Fantasy Book Club discussion

Jack Vance. Author of the magical Lyonesse trilogy and the innovative The Dragon Masters novella, just to name a couple.

Anyone else a Vance fan? If so, which of his works is your favorite?

He's somewhere in my top two or three, I think. Aside from the obvious answer (Tales of the Dying Earth: The Dying Earth/The Eyes of the Overworld/Cugel's Saga/Rhialto the Marvellous), I'm also a huge fan of the SF books he was writing back in the day (The Languages of Pao, Trullion: Alastor 2262, etc.) and his short fiction -- The Moon Moth is an excellent story. I love his way with language and his well-realized but slightly quirky cultures.

I haven't read much of his mystery works (originally published as by John Holbrook Vance) but plan to rectify that sooner rather than later.

This is a great time to be a Vance fan or to discover him -- Subterranean Press has been publishing some beautiful collections of his work, and almost his entire catalog is available electronically either from the usual sources or directly from www.jackvance.com.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't link to this video of Vance playing the ukulele.

I discovered Vance looking for a George R. R. Martin book to read and came across Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honour of Jack Vance. I bought it and loved it. I didn't even know about The Dying Earth. I quickly found a cheap copy and devoured it, followed by the sequels.

I got a collection of Vance stories but had to sell it before I read it all. The Dragonmasters was pretty cool. I think Sail 25 was my favorite of what I got to read.

I only found out about Vance last year, I look forward to reading a lot more of him.

The collection I had was one of the nice Sub Press ones, The Jack Vance Treasury

As a huge Jack Vance fan, I'm thoroughly embarrassed to admit that I have actually not yet read The Dying Earth. Yeah, that's really horrible of me, but I truly do plan on remedying that soon.

Thus far, my favorite of Vance's works is the Lyonesse trilogy (Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden, The Green Pearl, and Madouc). Anyone else a fan of this particular trilogy?

Brandybuck wrote: "Thus far, my favorite of Vance's works is the Lyonesse trilogy (Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden, The Green Pearl, and Madouc). Anyone else a fan of this particular trilogy? "

I've only read it once, years ago, but I remember enjoying it. Probably needs to be added to this year's list.

(The last time I did a major Vance reread was years ago on a vacation that involved [somebody else] driving across half of the country. This was pre-Kindle days, so I just shoved every Vance paperback I owned into my backpack and burned through them as quickly as I could.)

I've only recently read the four Dying Earth stories, and it was my first encounter with Jack Vance, but he is now in my top 5 or 6 favorite authors on the strength of those stories alone. I'm eager to get my hands on some more of his stuff. My buddy keeps telling me about the Demon Princes series, and I've been thinking of picking up those ones soon. Anyone else have any feedback on them?

I think I've only read the Demon Princes books once. They're also very good, and very Vancean, but they're Vance in his space opera mode as opposed to his Dying Earth mode -- much more adventure stories.