And what grander place to end matters than with an exceptional set piece? Events taking place over the course of two days, in Peacemaker the shadow guild is finally confronted—in their home. Bren and his entourage tasked with the confrontation, bullets fly, blood flows, and ultimately a society must reset its views to security and leadership.
Birth
Sustained internet buzz and an interesting premise were the primary reasons I bought Robinson Crusoe. The game has been routinely cited by many as one of their favorites, and the idea of getting through various scenarios cooperatively while telling your own story on a deserted island seemed worthwhile. And indeed, after getting over the massive rulebook hump, there was some fun to be had.
Life
In juggling the tasks while trying to stay ahead of the curve that constantly threatens to slide you off the island, my wife and I enjoyed our games. Collecting supplies, feeding people, building shelter, fending off wild animals, surviving the weather—it’s a true challenge that does a good job of evoking theme and gives a real sense of satisfaction and teamwork when successful.
Jagannath opens on “Beatrice”, a story whose title ultimately holds the key to its message. What begins as a story of a man's love for an airship, slowly, steadily, yet surprisingly, becomes one of abuse. What follow is one of the best in the collection, “Some Letters for Ove Lindström”. In this story, the reader gets a first-hand view into a daughter's letters to her recently deceased, alcoholic father after years apart. On the uncanny hand, the reader is treated to liminal fairy tale like a sliver of the newest moon, resulting in touchingly sentimental piece that retains its mystery and longing. A small paean to rural domesticity and simple love, “Miss Nyberg and I” is a brief story, perhaps more anecdote, about a strange little animal that grows from the soil complementing a budding relationship.
A Game of Thrones: The Card Game is a card-driven strategy/combat game, or, as can so romantically be expressed: dudes on a table. Players take turns marshaling their characters and assets, afterwards turning them loose in various forms, including espionage, power, and direct combat, all in an attempt gain power. The first player to earn fifteen power, wins. Interestingly, the game can also be played with three or four players and be just as viable, something relatively unique in the world of card-dudes on a table.
The collection kicks off with the title story. “The Drowned Life” is the story of Hatch, a normal man running the rat race of lower middle-class life, trying to keep up with bills, his job, and the necessities of family. Giving up one day, he sinks into Drowned Town, and there sees life from a different perspective. A metaphorically story dense with both overt and unobvious allusion, Ford nails the never-ending game of catch-up poorer Americans play. A spot of flash fiction, “Ariadne's Mother” symbolically seats Ford's rather cynical view on being a writer in the 21st century. “The Night Whiskey” is a weird—perhaps Weird—tale of a town wherein a deathberry grows, and every year the inhabitants celebrate by drinking a little of the liquor distilled from it. Strange things happening while drunk on the strong spirit, even stranger things happen one particular year when a new Harvester is needed. Not Ford’s best work, but a solid story. While less a story and more a mind map of remembrances of encounters with the ubiquitous little insect, “A Few Things About Ants” ends up in territory beyond memory in an interesting way.
A dynamic, edgy story, Afterparty tells of Lyda and her quest to find the center of distribution of a newly created designer drug she calls Numinous. With repeated, scaled use, Numinous converts and re-routes synapses and linkages in the human mind to the point they become real, at least in the schizophrenic sense. Gods and deities coming to life in users’ minds, those who don’t know any better come to take them pieces of existence. Churches naturally the most likely to exploit such ‘symptoms’, Lyda takes it upon herself to locate the source and put an end to it once and for all.
The Expanse series to date all about character viewpoint, Babylon’s Ashes possesses the most yet. Along with every crew member of the Roccinante (save Naomi) “Corey” also puts on the table Filip and Marco Inaros, Fred Johnson, Chrisjen, Anderson Dawes, Michio Pa, Praxidike Meng, and others. It’s through these viewpoints that Babylon’s Ashes cleans up the events of Nemesis Games, then sets the stage for the final four books in the series. In order to accomplish this, alliances must be made and broken, and old vendettas tested in fresh political waters.
This is it—the portal, the nap beside the river that leads down the rabbit hole, the slip into another dimension—where disposable assets, otherwise known as dollars, hopefully exist. If you’re reading this, it’s likely the Arkham Horror: The Card Game base game has scratched an itch, but not hard enough. It still itches, and you’re looking for a better way to scratch it. The Dunwich Legacy deluxe expansion, and the six mythos packs which complete the campaign, may be just the sharp edge you’re looking for.
“The Dunwich Legacy” is the first Arkham Horror campaign released after the base game. It starts with players investigating what seems a relatively ordinary occurrence: two professors from Miskatonic University have disappeared. Going to the University, investigators question Dr. Armitage to learn more. One professor last seen around the university’s academic building and the other at a local speak-easy, players then have a choice which they’d like to locate first, and the adventure begins. It perhaps goes without saying that, what at first seems “a relatively ordinary occurrence” slowly escalates into a situation anything-but. The investigators’ health and sanity tested to the max with each new scenario, it comes down to the wire—cosmic wire?—if they will survive the horrors they discover. Small towns, it seems, old big secrets (but not in any David Lynch sort of way).
Feminist fairy tale set in the Wild West, Six-Gun Snow White maps the familiar Disney story onto America’s 19th century from social, cultural, and gender perspectives. Born of a forced marriage between a rich, white land owner and a beautiful Native American woman, Snow White grows up with one foot in both worlds. But when her mother dies and her father re-marries a prudish East coast woman, the teenage girl is forced to put both feet on the white side. The expectations eventually becoming too much, something has to break. And break it does for young Snow White; what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Unfortunately, I discovered this fact late in the game. After the third story, I was thinking Hey, these stories seem too simple, too immature to be explicitly for an adult mind… But knowing many books marketed to adults do not possess any more maturity, I plowed ahead but with senses tingling. It wasn’t until halfway through I decided to check, and sure enough, it was marketed for teens, forcing me to go back and re-evaluate the stories, which I don’t think I always successfully did. Bottom line is: if I were a teen interested in sf and fantasy, would I enjoy these stories? Answer: likely yes. A few, unlikely…
Working with the British model of the 18th and 19th centuries, The Eye of the Heron is based on the idea of sending society’s criminals and otherwise unwanted to another place. In the novella’s case, it is another planet far from Earth. Colonized in two waves, the first wave established societal and cultural order built around the traditional Western idea—leaders, police, gender roles, etc. The second wave, however, went for something different: rule by referendum and common sense, underpinned by pacifism ideology. Pushed outside the established city, these Shanti-towners trade the food they grow to the city dwellers for metal, technology, and other critical items. But while trade may be a cyclical, balanced area, authority is not. The city-dwellers considering the Shanti-towners a lesser but necessary people, relations take a turn for the worse when a large group of Shanti-towners make the decision to strike out across the mountains to establish a new town closer to the sea.
Flamme Rouge is a board game ripe with potential. Card-driven racing, the base game came with the possibility of four players challenging one another across a huge number of potential track layouts. Undoubtedly aware of their game’s potential but waiting to see if it caught fire (har har), the designers surely breathed a sigh of satisfaction when the game caught the market’s eye, and that potential could start to be realized. Peloton and Meteo are the two expansions which have since arrived on shelves.
Peloton adds a number of things that diversify gameplay immensely. Foremost, it adds two additional teams of racers, pushing the player count up to six. It also adds a couple, slightly modified rules for the game to handle up to twelve racers. Next, it adds a couple cards which allow for the usage of dummy teams. For a two player game, having these additional one or two (or more) teams of dummy racers on the board adds to the atmosphere and makes things more tense and exciting. Thirdly, the expansion adds roughly a dozen new track tiles, some with new terrain. Capturing the early-20th century feel of road cycling in Europe, many of these new tiles feature cobblestones, which slightly change how cyclists move and slipstream. Building on top of these new tiles, designers included a set of cards which simulate a tour de ____.
In the early going, The Sunken Land has the atmosphere of a stereotype: one of “those French novels” where people have trouble with relationships while grappling with the idea of existence (never in so direct terms, natch). Indeed Shaw and Victoria, and their obtuse interactions and dialogue, spawn a certain feeling that something is amiss in their relationship and world, even if they do not know what it is, the quotidian events of their daily lives taking on additional layers in the process. But as the story moves forward, certain patterns begin to emerge. At separate, individual times, strange coincidences occur that are just far enough over the line that the tire of reality is pricked by a pin. As the escaping air builds into the crescendo of a hiss, the reader comes to learn that not all is existentially French. Broader, Lovecraftian-esque (not Lovecraftian) events are shifting and moving beneath the waves that speak to Harrison’s true substance to the novel.
Ostensibly (emphasis on ‘ostensibly’) Piranesi is the story of a man whose life revolves around cataloging the endless, tide-washed halls of a timeless building littered with marble statues. Surviving on seaweed and fish, the only other inhabitant of the House is a man he calls The Other. The pair meeting weekly to compare notes on survival, a spanner is thrown into the works of their schedule when another person is reported to be walking the halls. Threat or friend, rumors and hearsay swirl, forcing the man to strike out on his own to learn the truth.
In Survive: Escape from Atlantis, players try to get their meeples off a sinking island that is doing its best to kill them, and if the island doesn’t kill them, then surely the sharks, whales, sea dragons and fellow players will certainly have a stab at it. Players must do their best to remember the number hidden on the bottom of each of their ten meeples, trying to get those of highest value to safety first. Spoiler alert: given the riotous chaos that evolves, this philosophy devolves into: get any of my meeples to safety, regardless of value. The game’s win condition is total number of points from rescued meeples. (With my four-year old daughter, we sometimes just play total number of meeples still alive.) There are a few things to help the meeples, including boats and dolphins, but the sea is still a dangerous place, not every meeple seeing the end of game.
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2010) focuses on three primary things: the details of Monk’s character and personal life (heritage, upbringing, personality, relationships, marriage, children, etc.), the evolution of Monk’s music, style, gigs he performed, and albums he recorded, and lastly the relationships and partnerships that formed the social fabric he wove (and unwove) in the musical, mostly jazz scene of his era. As with good biographies, a strong sense of the history that Monk made and passed through emerges in the process.
Mice & Mystics is a cooperative game that plays out the story of Colin the Warrior, Tilda the Healer, Lily the Bowman, Filch the Scamp, Nez the Tinkerer and Maginos the Mystic in their fight against an evil queen who has taken their castle hostage. A light role playing game with miniatures, players traverse tiles and slay baddies while following story instructions in a gamebook. There are ranged and melee attacks, players can upgrade their characters, a variety of spells and items can be discovered, story achievements can be had, and a number of other details flesh out the mice’s adventures through the castle’s basements and sewers and in its dining halls and sleeping chambers.
Well, if one is to judge by the cover, the answer is no. Bren guiding/protecting a group of children does not seem a promising concept. And for 75% of the novel, the answer rings true. In true Cherryh style, the narrative takes its sweet time building up. But when it hits, it hits. There is an extremely quickly escalation into the climax (at least in Cherryh's terms), and the backstory delivered is meaty. Indeed human guests from the space station arrive for Cajeri's felicitous ninth birthday, but behind that intrigues and cabals that have been bubbling for ages finally come to the surface.
The collection kicks off with the titular story. A classical sf premise if ever there were (not a familiar, derivative premise rather one that feels classic but retains its uniqueness), “The Visible Man” finds a convicted criminal being transported to a new location at the outset. Having paid a high price for his crimes, he has been given medication which renders him unable to see humans. Stuck in the backseat of a small space like a car, everything is ok. But when he escapes, the limits of his condition come to the forefront. While the resolution may not be as substantive as could have been, the manner in which Dozois puts the reader in the shoes of a person who cannot see people is interesting.
Flamme Rouge is a 4-player, tactical bicycle racing game that has some delightful parallels to real world Tour de fill in your country___. Races held on modular courses that can be disassembled and re-built in a huge variety of ways, players draw and play cards to propel their two-cyclist teams toward the finish line and victory. Coordinating your small team a requirement, drafting sees cyclists gaining spaces for free, just as being at the front of the pack will find your cyclist taking exhaustion that will inevitably come back to haunt them in the latter stages of the race. Uphill and downhill sections changing the rules slightly, a player must be aware of what is ahead as much as where the other cyclists are if they want to win.
Longer Review: Journey is one of my favorite Playstation games of all time. Simplicity equaling zen elegance in its case, the bare bones of the game's setup gives the player room for reflection on the state of the world you traverse and the purpose of your actions as they compile, leading to an overall experience that transcends most games. Rather than frenetic button-mashing, it's tranquility extends beyond the moment. Okomotive's 2019 Far: Lone Sails is quite different in terms of its world and gameplay, but offers something equally meditative.
Throwing players into the proverbial deep end of the pool, Lone Sails begins with the player controlling a hooded person inside a homemade contraption that is part boat, engine, land crawler, and behemoth. The 2D, cross-section allows the player to move around inside, controlling the engine, brakes, firehose, sails, winch, and fuel tank. Bits of post-apocalyptic debris litter the road, and need to be collected as fuel to propel the behemoth when it runs out. Death not possible, it's the players job to figure their way through the various , obstacles and puzzles, maintaining the behemoth momentum all the while.
After
a typical Strahan intro, musing on the philosophical depths of the
subject he's picked for this anthology, the fiction opens with Vina
Jie-Min Prasad's “A Guide for Working Breeds”. A light, airy,
fairly insubstantial counterpoint to Strahan's intro
note to kick things off, it is a fragmented conversation between 2
AIs. It has a fair number of pages, which don't travel far. I
suppose the banter was supposed to be witty, and to some readers it
may be. The story does, however establish the the anthology will be
largely comedic in nature. Taking the integrity of the anthology up
a notch is Peter Watts' “Test 4 Echo” A dense, taught story
about robot-assisted exploration of the ocean of one of Saturn’s
moon, Watts finds the gray areas (emphasis on plural) between human
and machine intelligence. A solid story with a nice, organic twist
at the climax.
The stories in Rhialto the Marvelous all feature a group of eccentric magicians living in the last days of the sun. Vance capitalizing on the concept as only Vance can, their petty and esoteric interests are presented in comedic yet human fashion, and are integral to their interpersonal differences. Creaky, old men having wars of words (and occasionally fists) over magical baubles and tomes is great fun—high flying verbiage contrasted by childish interests.
Mare Balticum is a family game where players control fishing fleets on the Baltic Sea, trying to collect the most valuable haul of fish. Players have three actions on their turn: catch one of the five types of fish, move their ships to richer waters, or storage fish at the ports. All fish harvested from the board are afterwards replenished by drawing new fish from a bag, a bag that likewise contains six clock tokens. When a clock token is drawn, players must assign a multiplier value (3x, 2x, 1x, or 0) to the type of fish they think they will have the most tokens of at the end of the game. When the sixth clock token is drawn, the game stops, players count their fish, use the multipliers per fish type, and add up their score. The player with the most points, wins. (Total play time amounts to approximately 15 minutes per player.)
The premise of Afterland is quite straightforward: a strange cancer emerges in the near-future to kill 99% of males on Earth. But it is the aftermath of this situation which the novel focuses on, something which Beukes accomplishes through the points of view of three characters. The first are mother and son, Cole and Miles, told separately. When the reader first meets them they are on the run, trying to escape police given that all boys must be kept in special facilities for research purposes. Miles therefore travels as ‘Millie’, a fourteen-year old girl as the pair travel cross-country to Miami to catch a boat to South Africa. The third point-of-view is Billie, Cole’s sister. Awakening in a car crash at start of the novel and badly injured, she burns with hate for Cole, who was seemingly the cause of the crash. Believing Cole tried to murder her, Billie sets off on a vengeance mission to track down her sister and do her justice, and try to get a piece of the profit in the process.
This article is a response to some of the points raised by Skill Up in his review of the The Last of Us Part 2. Unlike a lot of, if not most of the game's reaction and backlash, this article will not be a hit piece or click bait. I hope it is critical but constructive, addressing what was unaddressed or misrepresented.
Unless you were part of the industry's development decades ago, most people would have scoffed at the idea that video games are an art form. Given the state of of video games today, however, it's tough to argue. Like books, movies, etc., video games have the power to speak to us through a medium that is fictional yet relative, and representative yet stimulating. But where books inspire imagination and movies guide you through an imagined experience, video games add yet another layer of imagination: participation. Players vicariously take on the roles of the characters, directing them within the limitations of agency granted by the game/technology. This experience is dichotomous; on one hand (no pun intended) are the technical mechanics of participation/gameplay (control, vision, action, interaction, etc.), and on the other hand are the elements of narrative (setting, character, dialogue, plot, etc.) In Skill Up's review of The Last of Us Part 2, this dichotomy is heavily, heavily biased to one hand with a lack of underpinning knowledge on the other. It does not do the game full justice.
There are many different types of gamers, and Skill Up is one I've come to categorize as a gamer who loves gameplay—the first hand, in-the-moment experience of interacting with the game's virtual world through the mechanics that allow this. Another way of putting this is: the details surrounding punching, kicking, shooting, attacking, etc. are of utmost importance. And yet another way of putting this is, some of his criticisms of TLoU2's gameplay are spot on. Gameplay has been slightly enhanced and improved from Part 1, but the loop overall is very similar, nothing truly innovative coming out the game. Naughty Dog clearly did not want to deviate too far from the success that was Part 1, and yes, there are absolutely other games with better control, response, action, etc. on the market. SkillUp nails this. Trouble is, gameplay isn't the game's prime focus, and by focusing so heavily on gameplay Skill Up failed to see what the game's focus actually is.
Having accidentally transported himself back to the very same place at which he started his quest for the eyes of the overworld, Cugel’s Saga opens with Cugel standing on said shores, with nothing in his pockets, wondering what to do. Heading in a different direction, he comes upon the manse of a magician, and there finds gameful employment collecting the scales of a dead demon from from a pit of slime, all for pitiful pay. Escaping the miserly magician on his own terms, Cugel once again finds himself alone in the wide world, but with a numinous object in his pocket tat he feels will surely lead him to revenge on Ionuscu, the Laughing Magician.
Figuratively and literally (at least in the text), The Eyes of the Overworld, first of the two Cugel novels, is magic. Ostensibly far-far-far future Earth, the sun is a dying red blob in the sky, occasionally fading out to pop back to life, while below on Earth humans live a quasi-futuristic/Medieval existence. One such existence is Cugel. At the outset, he is a wannabe tradesman at a flea market who quickly succumbs to his baser instincts at the behest of a fellow seller. Coming to regret his decision to steal from the local magician’s manse, Cugel finds himself thrown across the sky into foreign lands with the spells of the Laughing Magician impelling him to find and acquire an object of inestimable value and bring it home. All manner of being resourceful (a useful trait considering he gets himself into trouble as much as he avoids it), Cugel fulfills his mission, sort of. But as with most things, it’s the journey not the destination…
Kelly seeming to have shifted into a more subtle gear as the years go by, the splash of talking cats and dogs proves just the surface of King of the Dogs, Queen of the Cats. About an aristocratic canine named Gio, the dullards of societal stability have started shaking him loose from his deep-rooted life. Involved in love triangles, sneaking around at night, rubbing shoulders with nefarious people, and otherwise not knowing what to do with his life, Gio’s answer comes in the form of a circus brought to town by an extra-terrestrial cat. Revolution in the works, a stable life for Gio and the city around him will be no more…
An ordinary man working in the agave fields, players take on the role of Juan in Guacamelee. But he oh so quickly finds himself in the position of rescuing the beautiful president’s daughter from the evil Calaca, a demon who has emerged just before the Day of the Dead to find a sacrifice. With the assistance of goat man (as well as chicken magic), Juan punches, headbutts, and suplexes his way through our world, into another dimension, and back again to defeat the evil Calaca and rescue the president’s daughter. Not precisely Pulitzer quality writing, but certainly fun.
If you were hoping to have an additional question answered: how did Hadrian get his head chopped off and survive? You are not the only one. Hadrian also wants to know, and his quest leads him to an answer in Demon in White. But not before two major trials. The second not possible to be described (spoilers), the first can at least be introduced. With the slaying of the Cielcin prince, Hadrian is now a legend among men, and an Emperor’s knight. His first mission as knight sends him into the deeps of space to solve the mystery why imperial ships disappear without explanation in a certain quadrant. Hadrian unravels the mystery, but not before encountering a threat unlike the human world has ever seen, and one that has implications on the entire Empire itself.
Using a classic fairy tale motif, The Enchanted Tower sees a hero and a sorcerer racing toward a hidden key, trying to rescue or capture, respectively, a princess locked in a tower. The hero closes their eyes while the sorcerer hides the key in one of the many holes. Players then take turns rolling unique dice to move around the board and find the key. As the sorcerer knows where the key is, the hero is given a head start for searching. The player who finds the key first, however, does not automatically win. There are six keyholes in the tower that players must test to find the one that frees the princess, meaning it’s likely more races—and more suspense—await.
As hinted in the title, Out of Body is about out-of-body experiences, particularly one had by a small town librarian who begins to experience the phenomenon after being first-hand witness to a tragedy. His experiences arising at night after falling asleep, he goes out into the night world, there to learn who and what else is “alive” there. More than he ever expected, his out of body experiences lead him into the middle of a situation he would have far rather slept on.
Longer Review: Over the years, and undoubtedly over the years to come, there have been and will be video games trying to capture some essence of ‘samurai’. From Ninja Gaiden to Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, the world has a fascination with these Japanese knights, their code of honor, and the deadly katana combat they are famous for. And there has been, and will likely be controversy over how well or poorly these games capture that essence. With Sucker Punch’s 2020 Ghost of Tsushima, however, it’s difficult to see where any controversy might arise (save the ‘cultural appropriation’ crowd, natch).
Seeming to take all the lessons learned from this generation’s action-rpgs and blending them into a synergistic vision of single-player campaign glory, Ghost of Tsushima pushes all the right samurai buttons (har har). Fluid combat, engaging world-building, a story of honor and glory, evolving upgrade paths, blessedly short loading times, a staggeringly beautiful setting—finding holes in the game is very difficult. All the good parts of other games borrowed and implemented in a historically realistic setting, Ghost of Tsushima may be the last great game of the current generation of consoles.
Utopia Avenue is yet another departure for David Mitchell. Each of his prior novels scattered across the dartboard of setting and theme, Utopia Avenue finds itself in the counter-culture revolution of 1960s England. What we’ve come to call classic rock starting to take center stage, the book tells of a fictional band—a drummer, bassist, guitarist, and organist—who come together under the numinous auspices of Canadian manager Leon—to make it big. This arc of story, from poverty to success and beyond is everything a reader would expect from such a story. But it is likewise more.
A combination of Choose Your Own Adventure and tactical card-playing, Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a game that sees one to two players (up to four if you buy an additional copy) working their way through scenarios, searching for clues, accomplishing objectives, and trying to stay alive fighting monsters. The scenarios strung together to form an overarching campaign, players steadily add powers and abilities to their investigators as they move forward, facing bigger and more evil challenges while solving the larger mystery. RPG-ish, there is a chance players take on permanent trauma and injuries as a consequence of various decisions and story inflection points, making for a tense, seat-of-your-pants adventure through the layers of story. It turns out Lovecraft in the driver’s seat is a different experience than laying on the sofa with a glass of wine.
As you, my loyal thimbleful of readers have noticed the past few years, the blog has branched out into video games. While some may balk at an interactive, digital medium invading the space of what was primarily a blog reviewing the analog, for me it represented two things: a natural evolution reflecting my life (i.e. a person can only review a hundred or so books per year without looking for something else invigorating), but also a chance to write about another form of narrative that, while most often simpler in form compared to fiction, offers a participatory experience that books simply can’t. (It’s no surprise that the games I prefer are largely those which utilize a player’s agency in a story for thematic purposes.) And besides, since the beginning of the blog I’ve posted randomly my family’s various world travels (what some might argue is also a form of story—ha!). <drumroll> As of today, there is another contemporary form of narrative that has pushed for a place on this blog.
I’ve always played board games. But as a child, I never had a collection, a handful at best, and most of the games were common for the era—Monopoly, chess, Life, checkers, Jenga, Boggle, Mouse Trap, Sorry, Scrabble, etc. But I also had a couple of games that sparked a little extra enjoyment, games that brought to the table something a little less ordinary, namely Fireball Island and Scotland Yard. In Life and Monopoly, the “narratives” are dictated by wheel spins and die rolls. The number of outcomes to Life can’t hold a candle to the seemingly infinite paths the title—reality—holds for us. But in Fireball Island and Scotland Yard, a different “story” plays out on the board with each game. “Remember when your detective was standing here? I was just one space away, and I thought for sure you were going to catch me!” you might say after the game. Or, “If you hadn’t played that Fireball card here, she wouldn’t have been able to steal the jewel. That’s what allowed me to sneak up behind her and get to the docks ahead of you!”
Before I get into the list, a few honorable mentions. I love the Durdane series. It's perhaps the closest Vance came to writing a serial, 1920's pulp sf adventure, but in his vivid style. Spanning multiple planets and featuring space ship fights, blasters, aliens, etc., it's fast-paced fun that really keeps the pages turning. I have a soft spot in my heart for the duology Lurulu/Ports of Call. Written when Vance was in his eighties and nineties (his last published fiction, in fact), the books have less action than a lot of his other works but star a young man who longs to see the universe, and eventually does in a series of fun yet relatable planets and cultures. Paralleling Vance's own life traveling as a newlywed, father, and writer, I can't help but see Vance in the duology, reflecting back in old age with a glint in his eye, proud to have seen the world we live on and express that experience as only he can in sf adventure. And finally Wyst: Alastor 1716. The best of the three Alastor novels, in Wyst Vance takes the piss out of Bohemian socialism, interestingly through the experience of an off-world artist. Vance's sharp eye to human nature the guiding light, indeed, the communist collective has some dark spots to address but under Vance's hand are addressed in a humorous, almost satirical way. And there are more books I greatly enjoy, Emphyrio, Maske: Thaery, The Dying Earth, and others; Vance would not be Vance if he didn't have a lengthy list of highly readable fiction. But on to the top 10.
The Lesser Devil returns the reader to the setting of Empire of Silence, the place where Hadrian Marlowe was born, raised, and ultimately escaped. Set fifty-odd years after said escape, the story tells of Hadrian’s brother Crispin and a mission his father sends him on to a remote place on their planet. To say more of what transpires in the mission would spoil the story (matter go sideways very quick). Suffice to say, the authoritarian actions of Hadrian and Crispin’s father has not been to everyone in his empire’s liking, an overdue case of revenge on the books.
My joy in Tales of the Dying Earth was not a hit off the bat, however. I struggled with the opening stories—the stories taken from Vance's collection The Dying Earth. While highly readable, they didn't have that singular, unique voice that I would discover in the Cugel novels, and in essence define what Vance is as a writer to me. Dare I say it (will Vance's fans kill me?), the Dying Earth stories hovered somewhere just above normal, average. But will they feel that way the second time round—ten years and hundreds upon hundreds of science fiction and fantasy stories from all points later?