Customer Reviews

Palace of Love

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Two down and three to go... In order to exact revenge on Viole Falushe, the third Demon Prince, Kirth Gersen must first discover who Mr. Falushe is, and then find and infiltrate his famous Palace of Love.

The actual plot, while just as brisk and fun as usual, isn't the most entertaining aspect of The Palace of Love. This volume is particularly charming because of Jack Vance's exquisite characters -- three in particular:

1. Vogel Filschner was rejected by the prettiest girl in school when he was a pimply 14-year old geek. His retaliation feels just like what school psychologists are warning us about these days. He's a fascinating villain!
2. Navarath is a washed-up poet who lives on a houseboat. We're not sure if he's a genius, a fake, crazy, or just drunk. Whatever he is, he's amusing and Vance has lots of fun with Navarath, giving him an eccentric artist personality. He talks dramatically and emphatically, gestures extravagantly, seeks attention, drinks a lot, and broods. When he got on a spaceship for the first time he "simultaneously became afflicted with claustrophobia and agoraphobia, and lay on a settee with his feet bare and a cloth pulled over his head." He even constructs absurd (but somehow ingenious) poems, including one whose stanzas end with lines such as "But Tim R. Mortiss degurgled me" and "But Tim R. Mortiss peturgles me."
3. Zan Zu, the girl from Eridu, is a dreamy dirty adolescent misfit with no name. (Since Kirth asked for her name, Navarath introduced her as "Zan Zu from Eridu.") Vance can't help but use her entire title nearly every time she's mentioned (and I can't either), so Kirth thinks of her as Zan Zu, the girl from Eridu, and we regularly encounter the words "Zan Zu, the girl from Eridu" in the text. It just trips off the tongue so nicely and somehow made me smile every time I saw it. (I read somewhere that Jack Vance chose his characters' names this way -- by saying them over and over to see how they sound.)

These are three of Vance's best supporting characters, all packed into about 150 pages. That's enough reason to read The Palace of Love.

The third book in the Demon Princes series is predictably good. It is slow and methodical. It follows the same formula as the previous 2 books, which is a winning one. Kirth Gersen has sworn to hunt down and kill the 5 Demon Princes who murdered members of his family and his town many years ago. They now live anonymously, still committing acts of evil. Gersen now pursues Viole Falushe , who controls the Palace Of Love. Its location and nature is shrouded in mystery. Gersen slowly lifts the shroud.

Again, there are memorable bits of information and unusual characters. Gersen's companion during his search this time is an eccentric poet, who makes for a colorful character. The hunt for Falushe develops with the same sureness of the last 2 books, but I found this one to be somewhat slower in pace. Falushe's evil is deep and solidly told, and has a complexity to it that is refreshing. Vance sticks to the series premise as stubbornly as Gersen maintains his singular purpose. Gersen may be unable to change, but I would welcome at least a little something different from the series the next time around. Either way, Vance's strong writing will surely not disappoint.

The Palace of Love

A Guest of the Margrave

Kirth Gerson's quest for revenge against the five Demon Princes who destroyed his home and family has one unfortunate side effect. It makes him more than a little unlucky in love. When Alusz Iphigenia finds herself dragged to Sarkovy, the poisoner's planet, to watch a man die for selling poisons to Viole Falushe at the wrong price she draws the line and Gerson finds himself alone one again. Unsurprisingly, Gerson is almost relieved at the loss.

For Gerson, the thin clues discovered on Sarkovy will eventually lead him back to Earth where he must struggle to build the snare that will trap the elusive Falushe. Eventually, the trail will lead him to Navarth, a poet of unsteady demeanor and writing skills, the guardian of the young woman called Zan Zu from Eridu. Whoever Zan Zu really is, she is the double of Jheral Tinzy, the woman whose cavalier treatment launched young Vogel Filschner, later known as Viole Falushe, on the life of a dire criminal mastermind. Gerson uses Zan Zu and Navarth as the keys that will gain him access to the killer. Even if it means a trip to the fatal delights of the infamous Palace of Love.

If 'The Killing Machine' was a slight letdown, 'The Palace of Love' finds Vance back in complete control of his writing powers. The book is both a facile satire of the foibles of an overly attenuated civilization and a hard nosed adventure of the fight to the death between a vicious, if overly romantic, sadist and one of his earliest victims. Irony is the rule of the day as many characters get their just and embarrassing deserts. For a reader jaded by the modern tendency to the grim and noir, Vance's use of almost comic justice is like a breath of fresh air.

Vance creates his worlds in order to have full use of the people on them. Sarkovy, with its wheeled god, the archaism of Earth, and the countless quirks of the worlds of the Oikumene and beyond the Pale come to life in the footnotes and quotes with which Vance peppers his stories. You will find yourself enamored of both Vance's story-telling skills and his capabilities as a somewhat cynical sociologist. These are stories designed to fire the imagination, to stay in the mind after they are put to rest.