I've been holding off on writing my Jack Vance reviews for a while because I loved The Dying Earth stories so much that I'm still struggling with how to write the perfect review to make everyone run out and buy a copy. Since then, however, I've been slowly assimilating many of his other works ...
Nutshell: assorted losers use the always already imminent destruction of the Earth as an excuse for grave breaches of sense & decency; sadly, the destruction of this Earth is not presented herein.Though the volume designates a metonym by which the setting stands for a particular subgenre, the se...
quintessential Jack Vance adventure novel. swiftly-paced, drily witty, deeply ironic, byzantine in its layers of back-story and multiple displays of world-building yet happily trim and stripped-down in its actual verbiage, featuring a sardonic young hero, his icy love interest and various mysteri...
ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.As I'm writing this, Jack Vance's under-appreciated Lyonesse trilogy has been off the shelves for years. My library doesn't even have a copy — it had to be interlibrary loaned for me. Why is that? Publishers have been printing a seemingly endless stream of ...
As a standalone book, Lurulu isn't a great success. It's short, and it depends heavily on what went before. (Though there is a nice summary of Ports of Call, which is well worth reading, as it describes that book in even more colorful terms than the book itself.)As a sequel, or considered as the ...
The Blue World by Jack Vanceaka The KragenThe Blue World is a science fiction novel with an interesting setting of a vast, open ocean world without any landmass. The story behind the idea for the book is that, apparently, Frank Herbet discussed his idea for the novel Dune—which is set in a harsh ...
This third book of the Durdane trilogy provides a satisfying and somewhat surprising conclusion to the story, which I will not give away because it’s worth reading.Gatzel Etzwane again provides the single point of view. He would like to return to his relatively free and simple life as a musician,...
Part of what makes Jack Vance such a master is the casual way he conjures entire planets full of dynamic societies, even for minor stopovers in the story. This may be partially due to the fact that he goes out of his way to present deadly wilderness alongside civilization. There's a fair amount...
This novella won Vance his second Hugo Award and his first Nebula after it appeared in Galaxy in 1966. Vance’s specialty was a unique blend of science-fantasy riddled with exotic locales, star-faring feudalisms, and rich alien cultures, something that a Hard SF purist might blanch at. But without...
The first in another trilogy by Vance (The Cadwal Chronicles), this one set on the planet Cadwal, orbiting a star in what is known as the Wisp. As is common with Vance, we follow the fortunes of a young man (in this case Glawen Clattuc) growing up in a society with both advantages and injustices....
Half a century after he started publishing, Vance showed in this story that he still had his gift. For Vance fans, the characters are familiar types, but the writing flows just as smoothly as ever.Ports of Call is a travelogue, somewhat in the mode of Big Planet (but broader) or Space Opera (but ...
The first volume in Vance's Lyonesse trilogy felt like such a departure for the author--not that it didn't have his characteristic wit and oddness, but I really felt it was one of the first times that I was invited to feel for his characters. His usual fare is light and disconnected, skipping acr...
First, the Tor paperback edition has the least appropriate cover art imaginable: for this series in particular, Vance has absolutely no interest in the technology that allows his characters to travel the breadth of the Gaean Reach, and there is no description of what happens between the purchase ...
A six-year boy is found nearly beaten to death and, in order to save his life, a portion of his memory is erased. He recovers and is adopted and becomes Jaro Fath, an outcast youth on the socially stratified planet Thanet. As Jaro gets older, his desire to find out about his past intensifies un...
The second book in Jack Vance's Cugel saga, and third novel in 'The Dying Earth' series, 'The Skybreak Spatterlight' once again follows the rogue Cugel across fantasy wastelands in a world where the sun threatens to extinguish at any moment. Given the book's nature as a sequel, spoilers for the p...
I have already gushed enthusiastic about the opening volume in the Dying Earth epic. It seems I should have kept some of the hyperbole in reserve for later books, as the appeal of the setting and of the characters show no sign of slacking with this second book. It's also interesting to note that ...
"By an axiom of cultural anthropology, the more isolated a community, the more idiosyncratic become its customs and conventions. This of course is not necessarily disadvantageous."The Rhune are an aloof and eccentric culture. Lords of a beautiful, mountainous realm on the planet Marune of the Ala...
This is not my favorite Vance book (that honor goes to Eyes of the Overworld), not by a long shot but it shares so many characteristics that make Vance's books such a joy to read. Every Jack Vance book I've read demonstrate such fantastic knowledge about so many aspects of the world and this book...
Showboat World is not a sequel to Big Planet. It shares the first book's planetary setting and introduces new, native characters and a different scenario, revolving around the traveling 'showboats' that ply entertainment spectacles around the Tinsitala Steppe region. The back cover led me to be...
The name of the planet is Trullion! World #2262 of the Alastor Cluster! The descriptions of this beautiful world and its backwoods society of islands and watery fens were the best part of the novel. As always, the author conveys a lot with a little; his spare prose is wonderfully stylish and his ...
Rhialto the Marvellous closes the initial collection of Dying Earth stories, as chronicled by Jack Vance, a master of invention who took me on an incredible journey through eons of history, hundreds of lost civilizations and quirky cultures, multicolored vistas of exotic lands, weird trees and ch...
The Gray Prince – the novel – is reserved, dry, sly, a streamlined adventure, a mystery box full of more mystery boxes, a meditation on manifest destiny, a critical contemplation on colonialism that left me a little disturbed. The Gray Prince – the character – is a fool, a clown, an object of exp...