A tree of immense girth grows from a tufted shoot; a terrace of nine levels rises from a clump of soil; a journey of a thousand miles begins under the first tread.
--Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 64
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| Empires of Sand | Rhialto the Marvellous | Cugel's Saga |
| The Eyes of the Overworld | There Are Doors |
Empires of Sand, David Ball (1999), 559 pp (hb).
A historical novel that centers on two cousins in nineteenth century France. A French count crash lands his hot-air balloon in northern Africa, and ends up marrying a women from the Tuareg tribes; the count's younger brother is an army officer who ends up unjustly disgraced during an action against the Germans. Their sons start out friends, although the count's son heads back to his mother's people and is presumed lost. Years later, they meet up when his cousin is part of a military expedition to subdue the troublesome desert tribes.
This struck me as an unexceptionable effort that never really had the spark it needed to lift it to the level of really interesting. Not bad, but not particularly absorbing, either.
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Rhialto the Marvellous, Jack Vance (1984), 160 pp (tpb).
The last tale in Vance's Dying Earth sequence, this deals with the eponymous Rhialto, a magician in loose confederation or association of magicians. The assorted magicians squabble and scheme, and when one of their number tampers with the inscription containing the precepts governing their compact, Rhialto has to undertake a quest to figure out how it was tampered with and then prove that it has been altered. This sends him back in time an aeon or two (still far in our future, of course), and off on, well, adventures.
Rhialto seems a somewhat more moral creature than Cugel, although still not exactly what anyone might describe as a shining paladin of goodness or anything. As usual with Vance, this is interesting for the dialogue and the fantastic settings as much as anything.
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Cugel's Saga, Jack Vance (1983), 281 pp (tpb).
The further adventures of Cugel, who, when last seen at the end of The Eyes of the Overworld, had been stuck far from home by a misspoken spell. Cugel resolves to make his way back home and give a certain magician a sound thrashing. He then proceeds in stages across the lands between hither and yon, having various strange adventures, as when he manages to take command of a merchant ship powered by giant sea-worms (with the owner's wife and daughters still resident):
"Today I will prepare a tentative work schedule. During the day I will maintain the look-out and supervise ship-board processes. Perhaps here I should mention that Madam Soldinck, by virtue of her years and social position, will not be required to act as 'night-steward.' Now then, in regard to--"
Madame Soldinck took a quick step forward. "One moment! The 'night-steward'--what are her duties and why should I be disqualified?"
Cugel looked off across the sea. "The duties of the 'night-steward' are more or less self-explanatory. She is assigned to the aft-cabin, where she looks to the convenience of the captain. There is prestige to the post; it is only fair that it should be shared among Meadhre, Salasser, and Tabazinth."
As I think I mentioned, the best that can be said for Cugel is that he's an amoral fellow, but since, by and large, that describes most everyone he encounters in his travels, this usually reduces to who can get the drop on or advantage of the other. Sometimes it's Cugel, sometimes the other party, and reverses, in both directions, are commonplace, although in the end Cugel more or less wins through to more or less triumph.
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The Eyes of the Overworld, Jack Vance (1966), 155 pp (tpb).
This is not precisely a sequel to The Dying Earth, in that it doesn't continue events or the stories of characters begun in that earlier collection of tales. It is a continuation, though, in the sense that it takes place in the same milieu--a far future Earth, presided over by a dying red sun, sprinkled with bizarrely fantastic societies and populated by myriad grotesqueries.
This novel (it's more of a "novel" than its predecessor, although it's episodic, with a picaresque flavor) introduces the character of Cugel, an amoral, quick-witted (although not always particularly smart) rascal, a fellow just makin' his way in a nasty world. The action kicks off when Cugel sets out to burglarize a local magician's manse, gets caught, and is involuntarily enlisted by the magician to go fetch what, for simplicity's sake, we will describe as a demon's crystalized eyepiece (the so-called "eyes of the overworld"). Cugel goes, has adventures, comes back, seems to gain the upper-hand on the magician, and then (due in no small part to his own incompetence and desire for revenge) ends up being inadvertently flung back to the deserted shore where he began his quest, at which point the curtain rings down on the tale.
As always, Vance does nifty things with language, and much of his understated--but potent, once one is attuned to it--humor comes through the sometimes convoluted dialogue:
"First you are swathed head to foot in the intestines of fresh-killed owls, then immersed in a warm bath containing a number of secret organic substances. I must, of course, char the small toe of your left foot, and dilate your nose sufficiently to admit an explorer beetle, that he may study the conduits leading to and from your sensorium. But let us return to my divinatory, that we may commence the process in good time.
Cugel pulled at his chin, torn this way and that. Finally he said, "I am a cautious man, and must ponder even the advisability of undertaking such a divination; hence I will require several days of calm and meditative somnolence. Your compound and the adjacent nympharium appear to affor the conditions requisite to such a state; hence--"
Pharesm indulgently shook his head. "Caution, like any other virtue, can be carried to an extreme. The divination must proceed at once."
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There Are Doors, Gene Wolfe (1988), 313 pp (hb).
What to say about Gene Wolfe? The experience of reading him, unless you're a lot smarter than I am, always leaves you feeling like you're missing half the story. It's frustrating to just know that there are things going on beneath the surface that you're not getting. A lot of authors that left me feeling like this would find themselves removed from the "to read" list right quick...Wolfe, however, generally gives enough value even on the half I'm understanding to make it worthwhile. Which reminds me, I need to read the "New Sun" cycle again--I may "get" a good deal more of it the second time through.
At any rate, that brings us to There Are Doors, which unfortunately is even more obscure than usual. There's a guy, a salesman, and he spends a night with a goddess, and then follows her through a Door, or Doors, in spite of her admonition not to, and so he trails her across alternate worlds (?)--part of the time he's in a mental institution (?), and part of the time he's on the run from either the authorities (?) or the mob (?). Sometimes reading Wolfe, you feel like there's a key somewhere, and if you just had the key it would all fold into place and make perfect sense. Alas, I didn't have the key for this one.
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