Take a photo of a barcode or cover
klagge 's review for:
Cugel's Saga
by Jack Vance
There was recently a thread on the r/fantasy Reddit about favorite "antiheroes and lovable rogues." I posted about Cugel the Clever, the protagonist of this as well as Vance's earlier fix-up "The Eyes of the Overworld." Someone responded to say that while they also liked the books, Cugel is in no way lovable!
I don't know, I see where they're coming from, but after two books I have a weird fondness for Cugel. He's definitely lazy and almost always trying to cheat someone out of something. But in Vance's world, most of the people he meets are also of questionable moral character, so it's fun to watch Cugel trying to get the better of them with his harebrained schemes (which he usually does not--"The Clever" is a self-administered epithet that is not completely accurate). I also love the slightly weird diction of Vance's dialog, with characters always going "By no means!" and stuff like that.
The most memorable part of this one for me is the scene where Cugel and another guy are in a bar and trying to settle something through a series of games of chance that they invent that all go awry, including "racing" crustaceans across the floor (which promptly run off in random directions), a "press your luck" game of lowering a sliding door bit by bit until it will knock a waiter's hat off (you can guess what happens), and daring each other to cut off another patron's beard.
I don't know, I see where they're coming from, but after two books I have a weird fondness for Cugel. He's definitely lazy and almost always trying to cheat someone out of something. But in Vance's world, most of the people he meets are also of questionable moral character, so it's fun to watch Cugel trying to get the better of them with his harebrained schemes (which he usually does not--"The Clever" is a self-administered epithet that is not completely accurate). I also love the slightly weird diction of Vance's dialog, with characters always going "By no means!" and stuff like that.
The most memorable part of this one for me is the scene where Cugel and another guy are in a bar and trying to settle something through a series of games of chance that they invent that all go awry, including "racing" crustaceans across the floor (which promptly run off in random directions), a "press your luck" game of lowering a sliding door bit by bit until it will knock a waiter's hat off (you can guess what happens), and daring each other to cut off another patron's beard.