Night Lamp

Somewhere on a straggling road between Swift's Laputa and Iain M. Banks's Culture is a ruinous palace in which a mad author cobbles together patchwork quilts and calls them books: not so much world-building as world-jerry-building, or world-throwing-together-and-seeing-what-sticks. Imaginative, yes, and also baroque, absurd, irritating, facetious, and sometimes deliberately disgusting. I have a number of unread Vance titles on my shelves, but finishing this one was a bit of an effort, and does not inspire me to reach for another any time soon. MB 3-vi-2025

Night Lamp is one of Jack Vance's last novels, first published when he was eighty years old in 1996. It is a standalone space opera in his Gaean Reach setting, and it is mostly a story of personal vengeance. A lot of effort has been invested in sketching the civilizations and mentalities of a couple of worlds: the club-addicted hierarchical Thanet and the insular decadent Fader. The latter is a planet orbiting the star Night Lamp which gives the book its title.

There is very little attention given to technological constraints in this tale, and it is basically a space fantasy, where the only real speculative elements concern the peculiar cultures and societies of the principal planets and a few others that play key roles in the story. show more Ansible communication is implied, and interstellar ship travel clearly has no regard for relativistic limits, but no bother is made over how that is possible or what might be its other consequences.

Despite some tragic elements of the plot, Vance maintains a distanced, sardonic tone, and for a variety of reasons I think the book is best classed as a comedy. Some of the quasi-flirtatious dialogues between male protagonist Jaro Fath and his love interest Skirlet Hutsenreiter are droll as can be, and the adolescent plot arc on Thanet plays like a teen exploitation movie. I was especially amused by the courting customs of Fader proposed by Roblay of Immir (310-11). show less

I put off reading this late-life Vance novel for decades because of the ugly cover and un-engaging title. It's a perfectly solid example of Vance's strengths and weaknesses. Those strengths are his love of language, his delight in developing a variety of societies, all of whom can't understand how any other system could work, and his humor. The weaknesses are in the characterizations and lack of emotional resonance. Characters face some extremely traumatic events (and a few good ones) and do little more than expostulate wryly. The first half of Lyonesse remains my favorite Vance because it's the one time he actually makes you care about a character.

Recommended for all fans of Vance.

Why does one read Vance? Not for the impressive plots, the never-to-forget-characters, or the empire-building heroes: just the contrary. Vance is impressive by the amount of details and original ideas he is able to put into one book: the view on science of Jaro's parents, the creatures and animals on every planet he visits, the sociological organisation of societies on different planets... I wouldn't consider it a 'must read', but Vance stays Vance: interesting, fun and great to read.

Classic Vance - in a sense for the last time (after this two somewhat mediocre novels were published). Some great anecdotes in here, and a plot that goes all over the place.

Evocative, imaginative, and creative: vintage Vance: Jack Vance is now in his nineties, yet his creativity seems to be unbounded. This book will appeal to both newcomers and those who are already accustomed to Vance's unique style. The (great) story is littered with hundreds of ideas, persons, even whole worlds. Cruelty is always balanced with dry humor, and Vance manages to create believable and likeable (although sometimes quite peculiar) characters. A definite must-read.

Vancian weirdness at it's finest ~