Fantasy Masterworks #4: Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth

"In ages gone," the Sage had said, his eyes fixed on a low star, "a thousand spells were known to sorcery and the wizards effected their wills. Today, as Earth dies, a hundred spells remain to man's knowledge, and these have come to us through the ancient books...But there is one called Pandelume, who knows all the spells, all the incantations, cantraps, runes, and thaumaturgies that have ever wrenched and molded space..." He had fallen silent, lost in his thoughts. (p. 4)

There is something powerful about a ruin. Seeing grandeur cast down, witnessing the failing of a majestic vision, viewing a ruin inspires in many a mixture of wonder and contempt. Who could have created such majestic structures so long ago? What sort of folly befell this civilization for only broken, ivy-covered remnants remaining to serve notice of that culture's collapse? Does such a fate await our own?

Jack Vance in the four stories collected in his Tales from the Dying Earth takes these questions and fast-forwards things millions of years into the Earth's future, to a time in which the Earth's resources have been exhausted and its inhabitants live among the ruins of civilizations about which they know less than we do of the ancient Egyptians or Chinese. For them, Arthur C. Clarke's adage about advanced technology being scarcely distinguishable from magic in the eyes of those who cannot comprehend the technology being employed holds true.

The four stories in this omnibus, The Dying Earth (1950), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Cugel's Saga (1983), and Rhialto the Marvellous (1984), share little in common with one another except the same far-future setting and in the case of the middle two volumes, the protagonist called Cugel. While I knew going in that these stories were best viewed as being separate tales that perhaps ought to be considered separately, as a whole I found myself struggling at times with the stories.

I've had this omnibus for almost five years now, but I never could get beyond the first pages of The Eyes of the Overworld before putting it down in favor of another book. The first volume's rather dated narrative approach (it feels like an odd inversion of the action/adventure stories in the stamp of an Edgar Rice Burroughs in its exotic-yet-somehow-familiar setting and the 1930s-style matinee adventure hero) was trying enough, despite at times Vance's prose rising above that rather pedestrian level. But there was something about Cugel at the time that just irritated me. While on this most recent read, where I sat down one afternoon and just forced myself to keep reading despite my attention waning at times, Cugel's banter seemed more palatable, it wasn't until the very end of The Eyes of the Overworld that I began to warm to Cugel's rakish charm.

Cugel's Saga, however, dashed that charitable feeling. At nearly 300 pages, it was by far the longest of the four tales, and I just felt as though the story dragged the entire time. While there were occasional sharp, witty exchanges between Cugel and those around him, on the whole the story just felt lifeless to me, as if it were just one more foray for Cugel, one more time into the breach, but with nothing of import to show for it. By the time I reached the final tale, Rhialto the Marvellous, I just was eager to finish the damn thing. In the end, I think I made the worse decision by pushing on, leaving me to write something that was more akin to a confession that this tale didn't work for me and that at least part of the problem lay with my own past problems with a few elements early in the omnibus.

Will I try again in the future? Perhaps, since I hate the fact that I disengaged myself from processing this book about halfway through and that there is that suspicion that if I had tried just a bit harder, I could have wrung something from it other than the feeling that this collection was rather disjointed and that dying earth stories have been done better by those who followed Vance than by Vance himself. However, it'll be some time (likely a couple of years at least), but if I do try again, I'll at least try to accentuate the positive more than I did here.  Certainly not the "masterwork" in terms of prose or characterization that his other Masterworks titles, the Lyonesse and Emphyrio titles, prove to be.

Fantasy Masterworks #35: Jack Vance, Lyonesse II and III: The Green Pearl, Madouc

Rather than recapitulating everything that I said in my earlier review of the first Lyonesse book, Suldrun's Garden, this review of Jack Vance's latter two volumes in his Lyonesse trilogy, The Green Pearl and Madouc, will be much briefer.  For those who haven't yet read the above-linked review, it would behoove you to do so now, as I discussed there the origins of the Lyonesse legends as well as certain qualities in Vance's prose that appealed to me.

As much as I enjoyed the prose and storylines found in Suldrun's Garden, the subplots contained within The Green Pearl and Madouc are nearly as fascinating.  Although each sequel furthers the Aillas and Dhrun storylines, to the point where father and sun are reunited late in the series, each contains its own subplot around which much of the action of each of the two volumes is centered.  In The Green Pearl, it is the malevolent power of the green pearl that shapes destinies.  Here is the description of the pearl's origins:

In achieving her aims, Desmëi used a variety of stuff:  salt from the sea, soil from the summit of Mount Khambaste in Ethiopia, exudations and pastes, as well as elements of her personal substance.  So she created a pair of wonderful beings:  exemplars of all the graces and beauties.  The woman was Melancthe; the man was Faude Carfilhiot.

Still all was not done.  As the two stood naked and mindless in the workroom, the dross remaining in the vat yielded a rank green vapor.  After a startled breath, Melancthe shrank back and spat the taste from her mouth.  Carfilhiot, however, found the reek to his liking and inhaled it with all avidity.

Some years later, the castle Tintzin Fyral fell to the armies of Troicinet.  Carfilhiot was captured and hanged from a grotesquely high gibbet, in order to send an unmistakably significant image toward both Tamurello at Faroli to the east and to King Casmir of Lyonesse, to the south.

In due course Carfilhiot's corpse was lowered to the ground, placed on a pyre, and burned to the music of bagpipes and flutes.  In the midst of the rejoicing the flames gave off a gout of foul green vapor, which, caught by the wind, blew out over the sea.  Swirling low and mingling with spume from the waves, the fume condensed to become a green pearl which sank to the ocean floor, where eventually it was ingested by a large flounder. (pp. 3-4)

As was in the case with Suldrun's Garden, Vance splits the narrative into several subplots, each of which is largely independent of the others, although there is some convergence toward the end.  Aillas continues his adventures in opposing Casmir, although at times he finds himself on the wrong side of a quarrel, especially with the sometimes-comic clashes with the fiercely xenophobic Ska.  Casmir continues in his quest to avoid the dire prophecy about his grandson via his dead daughter Suldrun overthrowing him.  As he seeks answers to what happened the night that Suldrun gave birth, he learns that the Princess Madouc is actually a changeling, leaving him to worry ever anew about the future threat.

Vance mixes the serious and the whimsical adroitly here.  He sets the stage well for the adventures of each of his protagonists and while at times the action may verge on becoming too droll, he usually returns to the more dour side of this tale before things become tedious to read.  Often the legends surrounding Lyonesse, Ys, and the sunken lands would contain a mixture of the comic and the tragic, in order to make each more effective.  Too often, modern adapters of these settings would emphasize too much of one at the expense of the other, but Vance manages to find a good balance of both here in The Green Pearl.

The concluding volume, Madouc, is perhaps the most comical of the three.  Starring the changeling princess Madouc and her desire to discover her true parentage, several of the passages here contain witty exchanges that make any scene in which she appears a delight to read:

Casmir slowly drew back.  He looked down at Madouc.  "Why did you throw fruit at Lady Desdea?"

Madouc said artlessly:  "It was because Lady Desdea came past first, before Lady Marmone."

"That is not relevant to to the issue!"  snapped King Casmir.  "At this moment Lady Desdea believes that I pelted her with bad fruit."

Madouc nodded soberly.  "It may be all for the best.  She will take the reprimand more seriously than if it came mysteriously, as if from nowhere."

"Indeed?  And what are her faults, that she deserves such a bitter reproach?"

Madouc looked up in wonder, her eyes wide and blue.  "In the main, Sire, she is tiresome beyond endurance and drones on forever.  At the same time, she is sharp as a fox, and sees around corners.  Also, if you can believe it, she insists that I learn to sew a fine seam!"

"Bah!"  muttered Casmir, already bored with the subject.  "Your conduct is in clear need of correction.  You must throw no more fruit!"

Madouc scowled and shrugged.  "Fruit is nice than other stuffs.  I well believe that Lady Desdea would prefer fruit."

"Throw no other stuffs either.  A royal princess expresses displeasure more graciously."

Madouc considered a moment.  "What if these stuffs should fall of their own weight?"

"You must allow no substances, either vile, or hurtful, or noxious, or of any sort whatever, to fall, or depart from your control, toward Lady Desdea.  In short, desist from these activities!"

Madouc pursed her mouth in dissatisfaction; it seemed as if King Casmir would yield neither to logic nor persuasion. (pp. 27-28)

Madouc makes the concluding volume much more of a romp than either of the previous two volumes.  Her willful nature contrasts with the meek despondency of Suldrun and her ability to confound and frustrate King Casmir's machinations plays an important role in this novel.  In short, Madouc is an almost total reversal in tone from Suldrun's Garden; as the comic wit of the characters, especially Madouc and Shimrod, come to dominate the tone and flow of the story.  The various subplots, mostly independent until now, begin to weave together, until finally the prophecy regarding Dhrun and Casmir is played out in a fashion that is both expected and surprising in some of the manners of its execution. 

As a whole, the three Lyonesse volumes were a delight to read; easily my favorite of Vance's work.  In turns witty, tragic, and almost always full of a vitality of character and setting that most fantasists fail to achieve, these three volumes are more than worthy of being called "Fantasy Masterworks."  They are exemplary models of how to meld myth, tradition, and imagination together into a fascinating story that deserves to be read and re-read several times.  Easily one of the best "high fantasies" that I have read in quite some time.

Fantasy Masterworks #27: Jack Vance, Lyonesse I: Suldrun's Garden

King Arthur. The Round Table.  The sad tale of Tristan and Iseult.  Avalon.  The drowned city of Ys.  The lost kingdom of Lyonesse.  These disparate elements constitute part of the medieval "Matter of Britain,"  one of the three great sources of medieval myth and legend (the other two "matters" being those of France and Rome).  Nearly nine centuries after the most ancient lays and ballads of this "Matter of Britain," there are still a plethora of stories created from this amalgam of Breton, Cornish, Welsh, and Anglo-Saxon legends.  Whether the writer be Béroul, Shakespeare, Tennyson, or more recent writers such as Jack Vance or Stephen Lawhead, these tales of betrayed kingdoms, honorable soldiers, starcrossed lovers, and fateful watery dooms still resonate with readers today.  A strong case could be made that modern Anglo-American fantasy could not exist anywhere near its present form if it weren't for the shaping power of these enduring stories.  Certainly there would not be quite the same connotations about fairies (and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene unfortunately would have never existed without them), changelings, and luck of seven years' duration.  There is a remarkable vitality in these mostly-Celtic myths that informs so many fantasies today.

One of those elements in the "Matter of Britain," (with Arthurian legends at its core) is that of Lyonesse.  Over centuries, Lyonesse, the home of the Round Table knight Tristan, came to be associated with Cornish legends of a kingdom doomed to perish under the rapacious waves of the Atlantic Ocean.  It, along with its Breton city counterpart of Ys, contains tragic elements.  Not just because these city/kingdoms were doomed to drown, but in part because of the tragic histories bound up in each place.  Several writers over the centuries have written epic poems and ballads concerning these remnants of local folk memories of drowned ancestral lands.  One of the more recent adaptations of the Ys/Lyonesse tragedy is the trilogy written between 1983 and 1990 by the American writer Jack Vance.  Vance used these famous locales to create a "lost" archipelago comparable in size to Ireland that was located nearly equidistant between Ireland, Britain, and Amorica (Brittany).  This tale, set roughly two generations before the time of King Arthur, is perhaps one of the best recent adaptations of Lyonesse/Ys legends.

In the first volume, Suldrun's Garden, Vance introduces the setting and main characters for the trilogy.  Usually, long, detailed introductions to constructed settings disinterest me because they tend to distract from the story at hand, but in Vance's case, he creates a vivid tapestry quickly, one that reveals even more depths the more familiar one is with the legends from which Vance drew to write this trilogy.  Don't just "read" the quote below, but rather "listen" to it:

On a dreary winter's day, with rain sweeping across Lyonesse Town, Queen Sollace went into labor.  She was taken to the lying-in room and attended by two midwives, four maids, Balhamel the physician and the crone named Dyldra, who was profound in the lore of herbs, and by some considered a witch.  Dyldra was present by the wish of Queen Sollace, who found more comfort in faith than logic.

King Casmir made an appearance.  Sollace's whimpers became moans and she clawed at her thick blonde hair with clenched fingers.  Casmir watched from across the room.  He wore a simple scarlet robe with a purple sash; a gold coronet confined his ruddy blond hair.

***

During the months of winter and spring King Casmir looked only twice at the infant princess, in each case, standing back in cool disinterest.  She had thwarted his royal will by coming female into the world.  He could not immediately punish her for the act, no more could he extend the full beneficence of his favor.

Sollace grew sulky because Casmir was displeased and, with a set of petulant flourishes, banished the child from her sight. (pp. 1, 3)

Vance displays a masterful use of language here.  In just a few, short descriptions, not only can we visualize the ruling king and queen of Lyonesse, but we learn of their personalities, the hard life ahead for their infant daughter from their selfish inclinations.  Furthermore, there are just a few hints, seeded for further plot flowering later, of the supernatural, present in the form of Dyldra.  Vance's ability to construct well-drawn, vivid characters is balanced with his propensity in this series to "pan out" and hint at the histories of this doomed land:

Centuries in the past, at that middle-distant time when legend and history start to blur (p. 3)

Ehirme warned her:  "I've never fared so far, you understand!  But what grandfather says is this:  in the old times the crossroads would move about, because the place was enchanted and never knew peace.  This might be well enough for the traveler, because, after all, he would put one foot ahead of him and then the other and the road would at last be won, and the traveler none the wiser that he had seen twice as much forest as he had bargained for.  The most troubled were the folk who sold their goods each year at the Goblin Fair, and where was that but at the crossroads!  The folk for the fair were most put out, because the fair should be at the crossroads on Midsummer Night, but when they arrived at the crossroads it had shifted two miles and a half, and nowhere a fair to be seen. (p. 6)

This commingling of legend and history occurs throughout Suldrun's Garden, as the lands of Faerie and those of humans are intertwined, with only a few mysterious passages between each.  This is important later on in the novel and series, but for much of the first half of the novel, the story is concerned with the horrible treatment that Princess Suldrun receives from her parents after her father learns that Suldrun's first-born son will occupy the Lyonesse throne in front of him, a dark portent for an ambitious king who aims to unite the ten kingdoms of the Elder Isles under his iron rule.  In a scene that could be the twin to that of Danae and Perseus, Suldrun is banished to a remote garden, where she will stay under threat of enslavement and (presumably) rape if she strays from it.  However, there is a prince, Aillas, from a rival kingdom, who stumbles upon Suldrun's garden and they fall in and make love, with Suldrun becoming pregnant.

This sets the stage for one of the most tragic scenes in the book, their forced separation, Aillas' imprisonment in an oubliette filled with the bones of twelve prior prisoners, and the switching of Suldrun's baby son, Dhrun, with a fairy changeling.  Despairing, Suldrun takes her fate into her own hands:

In the garden the first day went by slowly, instant after hesitant instant, each approaching diffidently, as if on tiptoe, to hurry across the plane of the present and lose itself among the glooms and shadows of the past.

The second day was hazy, less breathless, but the air hung heavy with portent.

The third day, still hazy, seemed sluggish and drained of sensibility, yet somehow innocent and sweet, as if ready for renewal.  On this day Suldrun went slowly about the garden, pausing at times to touch the trunk of a tree, or the face of a stone.  With head bent she walked the length of her beach, and only once paused to look to sea.  Then she climbed the path, to sit among the ruins.

The afternoon passed:  a golden dreaming time, and the stone cliffs encompassed the whole of the universe.

The sun sank softly and quietly.  Suldrun nodded pensively, as if here were elucidation of an uncertainty, though tears coursed down her cheeks.

The stars appeared.  Suldrun descended to the old lime tree and, in the dim light of the stars, she hanged herself.  The moon, rising over the ridge, shone on a limp form and a sad sweet face, already preoccupied with her new knowledge. (p. 188)

This is such a tragic scene, but as important as it is for future events, it is in itself only part of the greater narrative tapestry being woven.  Vance writes so beautifully of her despondency, setting up the achingly simple phrase, "she hanged herself."  By this point, the reader will have come to have identified with her plight, to have felt her sorrows, and perhaps this will be devastating.  And yet this novel (and series) is not just about tragedy.  Suldrun and Aillas' son, Dhrun, experiences nine years' worth of life during his time with the fair folk, and the description of life among them is in turn droll and vaguely threatening:

"Thank you, Sir Dhrun!"  Nerulf drank the potion, and expanded to become his old burly self.  Quick as a wink he leapt upon Dhrun, threw him to the ground, tore away his sword Dassenach and buckled it around his own thick waist.  Then he took the green bottle and the purple bottle and flung them against a stone, so that they shattered and all their contents were lost.  "There will be no more of that foolishness," declared Nerulf.  "I am the largest and strongest, and once again I am in power."  He kicked Dhrun.  "To your feet!"

"You told me that you had repented your old ways!" cried Dhrun indignantly.

"True!  I was not severe enough.  I allowed too much ease.  Things will now be different.  Out to the cart, everyone!" (p. 222)

These scenes involving Dhrun's often-comical (mis)adventures among the faires, ogres, and other secret folk serve as a counterbalance to the mostly-grim happenings of the human adults in Lyonesse, Ulfland, and Troicinet, Aillas' home.  Vance expertly mixes these disparate elements together, creating not two entwined tales, but rather two tangential ones whose separate qualities serve to balance the excesses of the other.  Thus this story contains not just Suldrun's tragedy and what that portends for the remaining two books in the trilogy, but also the madcap adventures of Dr. Fidelius, mountebank and curer of sore knees.  This blend of humor and tragedy makes for an excellent beginning to a great trilogy.

Is Suldrun's Garden worthy of being called a "Masterwork"?  While I will address the series as a whole in my review of the remaining two volumes of this trilogy, it certainly is a fantastic tale that borrows from medieval legends without feeling too constrained by their forms and personages.  Vance has staked out his own territory in the midst of this rich collection of tales, creating a story that will appeal to readers of all sorts.