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 no 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 know 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
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The Killing Machine and actually the whole series is rather frustrating to read because it could have been a great one but constantly defeats those hopes. The first two books have a genuine level of originality and true romance about them with their fantastic but somehow plausible fantasy worlds of the dryads and Thamber respectively. Even the Palace of Love potentially has such a world too, albeit one that is constructed. Yet these books seem to have been written in a rushed and impatient manner despite many excellent details and concepts. Even Vance must have felt that since at least the last two are laid out in better detail. I couldn’t agree more about Alusz. She is what amounts to a fairy tale princess who through resourcefulness and decisiveness frees herself from Kokor Hekkus. And yet Gersen sees nothing much in her when he first spots her. Vance almost forces us to think that Gersen begins to value her only because Kokor does and that Kokor only values her because she defies him. And yet she is really the only self reliant and genuinely capable woman interest that Gersen has in the series. Another problem with the series is the relative lack of character drawing of the “Demon Princes”. What exactly distinguishes Malagate from Hekkus? Viole Falusche and Lars Lenque are relatively prosaic criminals despite a fetish or two. Only Treesong has some real bizarreness. I also have more problems of plausibility than most readers probably do about the plot as well. The way that Malagate acts in the final scene of the Star King, hiding under the sand, would evoke laughter if a movie was made of it; whether or not he is a true person he still has the morphology of a human. Also a galactic criminal like Malagate acting as a University dean without any protection in a little office flies in the face of any plausibility. Hekkus has the same insouciance running around by himself even if he is disguised. This rather trivializes these characters as they don’t seem to be running any large enterprise. Finally am I alone in thinking that the idea of Demon Princes that Vance started out with quickly got discarded without notice? The Star King race even as Vance presents it doesn’t evoke any alarm. The rest just seem normal humans who had criminal traits. It’s a shame that Vance didn’t see the great potential of these stories and more fully realize them.
Maury, thanks for your thoughtful comments. I am delighted to host discussions of Vance’s work long after he wrote these books, and even a relatively long time after I wrote these initial reviews. I don’t disagree with anything you have written here. If forced to point out a single weakness of virtually every one of the Demon Princes books, I would have to note the relative lack of detailed characterization. From Gersen, to the female love interests, to the Demon Princes themselves, each is only roughly, almost hastily sketched; this is certainly not an in-depth character studies of any of these figures. You’re right that in many ways these books ultimately end of as less realized works than they might have been.