Butcher and his “Dresden Files” books.

Steven Brust is another and it’s primarily because of his Vlad Taltos novels. It’s a mammoth series that I’ve been reading since the first book – “Jhereg” – came out in 1987. There are 15 novels in the Taltos series with at least 2 more coming as well as 5 titles in a prequel series called the Khaavren Romances – inspired by Dumas’ d’Artagnan romances. I can’t recommend these books highly enough. They’re tight, witty, complex and very, very fun. Vlad is one of those characters who’s aged really well. He’s a little slower, a lot wiser and not quite as cocky today as he was in 1987 when he first appeared in “Jhereg” but he’s every bit as lovable. I don’t know how anyone couldn’t enjoy this character or these books.

I saw “The Good Guys” pop up on Amazon about 6 months ago and it went straight into my Shopping Cart. It was released the same day as “A Call To Vengeance” and I worked my way through both in pretty short order. I’ve already posted on “A Call To Vengeance” and can honestly say that I’m glad I read it first. I saved the best of the two for last and ended New Release Week on a slightly higher note. I can’t tell whether Brust plans to turn this into a new series but he’s certainly left himself room to do so. While I hope he does, I have to say that I’d prefer him to get back to Vlad and finish his story before returning to the world he’s created in “The Good Guys”.

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed this book. It’s just that Brust will never write another book that I won’t -as I’m reading – compare to his Taltos series. Those books are – and always will be – special to me – mainly because of his main character. Vlad Taltos is one of my literary heroes. I have a 30 year relationship with him and he’s NEVER, EVER, EVER let me down. Brust made the mistake of getting it all right for me with his first series and I don’t think he’ll ever be able to get over that bar. The only time he’s ever gotten close is with his Taltos prequel series – “The Khaavren Romances”.

So – the problem for me here is that it’s a good book – it’s just not quite as good as what he’s written for me in the past. He certainly grabs your attention from the very first page. He doles out information about his primary characters and the organization for which they work in a measured way that holds you and compels you to read on. He teases you with ambiguities about the relationship and politics between the two magical societies in a very skillful way. Brust makes you want to finish this one from the very first page.

Ultimately, the problem has to do with the main character in “The Good Guys”. Donovan is a very hard-boiled, self-contained private investigator working for one of the two magical societies existing in our world – the Foundation. He’s competent and confident and capable and worth cheering for. He’s committed to his team but he’s almost too willing to put them in harm’s way. He’s not a killer but ultimately proves himself to be all too willing to dispense remorseless, terminal justice. He has an endearing disdain for the bureaucracy that he serves but it becomes so pronounced that it calls into question where his loyalties lie – if he has any at all – or his reasons for serving at all. He just didn’t engage me and worm his way into my heart in the same way that Vlad has. I found very little beyond his professionalism and skill to admire. Short to long – he’s all nails – displaying very little humanity.

Vlad on the other hand, while he’s an assassin and a mob enforcer – not normally the type of calling most of us would associate with a rich and warm and appealing personality – is all human – something made even more tangible to readers by the fact that he’s one of the few human characters in this enormous 30 year cast of characters. He’s defined not by his profession but by his love of food and friends and family and his relationship with his Jhereg familiar (who in many ways is actually the most enjoyable character in the 15 books that currently make up this series) – his loyalty and his sense of humor and his chaotic way of always finding the correct answer to seemingly intractable problems. I live for new Taltos novels in the same way that I live for new Harry Dresden novels – they give me the precious chance to spend another day or two with Vlad.

My last word on this – if this is your first Brust novel – you’ll probably enjoy it far more than I did – largely because you won’t be measuring it against a 30 year literary love affair.
53 people found this helpful
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Vulgarity
4.0 out of 5 stars Not character driven...
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2019
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...but a ripping yarn. [trying to avoid spoilers] This isn’t Vlad Taltos, and yet it is. A detective novel of sorts. Setting is hidden magic in the present day. Good guys and the other team. Being good doesn’t pay very well. The other team does better. But the people who are dying are members of the other team. Chasing a killer of bad people is somewhat morally ambiguous, and this story exists in this space.

Story flows chronologically (more or less) but with multiple points of view, and this works better than it usually does, I often find that approach very offputting and find myself wanting to skip chapters to avoid certain characters, but not here. Only occasionally do two characters experience the same event. It works.

The exposition of the world flows naturally from the story, as I have come to expect from Brust.

This was a more satisfying story for me than the incrementalists books. I see some reviewers don’t think this lives up to the Taltos books, but I’m pretty happy with it. I think it was a good buy.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Mattfeldt RK
5.0 out of 5 stars Brust keeps surprising his readers!
Reviewed in Brazil on March 29, 2021
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Another bullseye from Steven Brust!
Didn’t pause reading until the end. Definitely worth it!
Will please both old and new readers.
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Oglark
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome
Reviewed in Canada on May 2, 2018
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Very good book. A little over the top about how the protagonist views being black in the US, but otherwise a very good novel.
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Catmoor
3.0 out of 5 stars Just who are they?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 22, 2018
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I like Steven Brust's writing, and some of his standalone books are, in my opinion, among his best. This one, however, will need a good bit of digesting and at least one reread before I can form a final judgement. The concept - tell a story from two - or more -sides, each with a case for being the "good guys" - is an interesting one, and well done. Is it desirable to conclude who is "right"? That is the question I am still considering
Another reread, or two, may be needed; which perhaps justifies a fourth star. Read it and reach your own conclusion.
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