Review of The Face by Jack Vance

While I enjoy the first three Demon Prince novels for what they are, ultimately they do not display much of the panache that made Vance so special. They are straightforward James Bond-esque adventures in revenge mode without a lot of the figurative color that makes later Vance novels memorable. Published twelve years after The Palace of Love, the fourth novel, The Face changes things up, however. The 70s arguably the time Vance discovered his singular voice, The Face has a touch and feel different than the first three novels—and for the positive.

With three princes down and two to go, in The Face we see our hero Kirth Gersen set his sights on the low brow, petty Lens Larque. In the previous books, Gerson employed various tricks to get close to his targets, and in The Face it's business tricks, including becoming a majority stakeholder in a company owned by Larque. Requiring Gersen to do a lot of legwork tracking down shares, he eventually gets close to the vile Larque. But is it close enough? And indeed, is Larque not so unlike Gersen?

The Face has what the previous three Demon Prince novels lacked: splashes of color. Rather than A to C to B to D plotting with little to bring the points to bouncy life, The Face injects Gersen's mission with the character and soul it needs to truly live in the imagination. It's difficult for the reader to turn the last page without a smile of appreciation for the planet of Dar Sai and the Darsh people who inhabit its desert terrain (as well as the ironic manner in which it is used to close out the story). The final images of the book work at two levels, complementing Vance's anthropology while bringing the plot to an atypical close (at least for most vendettas).

Out of the hundred or so bits of science fiction Vance produced, The Face is one of the most unique. Not exactly known as a character writer, The Face nevertheless features Vance getting a little—a little—deeper into his main character than usual. The theme identity, Gersen finds himself carrying out his revenge mission but suffering the doubts and lack of conviction that being closer to the end of the mission than the beginning bring about, not to mention ruminative upon his longer term prospects for a normal life—house, wife, etc. Perhaps most telling is the manner in which Gersen sympathizes with his nemesis. I will not spoil the ending here, but I will say that it puts Gersen under the grayest, and therefore the most human of lights.

In the end I find The Face to be the best of the Demon Prince novels, and overall in the ten best of Vance's oeuvre. The authorial voice that aficionados love is in effect, the settings (physical and social) are vibrant, and for once there is an undercurrent of humanity that willing readers can appreciate. The desert towns with water spraying down parasols as Gersen questions his motives is something the series has not offered to date...