Jack Vance - Eyes of the Overworld, review

20180406 -
The Eyes of the Overworld -- audiobook

I finished this marvelous Jack Vance masterpiece today. I have been doing chores, building things, running around lately, so I'm continuously in need of audiobooks. I burned through this one.

It is the tale of Cugel the Clever as he wrongs a powerful wizard. He gets caught trying to steal something and for that, the wizard sends him on an errand to the northlands, which are one stranger occurrence after another. You get the feeling that Vance's imagination knows no bounds. It becomes thrilling because of the sense that not only can anything happen, but that you know that no matter what it is, it's going to be great.

The real nectar is the writing itself. Vance has graduated to a higher plateau of writers voice with this one. He writes in a particular kind of structured prose that is very careful, clear and descriptive and often wielding advanced words. Many times the wordings are works of joy in and of themselves because over and over again he manages to describe something so clearly that you are sure that it is the most succinct you have ever heard such a thing described.

Next for me was the revelation that this book is really about personal ego in confrontation with the world, as it is full of other lifeforms, all different, but all made up of like parts in that they are also instances of self-serving ego running around. What you get as the result is endless plot because Cugel is always trying to screw over the denizens of the world. While the many inhabitants he runs across are almost always trying to screw him over as well. Many times Cugel is deceived and steps into one of their traps or job offers only to find himself constrained or bested in some way. It all feels so organic and natural in the way it plays out. The inhabitants he writes about are creations of high-fantasy and bizarre genetic mutations. Despite this, the writing feels more like our world than the many "normal" books that adhere to the trappings and rules of reality. Vance bests them all.

10/10