Read Series: Gaean Reach
by Author Jack Vance
The Gray Prince (2004)
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...
Night Lamp (1998)
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...
Ports of Call (1999)
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 ...
Lurulu (2007)
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 ...
Maske: Thaery (2003)
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...