Tiassa by Steven Brust

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Overall, if you enjoy the Vlad Taltos books, I would find it hard to believe you wouldn’t like this. Moreover, if you also enjoyed the Khaavren books, you’ll finally get to see the joining of those two "lines" in this novel.



The book essentially includes 3 "Parts" or novellas which are all connected by a thread. The first part concerns an episode from Vlad’s past, primarily during the time of his engagement to Cawti.



The second part focuses on a consequence to this first episode, told in Cawti’s perspective, but involving Norathar, the Empress, and the Countess of Whitecrest (Khaavren’s wife). This occurs after Vlad and Cawti’s separation while Vlad is apparently back East somewhere.



The final part is told from Khaavren’s perspective, similarly to that you’ve seen in the books focused on the head of the Phoenix Guards. Yes, including some of the same banter and stylistic elements you’d expect in those books. This was excellently done, however, and you really get to see the care that the Empress has for Vlad and you see the respect for him grow in Khaavren throughout as well.



If you’re looking for "all the answers" to the dangling plotlines in the series, you are definitely not going to find them. Besides, there’s going to be at least one book for each of the houses in the cycle anyway. Duh.



If you’re looking for deep and thought-provoking reading… why on earth are you reading the Vlad books? These are meant to be light, fun, fast-paced reads with action and humor. Maybe tinged with a little dark reality, but still. Be realistic.



If you’ve read the other books in the series (either series, really) then you probably ought to just go ahead and get and read it. You know you’re going to do so eventually.



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Just a quick little postlet here regarding a new app I’m trying out and so far looks great: YNAB.

Here’s a link to YNAB’s website. Check it out.

What’s this application all about? Think for just a second… yep, that’s right, it’s a budget-building and maintaing application. It runs on pretty much every platform (it seems to be Adobe Air based) and it’s pretty slick.

Everyone reading this blog should take the time to create a budget every month. Before the month (don’t use the Congressional methodology and work on the budget in an “after the fact” manner). And pre-assign what your money is going to do each month. This is a strong theme in all of the Dave Ramsey teachings, but also across most financial advisors’ you will ever see. It’s essentially impossible to succeed with money if you don’t know how much you have and take control of it, instead of letting it control you. Some people out there might think that if you’re wealthy or have a high income you don’t “need” a budget. You’ll just out-earn your spending habits. In the awesome book The Millionaire Next Door they report on the research into this and they find that not only do the majority of millionaires budget rigorously, but also indicate that the majority of high income earners who do NOT budget are under-accumulators of wealth and end up essentially wasting their income.

Bringing it back around to the software… most of us have tried a budget here or there. I did it for years. MS Excel has that nifty “budget” spreadsheet included with the program. It looks good, right? Most of the categories you want. Some features to add the various amounts together and get you a number that says what your deficit or windfall is expected to be.

The problem with that was always that I would do the budget once and then try to follow the same sheet of paper for several months. Never really updating what was actually spent. Or adjusting the budget in any way. Other software falls prey to the same sort of “file it and forget it” pitfall.

That’s where YNAB seems, on my initial impression, to set itself apart. Of course it has a nice pre-built set of categories and adding and switching (and even moving) them is a snap. Once you have your budget set up, it also shows you the next 1-2 months ahead of time. It shows the balances on your debt accounts and it carries “leftovers” from categories for which you underspent (or for which you are budgeting monthly even though the bill is quarterly or semi-annual).

The program doesn’t automatically use the same values for your budget every month. I think this is excellent because it makes you actually think about what you’re doing. It does make it easy to start with the same numbers with a two-click process that gives you some smart options.

Visually the application is stunning, in my opinion. Beautiful shades of blue, with red debts just to remind you where you currently stand. After using Dave Ramsey’s Gazelle Budget software (which is great in a lot of ways, but the window is tiny and scrolling is backwards and moving from month to month is either redo the whole thing from scratch or start off with last month’s budget completely) this is just a lot better user experience. It’s almost “fun” to use.

By no means do I have a full grasp of the program, however. I need to get a grasp on account importing functions (it will import Quicken/MS Money files) and experience a few months of budget updating. What I’ve already seen in the program makes me not only look forward to getting to know it better, but also to become a power-user of this application.

Go download a 7-day trial at YouNeedABudget.com.