Anybody read any Jack Vance?

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Almost at random, I picked up a book called "Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden" by Jack Vance. It is the first part of a trilogy about the politics and magic of an imaginary land situated in the Atlantic Ocean in the Middle Ages. I wasn't expecting much but halfway through I am finding it to be quite good. A quick scan of reviews on Amazon reveals that this book and this author seem to be quite highly regarded but I have never heard of him before.

Has anyone else read any Jack Vance books and have any comments?

 

I think the reason you havent heard about him is that he is really old school. I myself read a collection of stories of him when I bought of a lot of books in the "Fantasy Masterworks" series and I thought it was pretty nice. Just like much of the older fantasy though it suffers a bit from being a bit too ethereal and weird, which is a good thing really but it also makes it, well, weird.

 

That is an apt description. It is a bit ethereal but that does make a nice change and it doesn't detract from the fact that it is good story with plenty of twists and turns (like Song of Ice and Fire but not as graphic). Don't forget, Tolkien is pretty old school as well.

 

I read Jack Vance's Lyoness trilogy back in high school or college and fell completely in love with his writing. I'd love to re-read them but unfortunately at least one of the volumes seems to have disappeared in one of our moves.

Hee hee, Joac, "old school." I think that's exactly why I do like Vance so very much. The Lyonesse tale strikes me as a story that's built on folklore, and I think that's where the ethereal nature comes from. Not that Vance's world doesn't hang together as completely as any other fantasy world, but it strikes more of a chord with the deep-rooted human instincts that gave rise to fairy tales and legends in the first place.

For me, the closest modern author to Vance is Guy Gavriel Kay, and he feels more historical than folkloric.

 

I am pretty sure it wasnt the Lyonesse series I read of him, it was a collection of short stories, most of them about some dude running around doing quests which were forced upon him. In one he was in some village where people had strange lenses on to make everything beautiful and in another story he dived for some kind of scales in a cold pond. Very weird. All the stories were set in a very distant future where the sun is red and dying and the world very scarcely populated. Everything was very far out. I enjoyed it alot though, not like Fritz Leiber whom I really didnt like and who also is old school.

 

The Lyonesse books do read a bit like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale but in a nice way. It also reminds me of some of Tolkien's early writings (like the stuff that is in The Book of Lost Tales etc). I'm glad I've found some other people who have read some of this author as well. I shall now try and track down the rest of the series.