Review: The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII South, Big Planet by Jack Vance

The Magnificent Showboats was originally published as Showboat World in 1975 and is set in the same locale as Vance’s novel Big Planet – a vast planet in another solar system in which a number of strange cultures live in small towns along an intricate river network. These rivers are plied by a number of showboats who bring entertainment and culture to the strange inhabitants of Big Planet. While this is nominally a work of science fiction, there is no real evidence of advanced technology, though we do have the sense that it is set in a far future where Earth (and the play Macbeth) have been almost entirely forgotten.

Please note that some plot spoilers follow.

The novel follows the misadventures of showboat captain Apollon Zamp as he struggles to take a crew of acrobats, actors, and magicians far upriver to participate in a contest sponsored by an enigmatic and eccentric king. Zamp is a rogue, though a lovable one, and he fairly quickly loses both his showboat and accumulated fortune. He must ally himself with the parsimonious Throdorus Gassoon, a rival showboat captain who vies with Zamp for the attentions of Damsel Blanche-Aster, who also desperately wants to travel upriver. The two captains continually quarrel over what play to perform (they eventually settle on a reenactment of the classic Macbeth, though Zamp edits the play to offer a more entertaining spectacle), production expenses, and how best to deal with the savage and unpredictable customers they encounter along the way. The finale (which I will not spoil here) offers a dramatic and unexpected reversal that caught me off guard. I had thought all along as I read that I knew how the story would end but I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case.

This was a delightful and comedic tale. Not a vast amount of characterization (Zamp, after all, could have just as easily been Cugel), but it was certainly fun. I give it 4 stars out of 5.

Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers

Review: Emphyrio by Jack Vance

Emphyrio is another of Jack Vance’s science fiction novels, almost certainly part of his Oikumene/Gaean Reach setting, but that hardly matters as the story is entirely self-contained.   Emphyrio was originally published in a hardback edition by Doubleday in 1969.  It is explicitly a work of social/political commentary, and I would suggest that its message is even more relevant today than it was in the late 1960s.

Please note that spoilers for the book’s plot follow.

Ghyl Tarvoke is a young man, raised by his father Amiante on the planet Halma.  Amiante is an extremely skilled woodcarver who eventually trains Ghyl in this craft.  All who dwell on Halma are members of craft guilds (closed shop unions) and entirely dependent on the socially- and politically-stratified state, which controls all aspects of daily life, including the most intimate details, in exchange for the cradle-to-grave welfare society provided.  Vance’s critique, of course, is that by becoming infantilized and allowing governmental and social institutions to provide the means of sustenance, one also allows those same institutions to determine the course of one’s existence through increasingly intrusive means.  Ghyl and his father become increasingly dissatisfied with the regimented society in which they find themselves trapped.  Eventually Amiante is killed and Ghyl falls in with a bad crowd, hijacking a nobleman’s space yacht and traveling to several other worlds, discovering more about Halma’s history and how the present society was formed.  I hesitate to reveal the nature of Ghyl’s discoveries, as they are startling and important to the novel’s climax.  Suffice it to say, Ghyl takes on the role of the mythical Emphyrio and overturns the oppressive system that governs Halma.

That plot may sound a bit dry when spelled out so baldly, but the tale is well-told and certainly more nuanced than I’ve described above.  Ghyl and the other characters are interestingly portrayed, and we certainly see a great deal more depth in Ghyl than in many of Vance’s protagonist (one of his few weaknesses, in my opinion).  That weakness, if it exists, is certainly not present in Emphyrio.

I had read this novel years ago but had forgotten how explicit (and important) it’s social and political critique was; this is somewhat unusual for Vance, but well-done, and one of his finest.  I highly recommend this science fiction stand-alone novel.  It is well-regarded and one of Vance’s best.  I give Emphyrio 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers

Review: Rhialto the Marvellous by Jack Vance

Yes, there are supposed to be two Ls in the “Marvellous” of the title.  Says so right there on the title page and on the cover of the Baen edition.  Rhialto is a “novel” composed of three shorter works all about the eponymous character, who is one of the few remaining powerful magicians in the Twenty-First Aeon of the Dying Earth.  Rhialto serves as the fourth and final canonical Dying Earth novel.  Two of the three stories — “The Murthe” and “Fader’s Waft” are original to this collection — while the third “Morreion” first appeared in Lin Carter’s edited collection Flashing Swords! 1, first published in 1973.  Rhialto the Marvellous was first published in a limited edition hardback by Brandywyne Books in August 1984, and was published by Baen Books in a wider release hardback two months later.

Please note that spoilers for the book’s plot follow.

A brief “Foreword” sketches out Rhialto and his fellow magicians, setting the stage for their adventures as the sun slowly burns out. While all know spells, they also command various sandestins, who are fabulously powerful, capricious beings bound to the magicians who perform any number of tasks for them in order that they may be eventually set free.

“The Murthe” is the first short story of the collection.  A visitor from the past comes to warn the magicians that a literal war of the sexes is upon them.  A powerful female witch from the past has decided to transform the all-male magicians into women so that they will become female witches under her control.  All but two of these eccentric magicians — Rhialto and his friend Ildefonse — are transformed into women and these last two male holdouts must stop the plot.  Some fun commentary on gender relations here.

“Fader’s Waft” is a novella, and takes up most of the word count of the collection.  Rhialto has most of his magical powers taken from him by his fellow scheming magicians and must travel to the past to recover an artifact that will aid him in restoring his power, aided only by his own native cunning and an extremely unreliable sandestin.  Time travel plays an extremely important role in this story, as each of the magicians has the ability to stop time (for everyone but himself) — now think about how complicated that makes debates and votes between the men! — and, of course, both Rhialto and his rivals and servants can all travel to the distant past, so there are many time-related schemes going on here.  It is also extremely amusing reading Rhialto’s frustrations in dealing with his sandestin servant who is doing its best to follow Rhialto’s orders to the letter and nothing more.

“Morreion” is the final short story of the collection.  Here, the magicians travel to the end of the universe — an actual wall, as it turns out — to find one of their long-missing fellow magicians.  Of course, none of them actually care about this poor fellow, but they suspect that he may know the location of the mysterious IOUN stones, which they all prize.  Lots of fun and scheming by rival, extremely powerful wizards.

Rhialto’s personality is sparsely sketched: we know he is extremely powerful, cunning, and a bit of a rogue.  That’s probably all we need.  Suffice it to say that the power level and concerns are ramped up considerably over those in previous Dying Earth tales.  While we don’t see any of the previous characters from the other Dying Earth books appear here, the setting of the Dying Earth is extremely important to the tone and plot of the stories.  In some ways, I get the impression that the Rhialto stories are set much later in time than, say, the Cugel stories, though it’s unclear if that’s actually the case.  I also suspect that the three tales here may be set temporally some distance apart, as Rhialto has different servants in each, and his relationship with his fellow magicians clearly changes between the stories.

I had read this collection once or twice before re-reading it recently and I had forgotten how truly funny Rhialto is.  Vance has a real talent for clever, understated humor that relies on witty dialogue, schemes and counter-schemes, and ridiculous/absurd situations.  This is Vance almost at his very finest, despite the relatively thin characterization of the protagonist (this is a weakness of Vance I have come to realize), and I give Rhialto the Marvellous 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers

Review: The Book of Dreams by Jack Vance

The Book of Dreams is the fifth and final book of Vance’s Demon Princes series.  It was first published by DAW Books in 1981, two years after the fourth novel of the series.  Like all the Demon Princes books, it is set in the Oikumene (later called the Gaean Reach), though to my knowledge, Vance never returned to any of the characters

Please note that spoilers for the book’s plot follow.

Kirth Gersen is tracking the fifth and final of the criminal masterminds collectively known as the Demon Princes, Howard Alan Treesong a.k.a. Lord of the Overmen.  Recall that Gersen now owns a business empire, including a magazine, and comes across a recent photograph of a group that contains Treesong in the magazine’s archives.  Gersen doesn’t know which individual in the group photo is Treesong, nor does he know when or where the photo was taken, so he cleverly sponsors a magazine contest to have readers help him track down Treesong.  It is in the course of this phase of the investigation that Gersen first encounters Alice Wroke, a young woman who has been badly used by Treesong but who is acting as his agent.  Gersen also learns that Treesong has been attempting to control the Institute, a powerful philosophical and social organization, by assassinating its leadership.  Gersen was himself once a low-ranking member of this organization in his youth, which we learned in The Killing Machine, though he has since left the Institute because of philosophical differences.  Gersen manages to thwart Treesong’s plan and wounds him, but Treesong manages to escape.

As with Gersen’s efforts to track down Viole Falushe (The Face), Treesong’s connections with his childhood home are what ultimately lead to his undoing.  Gersen learns of Treesong’s origins through his sponsored magazine contest and travels to the dour, religiously-strict Maundish region of the planet Mouderveldt.  There, he meets Treesong’s family and gains possession of Treesong’s “Book of Dreams,” a teenage journal where Treesong laid out many of his hopes, dreams, fears, hatreds, etc. in thinly veiled fiction, using his Seven Paladins as protagonists.  There are lengthy passages from Treesong’s Book of Dreams included in the novel, and it is through this that we learn much about Treesong’s troubled past and personal psychology.  Gersen attends Treesong’s twenty-fifth high school reunion, which Treesong has chosen as the time to gain revenge against all his high school acquaintances who tormented him in his youth.  These petty revenges are extremely amusing, though Gersen ultimately foils much of Treesong’s revenge fantasy and manages to wound him again.  Throughout, Gersen’s clever investigations and stratagems are detailed, and it is in the course of these that we really see Vance’s artistry shine.

Gersen then comes into contact with the parents of Treesong’s one high school friend, who was murdered long ago by Treesong.  They assist Gersen in his schemes to entrap Treesong using the Book of Dreams as bait, though Gersen eventually learns that their plans for revenge interfere with his own.  The final scene with Treesong getting his comeuppance is especially poignant, and it is here that we truly see how fractured Treesong’s personality is: his mind is made up of seven parts/personalities, each symbolized by one of the Paladins from his childhood writings.

I did not find Gersen’s romantic interest here, Alice Wroke, to be particularly interesting (I am, as I have mentioned previously, partial to poor Pallis Atwrode from The Star King).  Likewise, we don’t see a tremendous amount of characterization of Gersen’s motives and hopes for the future in this one, and I have often wondered what Gersen went on to do now that he’s defeated the five Demon Princes.  Think about it: from childhood, he was created by his grandfather as a living tool of vengeance.  He has spent his entire life training to destroy these criminal masterminds.  Now, around the age of thirty or so, he is fabulously wealthy and has completed his life’s work.  What now?  I always imagined that he went on to be an anonymous philanthropist and set up an agency to very discreetly provide extra-legal justice/vengeance for others wronged by criminals who cannot, for whatever reason, be brought to justice.  That’s as plausible as anything else, as Vance gives us no clue as to what’s next.  I suppose that’s because Gersen also has no idea what he’s going to do with himself.

This is Vance almost at his very finest, despite the relatively thin characterization of the protagonist and his love interest, and I give The Book of Dreams 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers

Review: The Face by Jack Vance

The Face is the fourth of Vance’s Demon Princes series.  It was first published by DAW Books in 1979, twelve years after the third novel of the series (Vance took a long hiatus from the Demon Princes books before he wrote the final two books).

Please note that spoilers for the book’s plot follow.

Kirth Gersen is tracking the fourth of five criminal masterminds collectively known as the Demon Princes, Lens Larque a.k.a. The Face.  Larque is an ugly outcast missing an ear lobe from Dar Sai, the home of the fierce Darsh people who, among other things, eat vile and repellent foods to remind them of the misery of existence.  Charming folk.  Early on, Gersen cracks Larque’s cover identity and nearly traps him in a courthouse ambush (Gersen has disguised himself as a “hanging judge” trying a lawsuit between the Demon Prince and a front company owned by Gersen), but Larque manages to both escape and receive an insurance settlement from Gersen’s firm.  That must have stung.  Along the way, Gersen encounters a young woman of the Methlen people, who are extremely proud and dislike outsiders.  Gersen is eventually scorned by the maiden and, after he finishes of Lens Larque, manages to gain a measure of revenge against her father.  The plot twists are complex and I don’t want to spoil all of them; needless to say, Gersen and Larque’s schemes and counter-schemes are perhaps more elaborate than those present in previous entries in the series, and certainly add to the fun of the book.

For me, there were two real highlights of the book.  First was Gersen’s need to acquire majority stockholder status of a small firm being used as a front company by Larque.  The first few shares are readily acquired, but Gersen must go to increasingly extreme measures to gather all the shares he needs, and this search truly pushes his cunning, patience, and fortitude to the limits.    The second highlight was Gersen participation in a combat game called hadaul.  It’s a mix of sumo wrestling and street brawl played on a field of concentric circles with a dozen or more combatants.  Very fun stuff indeed.

I did not find Gersen’s erstwhile romantic interest, the haughty Jerdian Chanseth, to be particularly interesting or endearing.  I was just as happy that it didn’t work out between the two.  Likewise, the small bits of characterization of Gersen’s motives and hopes for the future that we have seen in the three previous volumes were not present in The Face.  Having said that, I did enjoy The Face and found it as engaging as the rest of the series, but it lacked some of the charm and quirky characters of the previous books.  I give The Face 4 out of 5 stars.

Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers

Review: The Palace of Love by Jack Vance

The Palace of Love is the third of Vance’s Demon Princes series.  It was first published by Berkley Books in 1967, three years after Berkley published the first two books of the series.

Please note that spoilers for the book’s plot follow.

The novel begins with Kirth Gersen spending time with Alusz Iphigenia Eperje-Tokay, the woman he rescued in The Killing Machine.  Alusz cannot understand Gersen’s quest for vengeance and so the two part.  Alas.  It was not meant to be.  (I still don’t find Alusz nearly as entertaining a love interest as the ill-fated Pallis Atwrode from The Star King.)

In his effort to track down Viole Falushe, third of the Demon Princes, Gersen follows a lead to Sarkoy, a world mentioned previously in the series where its inhabitants have made poison a way of life.  There, Gersen learns something of Falushe’s past: he was born Vogel Filschner on Earth.  Filschner was a vile creature even as a teen, and he kidnapped and sold into slavery an entire choral group of girls in a fruitless quest to possess the object of his affections, a girl named Jheral Tinzy.  Unfortunately for the budding young psychopath, Tinzy didn’t attend choir practice the day of the kidnapping.

Gersen travels to Falushe’s hometown on Earth, since the criminal mastermind is still rumored to occasionally reappear here (regrettably we don’t see any of the quaint, bizarre customs for which Vance is famous in his descriptions of Europe in 3500 AD; I view this as a missed opportunity).  It is here that Gersen makes the acquaintance of the mad poet Navarth, who maintains occasional contact with Faluche.  In Navarth’s care is a young girl of unclear antecedents who resembles Jheral Tinzy to an uncanny degree.  Gersen’s investigation on Earth and elsewhere is interesting, as are the financial arrangements he makes to invest and utilize his ill-gotten gains from the last novel.  Gersen also prepares a cover story for himself as a journalist for a magazine he purchases outright.  Such are the options when one has billions to spend in vigilantism!

After a series of botched attempts to encounter Faluche (once again, his precise identity is unclear), Gersen finally arranges to travel as a guest to Faluche’s Palace of Love on a distant world.  There, Gersen finds an entire society that had dedicated itself to serving the criminal overlord.  He also discovers that the fiend has created a series of clones of his childhood obsession (the original having committed suicide many years previously) in an attempt to find one version of Jheral Tinzy who will love him.  Truly a perverse, tragic figure.  And one that, of course, Gersen ends up killing in the end.

I didn’t find the second half of The Palace of Love to be particularly engaging; it meandered a bit and I was, to be honest, bored in parts.  I also found many of the epigraphs to be especially (and unnecessarily) bizarre.  Gersen’s characterization, never particularly strong in the series, is limited in this middle work of the series.  I found this to be the weakest of the first three Demon Princes novels, though I certainly don’t think it’s bad by any means, and it does include some delightful moments.  I give The Palace of Love 3 out of 5 stars.

Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers

Review: The Killing Machine by Jack Vance

I have just completed re-reading the second of the five Demon Princes novels.  It was first published by Berkley Books in 1964, the same year Berkley published the first in the series.

Please note that spoilers for the book’s plot follow.

Kirth Gersen, having previously destroyed one of the five greatest criminals in the Oikumene (the “Demon Princes”), finds himself tracking down a second of the fiends.  This time around he stalks Kokor Hekkus, who has changed his M.O. a bit and has embarked on a campaign of audacious kidnappings.  The victims are all deposited at Interchange, a kind of interplanetary escrow service where kidnap victims are held for ransom safely and securely and where they may be ransomed without dealing directly with the kidnappers.  It’s an ingenious concept, though I’m not sure I want to live in a place where kidnappings are so ubiquitous that such a service is both necessary and, clearly, highly profitable.

Gersen discovers that a young woman, Alusz Iphigenia Eperje-Tokay, is the object of Kokor Hekkus’ desires.  She has sent herself to Interchange and has set the ransom at 10 billon SVU (the Oikumene’s unit of currency).  This is why Hekkus is kidnapping so many people of late — he needs the money to ransom her.  Gersen ends up at Interchange himself as a prisoner, but cleverly manages to defraud Interchange with counterfeit currency and so buys his way out, along with Alusz.  This annoys Hekkus to annoy end, we may be sure.  Gersen also assists an engineer who has been hired to construct a giant centipede-like vehicle (the titular killing machine?  or is that Hekkus?  or Gersen himself?) for Hekkus, who wants to use it to trounce some native warriors who have been annoying him of late.   Gersen and his current love interest end up back on Thamber, a fabled planet where the human inhabitants have lost contact with the rest of human civilization.  This also happens to be where Alusz is from, and the location of Hekkus’ secret fortress.  Rest assured that Kirth Gersen eventually manages to locate — keep in mind, he doesn’t actually now what the ever-disguised Hekkus looks like — and kill Kokor Hekkus, the second of the Demon Princes.  Gersen ends up fabulously wealthy, having gotten the girl and destroying a second of his enemies.

So how does this one compare with the first of the series?  Generally, it stacks up well, though I liked it slightly less than The Star King.  My criticisms are few and did not detract from my overall enjoyment of the novel.  The Killing Machine, like all the Demon Princes novels, is somewhat formulaic (in that they all share the same basic plot structure), and we probably see a trifle less characterization of Gersen here than in the first.  I also found the romantic interest, Alusz Iphigenia Eperje-Tokay, less enjoyable a character than Pallis Atwrode from The Star King.  Pallis was a delight; Alusz is a cipher.  There is clearly something about her that made both Kokor Hekkus and Kirth Gersen fall head over heels for her, but I’ll be darned if I can see what that might be.  Interchange as a concept and a locale within the story is highly entertaining, and I did find it more interesting and fully realized than any of the settings in The Star King, so that makes up for some of these negative aspects.

If you enjoyed the first of the Demon Princes novels, The Star King, I suggest you give this one a try, as it’s more of the same.  I give The Killing Machine 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers

Review: The Star King by Jack Vance

As mentioned previously on my blog, I plan to work my way through the Complete Jack Vance I now have in my possession and review each work as I complete it.  First up is The Star King (also published as Star King, but The Star King is Vance’s preferred title), originally published in two parts in the December 1963 and February 1964 issues of Galaxy magazine.  It was first published in novel format by Berkley Books in 1964 and won the 1963 Hugo award.  The Star King is the first of the five-volume Demon Princes series.

Please note that spoilers for the book’s plot follow.

As is characteristic of all the Demon Princes books, each chapter of The Star King begins with an interesting epigraph drawn from various sources within the setting (books, speeches, court transcripts, etc.), most of which offer some insight relevant to the unusual cultural practices, characters, or locales mentioned in the chapter at hand.  (I have to admit that the significance or relevance of a few slipped over my head and were just a little bizarre.)

The setting for all the Demon Princes books is the Oikumene, a more or less standard kind of space opera setting that Vance later came to call the Gaean Reach (which also appears in the three Alastor books, the Cadwal Chronicles, Emphyrio, Night Lamp, Ports of Call, Lurulu, and possibly The Gray Prince), in the year (approximately) 3500 AD.  Our protagonist is a young man named Kirth Gersen.  Gersen and his grandfather are the sole survivors of the “Mount Pleasant Massacre” in which their small colony was destroyed by a temporary alliance of five master criminals, the so-called “Demon Princes,” who killed or enslaved everyone but the two Gersens.  Kirth’s grandfather takes him to Old Earth and other places around the Oikumene training him in all the skills he may need to seek out and destroy the five Demon Princes in turn.  By the start of The Star King, Gerson’s lifetime of training is complete and he has begun to track the first of the Demon Princes, one Attel Malagate.  Unlike the other four, this Demon Prince is a nonhuman, a member of an enigmatic species known as the Star Kings, who can craft careful disguises to appear as a human.

At the start of the novel, Gersen finds himself in the Beyond, a lawless area outside civilized space where he encounters a man who has discovered an unusual, pristine wilderness world.  The man refuses to surrender its location to Malagate and his henchmen, and Gersen ends up with the coordinates, though he lacks the encryption key to unlock them.  Gersen begins backtracking Malagate’s location, managing to evade the Star King’s assassins, finally narrowing his search of Malagate to three possible candidates in a university department.  (I know several university officials I suspect may be renegade Star Kings, so I understand Kirth Gersen’s suspicions.)

He convinces the three to accompany him on a journey to find the utopian world, though he doesn’t know which of them is the Star King.  Gersen is an honorable fellow and along the way must also undertake a side mission to rescue a university receptionist he had gone on a first date with, the delightful Pallis Atwrode, who has been kidnapped and abused by one of Malagate’s lieutenants.  He succeeds, but I’m not sure the woman will ever be the same after her misadventure.  In the end, Gersen manages to emerge victorious due to his own cleverness and planning.  One down and four to go.

Gersen is an extremely clever, competent adversary to these fiends, and he has a one-track mind.  Interestingly, as Gersen explores the planet Alphanor, meeting various inhabitants, we see him wistfully desire a “normal” life, rather than his path of vengeance.  Ultimately Gersen lets nothing deter him from his vengeance and he puts aside these feelings, but it is nice to see these natural, very human feelings appear in a committed avenger like Kirth Gersen.  Plus, Gersen is an intensely good, chivalric individual, who temporarily delays his quest and risks his own life to rescue a woman who he hardly knew, simply because she was threatened because of her brief association with him.

This is a short, entirely straightforward tale, though it is entertainingly told, and is archetypically Vance, though it is not by any means his best or most complex work.  It would serve as a decent introduction to Vance, though I’m not sure that there aren’t better first Vances for the novice reader.  I give The Star King 4 out of 5 stars.

Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers

The Complete Jack Vance, Volumes I and II

As I mentioned previously, I have acquired the first two volumes of the Complete Jack Vance.  When all six volumes are available and in my hands, I will possess the entirety of Jack Vance’s fiction publications.  In case you were in any doubt, this is a Glorious Thing.

A few pictures of one of these marvelous tomes is available on the publisher’s blog here.

I am slowly but surely working my way through Vance’s oeuvre and plan to review each work individually on this blog as I complete them.

Here are the contents of Volume I:

The Star King; The Killing Machine; The Palace of Love; The Face; The Book of Dreams; Rhialto the Marvellous; Emphyrio; The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII South, Big Planet; The Rapparee; The Kragen; The View from Chickweed’s Window; Bad Ronald; Bird Island; Sail 25; The Men Return; Meet Miss Universe; I’ll Build Your Dream Castle; Three-legged Joe

And here are the contents of Volume II:

The Chasch; The Wannek; The Dirdir; The Pnume; Cugel the Clever; Night Lamp; The Miracle Workers; Nopalgarth; The Flesh Mask; The Dark Ocean; The Man in the Cage; The Man Who Walks Behind; The Gift of Gab; The Moon Moth; The World-Thinker; D.P!; The Visitors; Planet of the Black Dust; The Enchanted Princess; The Potters of Firsk; The Uninhibited Robot; Sabotage on Sulfur Planet

My first review, that of The Star King, first of the Demon Princes series will be posted shortly.

June 2010 Book Acquisitions

Yes, I skipped a couple months worth of acquisitions, but I’m not going to go back and recreate those lists. Here’s what I picked up this month:

• The first two volumes of the Complete Jack Vance (originally titled the Compact Vance Integral Edition). For a decade or so I have been kicking myself for not purchasing a copy of the original Vance Integral Edition, but now I’ll have every work of fiction Vance — one of my favorite authors — has ever written. Woo hoo! This one is a real triumph for me, and I’m very happy to have these in my collection. I can’t wait for the remaining four volumes to become available. Expensive, but oh so worth it.
• I bought two books from Amazon (had a gift certificate to cover some of the cost): Serial Vigilantes of Paperback Fiction (a reference work about a subset of the men’s adventure genre; expensive, but a must for my collection given my interest in the genre) and The Girl Who Played with Fire, the sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I enjoyed the first one so much that I had to pick this one up. That’s unusual because I typically don’t like blockbusters, but the first in this trilogy really surprised me with how enjoyable it was.
• I purchased an autographed Polish edition of Glen Cook’s The Black Company. No, I’ll never, ever be able to read it but hey, for a couple bucks, why not? I’ve always found it interesting that Cook has such a following in Eastern Europe (of course, I can see that the bleak settings in his works would appeal to Eastern Europeans).

So that’s it. I acquired 5 new books and read 20, with a net reduction in my “to be read” list of 15 books. Not bad. I’m trying to have a new austerity program with my book purchases (wish me luck with that), though I am going to visit a new nearby used bookstore tomorrow. We’ll see what they have. They’re located in a dreary mall and I’ve heard that they’re a tad expensive, so I don’t have high hopes. But it should be fun, and I’m going to eat some damn fine Chinese food while I’m at the mall. Yum.