Rhialto the Marvellous closes the initial collection of Dying Earth stories, as chronicled by Jack Vance, a master of invention who took me on an incredible journey through eons of history, hundreds of lost civilizations and quirky cultures, multicolored vistas of exotic lands, weird trees and chimaeric wildlife, magic invocations and last, but not least : deeds of daring, craft and cunning to tax credibility . Even if none of the later books quite recaptured the lyrical, melancholic atmosphere of the first one, prefering instead a more humorous, adventure oriented approach, the series kept me glued to the pages until the very last morsel. And then I wished I could spend more time in the company of the characteristic amoral, arrogant, opportunistic and unreliable scoundrels that usually lead the way around the Dying Earth landscape. Rhialto is not a simple reincarnation of Cugel the Clever: he is a fussy dresser and a cad where women are concerned, but as a wizard he is quite proficient in the art, and as a trickster he is less easily fooled by other magicians, demons or villagers he meets on his quests. Both heroes have supersized egos, but where Cugel ended mostly on the losing side in every intellectual endeavour and got by only through brawns and a lot of luck, Rhialto is deviously planning ahead and outsmarting his adversaries in a Sherlock Holmes manner. It took a good portion of the book to get me interested in Rhialto, and finally it was his sarcastic wit and elaborate form of polite expression that conquered me: Always disposed to create a favorable impression before members of the female sex, so long as they were of an age and degree of vitality to notice, Rhialto leaned an arm against a stump, disposed his cloak so that it hung in a casual yet dramatic style.The girls, preoccupied with their chatter, failed to notice his presence. Rhialto spoke in melodious tones: "Young creatures, allow me to intrude upon your attention, at least for a moment. I am surprised to find so much fresh young beauty wasted upon work so dull, and among brambles so sharp." I have already accepted the fact that the series abandoned almost all the science-fiction elements after the first book and developed as a magic intensive sword & sorcery adventure. If Cugel was more adept with a sword that with a spell, Rhialto relies very little on physical exertions and deploys almost exclusively his magic-fu. The magic theory of the Dying Earth is succintly presented in the introduction of the novel ( Magic is a practical science, or, more properly, a craft, since emphasis is placed primarily upon utility, rather than basic understanding.), with a few choice examples of spells that had me chuckling in anticipation of seeing them deployed later in the book: Looking into (for instance) Chapter Four of Killiclaw's Primer of Practical Magic, Interpersonal Effectuations, one notices, indited in bright purple ink, such terminology as:Xarfaggio's Physical MalepsyArnhoult's Sequestrious DigitaliaLutar Brassnose's Twelve-fold BountyThe Spell of Forlorn EncystmentTinkler's Old-fashioned FroustClambard's Rein of Long NervesThe Green and Purple Postponement of JoyPanguire's Triumphs of DiscomfortLugwiler's Dismal ItchKhulip's Nasal EnhancementRadl's Pervasion of the Incorrect Chord. Actually, very few on the list made it into the proper adventure, but it was fun to imagine them in action. The one spell that is put to repeated use is one that I believe every one of us imagined at one point in his life being in control of: the power to stop time for everybody else, and move freely about the frozen population. Here it is used primarily for mischief or for getting the heor out of tight corners.Coming back to the book, there are only three novellas in it, but the middle one is quite extensive, and I didn't feel shortchanged in any way by the limitation. Having the same set of protagonists (a conclave of wizards that are constantly quarelling among themselves, reminding me fondly of the masters of the Unseen University on Discworld) in all three parts of the book helps with the continuity and with the character development. The Murthe is a hilarious farce about the wizards phobia towards womenfolk. Their 'boys only' club falls prey to a spectre from a terrible past, when women had ascendancy: The Murthe is at large among you, with squalms and ensqualmations. The series had its less savoury moments, especially when Cugel was involved, with women treated as sex objects and as fickle creatures. The panic of the wizards as they contemplate serving under women is a refreshing reversal, and their bafflement regarding their true nature is illustrated in the following extract: Calanctus likens a woman to the Ciaeic Ocean which absorbs the long and full thrust of the Antipodal Current as it sweeps around Cape Spang, but only while the weather holds fair. If the wind shifts but a trifle, this apparently placid ocean hurls an abrupt flood ten or even twenty feet high back around the cape, engulfing all before it. When stasis is restored and the pressure relieved, the Ciaeic is as before, placidly accepting the current. Do you concur with this interpretation of the female geist? Fader's Waft follows the quest of Rhialto to recover the Blue Perciplex: a precious prism containing the rule of law governing the Wizard Conclave. The prism is hidden in the past, and Rhialto must time-travel back accompanied by a couple of recalcitrant indentured demons. He meets twenty footed blue aliens from Canopus, witnesses epic battles between long lost empires, damzells in distress, venal construction workers, villagers with peculiar eating habits: Must your disgust be so blatant? True: we are anthropophages. True: we put strangers to succulent use. Is this truly good cause for hostility? The world is as it is and each of us must hope in some fashion to be of service to his fellows, even if only in the form of a soup. The humour mixed with the rich history of the past/future Earth and with the flowery prose made for a very pleasant pastime indeed, and too quick I arrived at the last story: Morreion has the wizards travelling in a floating palace to the edge of the Universe searching for 'nothing' (aka : the nonregion beyond the end of the cosmos). There they hope to rescue one of their colleagues who left ages ago in search of precious, magic infused IOUN stones (and relieve him of this treasure, if possible). Some of the passages describing the journey came very close to the marvellous prose that first attracted me to Jack Vance: Through clouds and constellations they moved, past bursting galaxies and meandering star-streams; through a region where the stars showed a peculiar soft violet and hung in clouds of pale green gas; across a desolation where nothing whatever was seen save a few far luminous clouds. Then presently they came to a new region, where blazing white giants seemed to control whirlpools of pink, blue and white gas, and the magicians lined the balustrade looking out at the spectacle. But every ship or floating castle eventually reaches harbour and the weary traveller must disembark, wave goodbye to his companions and go his own way. Morreion, the lost wizard, remarks at one time to his colleagues: Before you came my life was placid; you have brought me doubt and wonder. The same applies to me, and I know I will come back to sail once more with Jack Vance on the boundless oceans of his imagination.
Rhialto the Marvelous, also by Jack Vance is the last of the Vance books of the Dying Earth. This book features the titled magician in 3 somewhat longer stories and is set even further into the future of the Dying Earth than the previous stories. Rhialto shares several personality traits with Cugel - in that he has a very high opinion of himself, and feels that he's owed the best in life. The difference is that Rhialto is a full fledged wizard, instead of a rogue with only some minor knowledge of magic. Rhialto's adventures also focus more on him defeating problems that come to his door and disrupt his life, rather than him actively seeking out opportunities to defeat his enemies or increase his wealth or power. Rhialto also share the same callousness and disregard for others that Cugel has.Overall, while Rhialto was entertaining, I found this book less enjoyable than the previous 3 in the series, for the most part because in some ways Rhialto was a bit of a buffoon. While at times he was clever and successful, large parts of his adventures were about him being stymied at every turn by his enemies, and didn't convey his actual intelligence and arcane power as being able to deal with the obstacles in his path. He certainly seemed more effete than his predecessors, which was directly stated in the book, as the wizards of his generation were thought to be less powerful than previous ones. In addition to this, there were sections of the book that seemed to almost parody the concept of powerful wizards dueling. One of the stories featured prominent use of multiple time stopping magics, with different wizards having anti-time stop amulets, and casting time stops split seconds after each other, so that when you were done reading about what Rhialto did during his time stop spell, it ended, and everything was different, since his rival had cast a time stop immediately afterward, and changed things again. I was left wondering why I had read the whole previous section. Overall, I wouldn't say this book was unenjoyable, but didn't find that it held up the high standards of the other Dying Earth books.
What do You think about Rhialto The Marvellous (1985)?
Rhialto the Marvellous (1984) is the final book in Jack Vance’s Tales of the Dying Earth. The book consists of three stories, “The Murthe”, “Fader’s Waft”, and “Morreion”, so in structure it is more like the loosely connected stories of The Dying Earth (1950). This time around Cugel the Clever is not featured. Instead, we are introduced to the magician Rhialto (the Marvellous), a resourceful, clever, and somewhat vain and flamboyant member of a conclave of loosly-allied magicians in Ascolais and Almery in the 21st Aeon. Overall, I’d rate this as the weakest of the four parts of Tales of the Dying Earth, but still worth reading if you enjoy the wild imagination, high language, and deadpan humor of Jack Vance’s baroque tales set in the far-future dying earth.“Morreion”, the last story, is by far the best. It chronicles the journey of Rhialto and his fellow magicians to the edge of the universe to find a missing colleague who sought the source of the much-coveted IOUN stones (which are used in D&D, apparently). This story is filled with humor, wonder, high language, and the colorful imagination Vance is famous for. It could easily have been included in the original Dying Earth book.“The Murthe” is a very short and humorous story of the havoc that is wreaked by a powerful magic-user from the past, who starts to convert the magicians in Rhialto’s conclave into women without them realizing it through a process of “ensqualmation”. Their antics as they become more feminine are quite amusing, and her power is not easily vanquished.“Fader’s Waft” is the longest story, and unfortunately the weakest in my opinion. In this story Rhialto is the center of various schemes by his fellow wizards to defame his character and seize his magical possesions. In order to determine guilt or innocence he must travel back in time to retrieve the Percifex, a codex of the Blue Principles that the magicians must abide by. Although some of the situations are fun to read about, overall it gets fairly tedious at times and doesn’t measure up to Cugel’s stories.
—Stuart
Πάπαλα η Ετοιμοθάνατη Γη του Τζακ Βανς, μιας και το Ριάλτο ο Θαυμαστός που μόλις τελείωσα, δυστυχώς, ήταν το τελευταίο βιβλίο με ιστορίες του μοναδικού αυτού κόσμου. Να πω την αλήθεια, μου φάνηκε το πιο αδύναμο βιβλίο από τα τέσσερα της σειράς και άμα το συγκρίνεις με τα Μάτια του Ανώτερου Κόσμου ή, ειδικότερα, με την Οδύσσεια του Κουζέλ, η διαφορά είναι εξόφθαλμη. Δεν λέω, συμπαθητικούλης ο Ριάλτο, αλλά σαν τον Κουζέλ δεν είναι! Πάντως, κακά τα ψέματα, από μόνο του είναι ένα πολύ καλό και ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο φαντασίας που ο κάθε φαν της σειράς και γενικά της φαντασίας πρέπει να το διαβάσει οπωσδήποτε. Έχει τις στιγμές του, την μαγεία του, τις εικόνες του, η γραφή του Βανς είναι αρκετά ζωηρή και όμορφη, όμως έχει χάσει την σπιρτάδα και το χιούμορ που υπήρχε όταν πρωταγωνιστής ήταν ο Κουζέλ. Δεν είναι μυθιστόρημα, αλλά κάτι σαν συλλογή τριών ιστοριών: Η Μουρθ, ένα μεγάλο διήγημα σαράντα και βάλε σελίδων, Η Πνοή του Φαντέρ, μια νουβέλα σχεδόν εκατόν τριάντα σελίδων, και Μορέιον, ένα μεγάλο διήγημα περίπου εξήντα σελίδων. Αυτά τα ολίγα! Γενικά, λίγο έως πάρα πολύ, ευχαριστήθηκα το κάθε βιβλίο, ευχαριστήθηκα φαντασία, μαγεία, εικόνες, ταξίδεψα σε άλλους κόσμους, και το μόνο σίγουρο είναι ότι η γραφή του Τζακ Βανς θα μου λείψει πολύ, όπως και ο όμορφος και ξεχωριστός κόσμος που δημιούργησε.
—George
"Flagrant and wild!"If you’re a fan of Jack Vance, of course you’ve read, or plan to read, Rhialto the Marvellous, last of the Dying Earth books. If you’ve not read any of Mr. Vance’s work, you can start here — it isn’t necessary to have read the previous installments.Rhialto, who has earned the cognomen “Marvellous” (this has something to do with him being a bit of a dandy) is one of the last of Earth’s magicians, a small group of selfish and unscrupulous men who sometimes work together and sometimes oppose each other as it suits their individual inglorious purposes. The other magicians don’t care too much for Rhialto because he is aloof, popular with women, arrogant, and generally unflappable. Rhialto the Marvellous contains three stories... Read More:http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
—Fantasy Literature
