The Khaavren Romances. Steven Brust or Paarfi.

Continual humour from start to finish as well as a simple but standard
average fantasy plot.
Further to comments earlier this year by Tony Nance about Brust, I
discovered that although, many years ago I had read The Phoenix Guards
and Five Hundred Years After, which were Five and Four Star reads for
me, I had not continued with the third of five books in the series which
I thought was The Paths of the Dead.
When about 70% through I realised that there wouldn't be sufficient
pages to complete the various threads and discovered that the last book
had been split into three books supposedly by the publisher without
permission according to the highly respected historian, Paarfi. He
complains at the beginning of book two, The Lord of Castle Black, that
the publisher has asked him to summarise book one as an introduction
with which Paarfi eventually complies with extreme annoyance spending
the first third of this summary on various plausible reasons in a
humorous way why this does more harm than good.
I think that I stopped reading because the novelty of his humour wore
off a little in book two but this time I read the final three with no
decrease in appreciation.

The humorous politeness of dialogue is amazing creating the impression
that they are all rather thick.
"...you wish my opinion??
?Yes, exactly. And the proof is: I asked.?
?Well, that is true, you did.?
?And then??
?Well, in the first place, my opinion is..."
Most of the dialogue is simple like this and whilst reading I found it
quite rhythmical.

An example of historian Paarfi's style.
Grita is spying on her enemies and overhears a lackey holding forth on
how to season cast-iron pots. "While this was not what Grita wanted to
hear, it was, nevertheless, what was said, and she was required to
accept it as much as the reader?although the reader is perhaps more
fortunate insofar as he is not required to hear the entire conversation,
but only a summary of it. It is well known by those who make a career of listening in on private conversations?by which we refer to those who do
so for the Empire, as well as those who do so for personal reasons of
one sort or another?that one must often listen to a considerable amount
of wearying, trivial discourse before hearing anything of interest."

The third book of The Viscount of Adrilankha is titled Sethra Lavode.
I loved all three.

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