The Jack Vance Treasury

Stop looking at ominibuses of "The Dying Earth" if you're looking for a representative selection of choice Vance work, this is the pick. Both his Hugo award winning novels "The Dragon Masters" and "The Last Castle" are included here - short expert novels of uncanny narrative precision, deft character creation, and striking tableau.
Fear not though, -there are excerpted stories from "The Dying Earth" included, and they are better showcased in this collection -so you will get a nice big taste of that. My personal non-favorite Vance creation Cugel, is here, in thankfully digestable bite size pieces that keep him from becoming as irritating and tedious as he is wont to be.
I like almost all the non-Cugel short stories a great deal, with the possible exception of the unpleasant but thankfully short atmosphere piece "The Mitr".
"The Miracle Workers, the Magnus Ridolph story- "The Kokod Warriors" and "The Moon Moth" all wonderful examples of the Vance approach to SFF yarn spinning. I found them delightful.
Get it! Read it! Great stuff! ( )

The majority of these stories are the sword & sorcery type and, in spite of the fact that the only magazine I subscribe to is Fantasy & Science Fiction, S&S stories are not my cup of tea. I have no desire to be swept up in the details of a story that seems to exist purely for the details rather than the story. So I approach any such story with trepidation. Let me quickly add that such a harsh assessment is not true of these stories. (Well, not most of them. There are a few…) Jack Vance did not reach the heights he has by being a hackneyed purveyor of retread Dungeons and Dragons stories. But, when the collection is composed primarily of these, and you have a natural aversion to the sub-genre, it is difficult to approach the stories on their own merit. Accordingly, I got tired. There were only so many times I could slog my way into another story where I had to figure out whatever nomenclature was being used for this world – a slogging that detracted from the enjoyment of the underlying story.

And, in spite of my rant above, there are quality underlying stories. “The Dragon Masters” and “The Last Castle” are deserved award winners. And other classics reside herein also. However, there are (as can often happen in Best Of collection) some duds – stories that were an endurance test rather than a joy. That Jack Vance can write is undisputed. Whether one wants to have a steady diet of Jack Vance falls much more to the individual taste. I found enjoyment in some of these stories in the past, but reading them all together this time only resulted in a distraction from that joy. ( )

http://www.skyseastone.net/jvstin/unjvst/006435.html ( )