Rating: 
Summary: Adventures of Magic and Treachery
Review: "Tales of the Dying Earth" is a great series of books by Jack Vance. Set in a time so distant from ours, the sun is a dull red ball in a dark sky, futuristic cities are half-buried mounds of ancient rubble, and magic is as natural as walking.These four books are generally regarded as fantasy, but it has elements of science fiction as well. The magic that characters perform is really just advanced science, but it's so sophisticated it looks like magic to us. (If a caveman could see how we live in the 21st century he would think everything we did was magic too.) The future in these books is so remote, there is a religous sect who won't walk on the ground because it would seem like desecration to the aeons of dead people in the soil. The first book in the collection, "The Dying Earth", involves a range of colourful characters. They each go on a mini-quest of some sort, facing many exotic dangers. The next two books, "The Eyes of the Overworld" and "Cugel's Saga", follow the adventures of Cugel the Clever, an amoral, likeable rogue who lives on his wits. Most of the time it's his own greed that gets him into trouble. The last book is "Rhialto the Marvellous". This series is quite an achievement. I read "The Book of the New Sun" a couple of years ago, knowing it was inspired by Jack Vance's work. I find that Vance's style of writing is easier to comprehend, it's less cryptic and less ornate. There is always something to keep the reader interested. Anyone who likes fantasy or science fiction should read these.
Rating:
Summary: An acquired taste with pleasures to spare.
Review: A collection of previously released novels, this volume is a rare opportunity to have in quick reach a set of the most ideosyncratic, enthralling fantasy stories of the Twentieth Century. Vance transports us to a future far more distant than most speculative writers would ever consider. The sun, a red, hulking giant, looms in the sky. Over billions of years, science has been transformed into magical lore and is practiced by eccentric and often dangerous wizards. This is science so advanced that for all intents and purposes it is magic. Vance's skill is in transporting you into this world and acquainting you intimately with its exotic tastes, smells, feelings, and scenery--you are pulled into the odd and exciting realm and accompany fascinating men and women on mind-boggling adventures. Vance's stories require savoring again and again. Reading them is like returning to an old friend with quick wit, an eye for detail, and an ear for a story. Don't give up on Vance if, at first, his unusual prose proves difficult or excessively ornate. Just allow yourself to continue and, eventually, he will cast his spell over you. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Landscapes...uhmm, that's about it.
Review: A couple of exquisite stories in the original bunch of "Tales" ("Mazirian the Magician" is my favourite) lose their lustre in the subsequent "novels" -- actually a poor cobbling together of loosely linked incidents -- in the other three quarters of this collection. Vance has a colourful eye; his vision of an Earth at the end of time is wistful, poignant, strange, memorable. However, when he moves his brush away from composition to the banal mechanics of narrative and character development, Vance loses interest. EYES OF THE OVERWORLD and CUGEL'S SAGA, for example, are basically the same novel lumbered with the same obnoxious hero and EXACTLY the same (slim) premise. A better buy would be a slim volume the "Tales"; the rest is just paper weight.
Rating:
Summary: the classic of classics
Review: A long-time admirer of Vance's works, I have little to add to the praise of other reviewers. His style is his single best quality: elegant, dry, amusing. The purple passages of "The Dying Earth," while beautiful and stylistically meaningful in themselves (decadent prose for a decadent Earth), begin to give way in the book's last tale to the livelier, witty picaresque that becomes Vance's hallmark in the Cugel books, in "Rhialto," and in his Lyonesse trilogy. And, not sufficiently mentioned, Vance can be funny as hell, especially in the later works. There are some interesting criticisms on this site, some with little merit. If you don't like short stories, or if the only acceptable prose is modeled on Hammett and Hemingway, then don't expect to like Vance. It helps to be an aesthete, or wish you were one. And as for the lack of continuity in the Cugel stories, (1) they were originally published in magazines, not composed as a single narrative, and (2) the picaresque is, just about by definition, one damn thing after another. Vance loves strangeness for its own sake, weird cultures, bizarre customs. He has a touch of the Enlightenment-era anthropologist about him: with so many diverse ways of living, can we say that any one is the "right" way? The picaresque plots let him do what he does best, move from village to village (or, in his SF, planet to planet) and invent something new every time. The misogyny complaint is the most accurate criticism that I see here. Vance is a conservative in many ways, in a classical sense rather than in the bible-thumping American sense. (Note the laissez-faire attitude to politics & religion in the Lyonesse books.) Men are men, women are women, and that's it. Any homosexual in his books is a degenerate villain. Cugel certainly is brutal to the women he meets in "The Eyes of the Overworld," though since he's a cutthroat and a scoundrel in any event, that's not to be wondered at. But characters like T'sais in "The Dying Earth" show the promise of a broader perspective, and for whatever reason-the 20th century rubbing off on him, perhaps-Vance has more sympathetic females in his later works, including of course Suldrun, Glyneth, and Madouc in the Lyonesse books. The case of Cugel is interesting: he kidnaps and, effectively, rapes Soldinck's comely 3 daughters in "Cugel's Saga," but when their trick on him is revealed, they don't miss the opportunity to scoff at his erotic inadequacies. As for Rhialto, he's a ladies' man, and he knows it. The rescued princess in "Fader's Waft" is treated as a free agent, albeit one who finds R. charming & accepts his advances. As for the tale of the Murthe, let's just say I found it a tad obnoxious *before* I got married, and now find it actually kind of sweet. Whether that tells something about Vance or just about me, how can I say? Vance will never be a feminist (when Glyneth has kids, she drops off the map, and so on), but I think "misogyny" is too strong.
Rating:
Summary: Misogynist? Not quite ...
Review: A long-time admirer of Vance's works, I have little to add to the praise of other reviewers. His style is his single best quality: elegant, dry, amusing. The purple passages of "The Dying Earth," while beautiful and stylistically meaningful in themselves (decadent prose for a decadent Earth), begin to give way in the book's last tale to the livelier, witty picaresque that becomes Vance's hallmark in the Cugel books, in "Rhialto," and in his Lyonesse trilogy. And, not sufficiently mentioned, Vance can be funny as hell, especially in the later works. There are some interesting criticisms on this site, some with little merit. If you don't like short stories, or if the only acceptable prose is modeled on Hammett and Hemingway, then don't expect to like Vance. It helps to be an aesthete, or wish you were one. And as for the lack of continuity in the Cugel stories, (1) they were originally published in magazines, not composed as a single narrative, and (2) the picaresque is, just about by definition, one damn thing after another. Vance loves strangeness for its own sake, weird cultures, bizarre customs. He has a touch of the Enlightenment-era anthropologist about him: with so many diverse ways of living, can we say that any one is the "right" way? The picaresque plots let him do what he does best, move from village to village (or, in his SF, planet to planet) and invent something new every time. The misogyny complaint is the most accurate criticism that I see here. Vance is a conservative in many ways, in a classical sense rather than in the bible-thumping American sense. (Note the laissez-faire attitude to politics & religion in the Lyonesse books.) Men are men, women are women, and that's it. Any homosexual in his books is a degenerate villain. Cugel certainly is brutal to the women he meets in "The Eyes of the Overworld," though since he's a cutthroat and a scoundrel in any event, that's not to be wondered at. But characters like T'sais in "The Dying Earth" show the promise of a broader perspective, and for whatever reason-the 20th century rubbing off on him, perhaps-Vance has more sympathetic females in his later works, including of course Suldrun, Glyneth, and Madouc in the Lyonesse books. The case of Cugel is interesting: he kidnaps and, effectively, rapes Soldinck's comely 3 daughters in "Cugel's Saga," but when their trick on him is revealed, they don't miss the opportunity to scoff at his erotic inadequacies. As for Rhialto, he's a ladies' man, and he knows it. The rescued princess in "Fader's Waft" is treated as a free agent, albeit one who finds R. charming & accepts his advances. As for the tale of the Murthe, let's just say I found it a tad obnoxious *before* I got married, and now find it actually kind of sweet. Whether that tells something about Vance or just about me, how can I say? Vance will never be a feminist (when Glyneth has kids, she drops off the map, and so on), but I think "misogyny" is too strong.
Rating:
Summary: Great collection
Review: All praise TOR books for reprinting this collection of Dying Earth - it will save Vance lovers the bother of searching used bookstores for these fantasy gems. As other reviewers have stated, this is actually four books in one, and each is highly entertaining. Vance is one of the most original fantasy and science fiction writers of all time, and these books are representative of his seemingly inexhaustible imagination.
Rating:
Summary: Great collection
Review: All praise TOR books for reprinting this collection of Dying Earth - it will save Vance lovers the bother of searching used bookstores for these fantasy gems. As other reviewers have stated, this is actually four books in one, and each is highly entertaining. Vance is one of the most original fantasy and science fiction writers of all time, and these books are representative of his seemingly inexhaustible imagination.
Rating:
Summary: Caveat Emptor
Review: Each of these books would merit a 5-star rating, but this particular edition earns a low score because of the shoddy copy-editing. It's a reprint of the Science Fiction Book Club hardback and faithfully reproduces the typographical errors which bespattered that edition. After seeing a major character's name spelled three different ways, the reader begins to wonder if the copy editor may have accidentally left out a few words or an occasional sentence from the original printings. Jack Vance has always been a careful stylist. Surely he and his readers deserved better treatment.
Rating:
Summary: Original
Review: Enjoyed this book. Original concepts, not the well-worn horse we've seen lately.
Rating:
Summary: Classic.
Review: Great escapist fiction. "The Dying Earth" is fascinating. The Cugel stories are fascinating as well, and have some of the funniest moments in fantasy. "Rhialto the Marvelous" isn't as good as the first three parts, but it's still entertaining. If you've never read Jack Vance, this is the place to start.
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