Customer Reviews

Star King (The Demon Princes, Book 1)

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If, as was all too possible during the years when this series was mostly out of print, you happened to have started at the wrong end of Kirth Gersen's quest for vengeance on the Demon Princes, the 5 crime lords responsible for the raid on Mount Pleasant that left all but Kirth and his grandfather dead or enslaved, you might have wondered how his quest could have taken him so long, since in the later stages he had amassed impressive resources and connections in gathering information.

Well, he didn't start out that way. (Obviously not, since he and his grandfather lost everything and everyone they loved in the raid.)

This book doesn't begin with the raid itself, or even with Gersen's grandfather shaping him as a tool for revenge (although Gersen's brooding on his memories serves to provide us with both). This phase of his lifelong hunt begins at Smade's Planet, owned and operated as the private preserve of Smade himself. (Practically speaking, it's a worthless hunk of uninhabited real estate, except for the area around Smade's Tavern itself, that legendary neutral ground where troublemakers are thrown into the sea - an advantage to running one's own personal planet, in this universe where interstellar law is nonexistent, certainly as far as the Beyond is concerned.) Gersen, making a precarious living as a bounty hunter while pursuing his private quest, meets Teehalt, a professional explorer who talks too much when he gets drunk. Teehalt has just found a world so beautiful that he can't bear to turn it over to his employer - Attel Malagate. Since Gersen has only just peeled back the layers insulating the Demon Princes from the Mount Pleasant raid, destiny seems to have presented him with his first target...

Malagate is unlike the other Demon Princes in several ways. The Woe is the only nonhuman among them, being a Star King - that ultra-competitive species who only leave their planet if they can pass for human, and have a chance to beat humans at their own game. He alone is neither flamboyant nor given to flights of ego - which, coupled with his alien mindset, don't ease Gersen's task of hunting him down. We see little of the terrible crimes Malagate has perpetrated, apart those affecting individuals such as Gersen himself.

Gersen's quest takes place in a universe wherein humans have had starflight for centuries - how many isn't at first apparent, but the reader learns from a passing weights-and-measures quotation that the calendar referenced throughout the book treats 2000 AD as its zero-point. Most chapters begin with a quote from some work within this universe - a Cosmopolis interview with Smade about his planet, for example. We learn that there is no interstellar government - and in the Beyond, the only large organization is the Deweaseling Corps, who exist to lynch all 'weasels' - agents of the Interworld Police Coordination Company (IPCC). All in all, Vance does an excellent job of creating a densely textured civilization - so much so that if the reader encounters an unfamiliar term, the best policy is to keep reading until Vance makes its meaning clear shortly thereafter (either from context or another helpful chapter heading).

Kirth Gersen (sometimes called Keith Gersen) is a formidable bounty hunter and occasional secret agent/enforcer for an interstellar law agency. Gersen, however, has his own personal agenda: to seek out and kill the 5 super-criminals (known as the 5 Demon Princes) responsible for the raid on his home planet that left everyone but him and his grandfather dead or enslaved.

To that end, Gersen has been transformed by his grandfather into the ultimate instrument of vengeance. As his grandfather told him following the raid:

"Many fine things your father had planned for you: learning and useful work; a life of satisfaction and peace. All this is gone now, do you understand? But the learning you shall have - the use of your hands and mind. And useful work: the elimination of evil men. What work is more useful than this? Finally, I cannot give you peace, but I promise you ample satisfaction, for I shall teach you to crave the blood of these men more than the flesh of a woman."

True to his word, the old man forges his grandson into an unstoppable instrument of vengeance. In fact, Gersen often seems more a force a nature than a human being, more machine than man in his single-minded quest for revenge. His fighting prowess and physical abilities are without peer; likewise, his mind is sharp and focused.

In Gersen, Vance has created a hero in the classic mold: strong, skilled, intrepid and resourceful. Yet, he must be all of this and more as he hunts down the first Demon Prince, a member of an alien race known as "the Star Kings". The setting for all of this is the "Gaean Reach", which encompasses those areas of interstellar space to which man has gone. Gersen's agenda, however, takes him far beyond this realm into an area where man has seldom, if ever set foot.

I bought this book when a student at Cambridge (England) University in 1969.

The story follows Kirth Gersen, effectively orphaned by a raid on his home planet by the five 'Demon Princes' and who is brought up by his grandfather, who instils into him a thirst for revenge upon them.

The book is typical of Jack Vance's quirky style, combining dry humour, action and a number of typical sixties SF inventions, some of which have come almost frighteningly true.

His prologues to each chapter pre-date the foot-notes so typical of Terry Pratchett's novels (he is quoted in 'The Unseen University Challenge' quiz-book on Pratchett,s Discworld as being one of Pratchett's inspirations) and include (from memory as I am writing this in Jordan and my copy is in England) the phrase "Someone else's ignorance is bliss" and an acknowledgement to 'Herb Frankbert'.

The style has the typically Vance humanitarian touch and is reminiscent of the sadly under-rated Lloyd Biggle Jr. (e.g. 'Monument' and 'The Still Small Sound of Trumpets'.

In this first novel of the series, Gersen is on the track of Attel Malagate - 'Malagate the Woe' - a 'star king' belonging to a race outwardly human, but from a totally different evolutionary background and planet.

The story is fast-moving, but with some very clever twists and leaves - as it should do - an opening for the rest of the series.

I would dearly like to obtain a new, or nearly new copy, together with the rest of the series, as my original has now almost totally collapsed.

END

This is not a science fiction series as much as an anthropological and sociological textbook. Vance posits a very plausible and non-utopian future. This future is detailed and so real you could well remark, "I could get killed in this book!" This is such a refreshing change from the dreary infantilism of "Star Trek". This book is, above all things, PLAUSIBLE. "Conservatives" might be expected to love this book and "liberals" to hate it. Here we have no enlightened and merciful elite but, rather, a number of contending circles and forces. No such thing as "The Federation"; simply not enough force to make a universal imperium possible. What'll get you hung on one planet will get you applauded on another. Humans remain humans, aye, but social mechanisms evolve to meet needs.

First revenge.


A chance encounter in a bar gives Gersen a lead on his first target, as does a fortuitous coincidence of transport.

He learns what Malagate actually is, and sets out to track down who he actually is, but has to deal with his henchmen first to get to him.

One thing Gersen has going for him is that your crimelord types aren't always nice to those around him, giving him a lever or two.


3.5 out of 5