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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
For some ungodly reason I've become interested in George R. R. Martin's interminably unfinished A Song of Ice and Fire, despite the lack of any new book on the horizon. Its appeal is largely attributed to its ensemble cast -- there are absolute villains and a few heroes, but the bulk of characters are brilliantly psychologically rendered. Without the characters, the world itself would be pretty bland.
I picked up Vance due to his tremendous influence both on Martin et al. and on D&D. Most of his influence on contemporary D&D has been ironed out, which has possibly contributed to its success, because this is a really weird book that seems to belong to a niche I am not fully part of.
The prose is excellent - it is fabulously out of style, and between its extravagance and the book's lightness on characters, I'm not certain a book like this would find an audience today. I am not even truly its audience...as I read on I felt like I was walking through a frustrating art exhibition. I found certain things to appreciate, but I felt myself reaching to explain away its flaws as somehow intentional.
I do think a lot of fantasy fans should read this, as long as they know which lessons to take as edifying and as cautionary. I'll likely read more Vance, but only fleetingly, skimming, appreciating word paintings, but not as stories, not for meaning. As frequently as I groan and grumble at overly censorious contemporary moralising, I can't help but see the alluring infant role women take in this book, and in a general sense in 'classic' fantasy to be, at best, deeply embarrassing to read. At the same time, I do think we need to bring back the 'guilt' in 'guilty pleasure', so...
I picked up Vance due to his tremendous influence both on Martin et al. and on D&D. Most of his influence on contemporary D&D has been ironed out, which has possibly contributed to its success, because this is a really weird book that seems to belong to a niche I am not fully part of.
The prose is excellent - it is fabulously out of style, and between its extravagance and the book's lightness on characters, I'm not certain a book like this would find an audience today. I am not even truly its audience...as I read on I felt like I was walking through a frustrating art exhibition. I found certain things to appreciate, but I felt myself reaching to explain away its flaws as somehow intentional.
I do think a lot of fantasy fans should read this, as long as they know which lessons to take as edifying and as cautionary. I'll likely read more Vance, but only fleetingly, skimming, appreciating word paintings, but not as stories, not for meaning. As frequently as I groan and grumble at overly censorious contemporary moralising, I can't help but see the alluring infant role women take in this book, and in a general sense in 'classic' fantasy to be, at best, deeply embarrassing to read. At the same time, I do think we need to bring back the 'guilt' in 'guilty pleasure', so...
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This time around I liked the first book of the Dying Earth series so much better then the other two I've read so far. It's very poetic and the short stories work like impressionist brush strokes creating the dark world Jack Vance has invented. In the Cugel adventures the Dying Earth world becomes more like a crutch to tell about his mishaps while here the world is more like one of the characters.
There were aspects and novelties that I liked; particularly seeing the origins of the Vancian magic system which pervades Dungeons and Dragons to this day. But ultimately the setting was less interesting than I'd hoped.
Few bookish experiences are akin to reading the whispersilk elegance of Jack Vance's cruel, unsparingly despairing and interlocking stories about the various individual journeys taken by the proud, the greedy, and the curious at the end of the death of the world. Marked by the immense transformation of the post-modern world, when the euphoria of industrialization had been burnt, blackened, and blown to pieces by two world wars, two atomic bombs, and the disarray of the imagination that followed revelations of concentration camps and human cruelty, not to mention the domestic violence of the nuclear family at empowered masculinity's hands as an American response to societal transformation, Vance's composite image is a distillation of the pessimistic end-point of all of this historic change. His focus on intertwining individuals foretells the rise of the neoliberal paradigm that reduces society to individuals, but with the difference that, for Vance and unlike contemporary powers that be (and the array of role-playing games that Vance helped to spawn, that focus on individual empowerment above all else!), it is undesirable.
But what a vision he builds: iridescent colours, unimaginable splendours, and unparalleled cruelties. Travels with fantastical dangers; a magic built of genre-altering ease; characters with outlandish names and outsized personalities.
The mistake is to think that this will be an easy read, and that these will be kind and sympathetic people whose moralities are those of neoliberal's socially-conscious hangover, with lip-service to a disappearing safety net and piety garbing the soft cloth that wraps hard societal power. Vance trains his eyes on the behaviour of the deeply unpleasant, especially those who wield misogynistic violence, as he recognizes that their power in his own world is as destructive. However, there is an allowance here at the death of the world: dramatic irony. No-one comes out well, but the evil and the cruel are saved an especially vicious fate, with the wilfully ignorant committing acts of clear atrocity and the pleasant and curious finding their way to small mercies and survivals. This is not to say that Vance escapes unscathed or his stories unmarred, and there are plenty of gendered assumptions structuring his narrative armature of desire and personality. In this, too, the mistake is to think this will be an easy read.
The Dying Earth does something only infrequently found: it viscerally responds to its historical moment, and in doing so lays the foundation for an immense flourishing of genre literature that follows, from Dungeons and Dragons to the tropes and trails of contemporary fantasy. I was disturbed, discomforted, enthralled.
But what a vision he builds: iridescent colours, unimaginable splendours, and unparalleled cruelties. Travels with fantastical dangers; a magic built of genre-altering ease; characters with outlandish names and outsized personalities.
The mistake is to think that this will be an easy read, and that these will be kind and sympathetic people whose moralities are those of neoliberal's socially-conscious hangover, with lip-service to a disappearing safety net and piety garbing the soft cloth that wraps hard societal power. Vance trains his eyes on the behaviour of the deeply unpleasant, especially those who wield misogynistic violence, as he recognizes that their power in his own world is as destructive. However, there is an allowance here at the death of the world: dramatic irony. No-one comes out well, but the evil and the cruel are saved an especially vicious fate, with the wilfully ignorant committing acts of clear atrocity and the pleasant and curious finding their way to small mercies and survivals. This is not to say that Vance escapes unscathed or his stories unmarred, and there are plenty of gendered assumptions structuring his narrative armature of desire and personality. In this, too, the mistake is to think this will be an easy read.
The Dying Earth does something only infrequently found: it viscerally responds to its historical moment, and in doing so lays the foundation for an immense flourishing of genre literature that follows, from Dungeons and Dragons to the tropes and trails of contemporary fantasy. I was disturbed, discomforted, enthralled.
This is definitely not a book for everyone.
With the purpliest of proses, Jack Vance regales us with a troop of absurd characters, each marching onto the stage in order to get tangled up in some bizarre situation, before being quickly ushered off to make room for the next character. Many readers will be put off by the sheer strangeness of the world Vance has created, or by the loose connectedness of the stories.
I'm not even sure I knew what was going on half the time, but I found it to be a wild ride all the same.
With the purpliest of proses, Jack Vance regales us with a troop of absurd characters, each marching onto the stage in order to get tangled up in some bizarre situation, before being quickly ushered off to make room for the next character. Many readers will be put off by the sheer strangeness of the world Vance has created, or by the loose connectedness of the stories.
I'm not even sure I knew what was going on half the time, but I found it to be a wild ride all the same.
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
The Dying Earth is a lot like the Twilight Zone: it is a series of speculative ideas explored for the sake of thought. It is thought provoking, the story is there more to convey the thought than for its own sake. It's entertaining, but it's not focused on character, plot, etc, the sort of things that people normally go to books for. It's a different sort of genre. It's akin to things like I, Robot or that sort of idea-focused science fiction stuff.
This is a thought-oriented sortof book, whereas most books are emotionally oriented. Even the rating systems here are built and designed for describing the emotional content of books, so they aren't even relevant here.
This is a thought-oriented sortof book, whereas most books are emotionally oriented. Even the rating systems here are built and designed for describing the emotional content of books, so they aren't even relevant here.
Probably a 3.5. I wanted to read this to complete my nerd literacy, since I've always heard that the D&D magic system ("Vancian magic") is borrowed from/based on this book of Vance's. The Dying Earth is six stories, more-or-less loosely connected. The first story successfully carried me away with its sheer strangeness, as Turjan travels to a distant Embelyon to find mighty Pandelume to learn the secret of creating people in vats. Why does he want to create people in vats? I mean, why wouldn't you? Pandelume seems to take in stride that of course you would want to. It doesn't read so much as, like, a story, with characters and conflicts, as a history, a series of events that occur one after another. That Turjan, huh? Sure did see some wild stuff in Embelyon! Sure does like making people in vats! Pretty interesting, eh?
I think the second story is maybe the most stylistically sophisticated, centering the villain's point of view gradually reintroducing characters from the first story until you realize that while sadistic Mazirian is just going about his day, our buddy Turjan is in a real jam. There's some pretty cool twists and turns here and a much more emotional denouement, when Turjan's creation (those vats!) T'sain matches wits with Mazirian to save her...dad?...with her life on the line. The third story was maybe my personal favorite, the only story that follows a female point-of-view and has a very emotional heart, as T'sais, faulty creation of Pandelume, travels to distant earth to look for love. I liked T'sais and her sad tale, but it's starting in this story that the book gets into a rut of passive protagonists (each more boring than the last, in my humble opinion) wandering around and witnessing ancient enigmas resolving themselves
Comparing this with the other relatively classic genre fic I read recently, The Man-Kzin Wars, I'm really struck by the extent to which genre fic from this period acts as, big scare quotes, "romance novels for boys." What I mean by that is that they specifically act as wish fulfillment fantasies about romance, and it's a very specific formula: gentle, docile, easily upset woman falls madly in love with decent, brainy man who saves her. That's too reductive, and there's definitely stuff in each book that breaks the mold, like the aggressive Kzin women of "Cathouse" in The Man-Kzin Wars, and T'sais in The Dying Earth, whose story has Jane Eyre vibes. At the same time, the basic pattern is pretty plain to see.
I think the second story is maybe the most stylistically sophisticated, centering the villain's point of view gradually reintroducing characters from the first story until you realize that while sadistic Mazirian is just going about his day, our buddy Turjan is in a real jam. There's some pretty cool twists and turns here and a much more emotional denouement, when Turjan's creation (those vats!) T'sain matches wits with Mazirian to save her...dad?...with her life on the line. The third story was maybe my personal favorite, the only story that follows a female point-of-view and has a very emotional heart, as T'sais, faulty creation of Pandelume, travels to distant earth to look for love. I liked T'sais and her sad tale, but it's starting in this story that the book gets into a rut of passive protagonists (each more boring than the last, in my humble opinion) wandering around and witnessing ancient enigmas resolving themselves
Comparing this with the other relatively classic genre fic I read recently, The Man-Kzin Wars, I'm really struck by the extent to which genre fic from this period acts as, big scare quotes, "romance novels for boys." What I mean by that is that they specifically act as wish fulfillment fantasies about romance, and it's a very specific formula: gentle, docile, easily upset woman falls madly in love with decent, brainy man who saves her. That's too reductive, and there's definitely stuff in each book that breaks the mold, like the aggressive Kzin women of "Cathouse" in The Man-Kzin Wars, and T'sais in The Dying Earth, whose story has Jane Eyre vibes. At the same time, the basic pattern is pretty plain to see.