The Dying Earth, Jack Vance
The Dying Earth, Jack Vance
4 Rating(s)
List: $35.99 | Sale: $25.20
Club: $17.99

The Dying Earth

Author: Jack Vance

Narrator: Arthur Morey

Unabridged: 6 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 02/15/2010

Categories: Fiction, Fantasy


Synopsis

The stories included in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of wisdom and beauty, lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells. We meet the melancholy deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. Each being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are dangerous. All are at home in Vance’s lyrically described fantastic landscapes like Embelyon where, “The sky [was] a mesh of vast ripples and cross-ripples and these refracted a thousand shafts of colored light, rays which in mid-air wove wondrous laces, rainbow nets, in all the jewel hues....” The dying Earth itself is otherworldly: “A dark blue sky, an ancient sun.... Nothing of Earth was raw or harsh—the ground, the trees, the rock ledge protruding from the meadow; all these had been worked upon, smoothed, aged, mellowed. The light from the sun, though dim, was rich and invested every object of the land...with a sense of lore and ancient recollection.” Welcome.“The Dying Earth and its sequels comprise one of the most powerful fantasy/science-fiction concepts in the history of the genre. They are packed with adventure but also with ideas, and the vision of uncounted human civilizations stacked one atop another like layers in a phyllo pastry thrills even as it induces a sense of awe [at]...the fragility and transience of all things, the nobility of humanity’s struggle against the certainty of an entropic resolution.” —Dean Koontz, author of the Odd Thomas novels“He gives you glimpses of entire worlds with just perfectly turned language. If he’d been born south of the border, he’d be up for a Nobel Prize.” —Dan Simmons author of The Hyperion Cantos

About Jack Vance

Jack Vance is one of the greats of science fiction. He has been writing for more than 60 years, and in 1997 was honored as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. He is the author of dozens of science fiction and fantasy novels, including the World Fantasy Award winning Lyonnesse series, and the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning The Last Castle. He lives in Oakland, California.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on February 06, 2021

I did not like this book much the first time I read it, but after reading it a second time while visualizing its characters as puppets, I found I liked it much more. This book—particularly the first three stories—irritated me. I found its wizards to be contemptible creatures, morally inferior product......more

Goodreads review by J.G. Keely on October 17, 2014

Strange to think that this was the series that inspired Martin and Wolfe in their fantasy endeavors. Going from their gritty, mirthless rehashes of standard fantasy badassery to Vance's wild, ironic, flowery style was jarring--going directly from Anderson's grim, tragic Broken Sword to this was tona......more

Goodreads review by Vit on June 09, 2018

To read The Dying Earth by Jack Vance is like to find oneself inside the fabulous canvas painted by some artist exiled to the end of the fatigued time… Or in the garden of paranoia… Deep in thought, Mazirian the Magician walked his garden. Trees fruited with many intoxications overhung his path, and......more

Goodreads review by Bradley on May 03, 2016

1950, a time of transition from swashbuckling square-jawed heroes with huge brains and spaceships falling headlong into a deep future world where everyone is surrounded by death, old tech indistinguishable from magic, and to make things worse, the sun is dying. This is the last hurrah of Earth and i......more

Goodreads review by Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) on September 08, 2024

4.0 Stars This is an interesting sci fantasy novel that blends the two genres together in a delightful way. Given the premise, I couldn't help but compare this series to the Book of the New Sun. The one likely took inspiration from the other but each is also very much its own. The Dying Earth was a sh......more