The Star King

In his long career, Jack Vance wrote fantasy, science fiction, and mysteries. In The Star King, he combines all three genres with a touch of tongue-in-cheek humor. His hero, Gersen, is a quiet observer and a relentless tracker. His villain is an over-the-top pass-for-human alien, Malagate the Woe, who would be right at home on Barsoom. Gersen’s quest to retrieve his stolen spaceship takes him across the galaxy from one exotic planet to another.

Vance’s style has a stately precision that never talks down to the reader, as in this description of a man Gersen meets in a bar: “He might be precisely as he represented himself, a locater in some sort of trouble at Brinktown. Or he might be otherwise: a situation entailing a set of show more hair-raising corollaries.” Vance never lets us take the conventions of his genre too seriously. Here, for example, is his first-chapter epigraph:

"What a paradox, what a fearful reproach, when the distinction of a few hundred miles—nay, as many feet or even inches!—can transform heinous crime to simple unqualified circumstance!"
…Hm.
Balder Bashin, in the Ecclesiarchic Nunciamento of Year 1000 at Foresse, on the planet Krokinole.

P. G. Wodehouse couldn’t have said it better. show less

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

When he was a child, Kirth Gersen's village was raided and massacred by the five Demon Princes. He and his grandfather escaped and, at his grandfather's encouragement, Kirth has spent his life training and preparing for revenge. Now it's time...

Jack Vance's DEMON PRINCES saga consists of five short science fiction novels which each tell the tale of how Kirth Gersen tracks down and deals with one of the evil men who killed his family. In the first installment, The Star King, Kirth is looking for Attel Malagate, aka Malagate the Woe, who may be masquerading as a university academic. Along the way, Kirth must get past Malagate's henchmen, including the memorable Hildemar Dasce, also known as Beauty show more Dasce or Fancy Dasce:

Into the hall stepped the strangest human being of Gersen's experience.

"And there," said Teehalt with a sick titter, "you see Beauty Dasce."

Dasce was about six feet tall. His torso was a tube, the same gauge from knee to shoulder. His arms were thin and long, terminating in great bony wrists, enormous hands. His head was also tall and round, with a ruff of red hair, and a chin seeming almost to rest on the clavicle. Dasce had stained his neck and face bright red, excepting only his cheeks, which were balls of bright chalk-blue, like a pair of mildewed oranges. At some stage of his career his nose had been cleft into a pair of cartilaginous prongs, and his eyelids had been cut away; to moisten his corneas he wore two nozzles connected to a tank of fluid which every few seconds discharged a film of mist into his eyes. There was also a pair of shutters, now raised, which could be lowered to cover his eyes from the light, and which were painted to represent staring white and blue eyes similar to Dasce's own.

Yikes!

Kirth Gersen is the type of hero who was popular back in the 1960s when this series was written: a single unattached worldly man who's clever and brave, but only slightly more clever and brave than his enemies — a James-Bond-type hero. His enemies are James-Bondish, too (Beauty Dasce reminds me of Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker). In fact, these are the kind of books that would make great movies because they're short, the plot is tight, fast, and action-packed and there's plenty of violence, but it's not gory. There's even a bit of romance and mystery.

But what sets these stories above most novels and movies of this type is Jack Vance's succinct, perfect prose and the scope of his active imagination. In his science fiction novels, he's got an entire fictional universe to work with and he makes the most of it, offering us fascinating and ever-changing vistas, races, and cultures. show less

In Star King Vance begins each chapter with quotes from various documents, speeches, etc. from the history of the Oikumene and the Rigel Concourse, some more obviously connected to the chapter than others. The actual story begins with Kirth Gersen's arrival at Smade's Planet and his meeting with Lugo Teehalt. From this meeting Gersen picks up a clue to the real identity of a notorious criminal named Attel Malagate that Gersen has sworn to destroy. And the action begins.

Although I'm sure that I read some of Vance's books years ago, I have no memory of ever reading this one. I must have acquired it at a time when my reading switched to (mostly) other genres for a while. It was pretty good for a sixties space opera type SF story. I think show more one of the things I liked, aside from the adventure, was the way Gersen carefully followed the clues and plotted his next move thereby (mostly) staying ahead of the "bad guys". show less

The Star King (also published as Star King, but The Star King is Vance's preferred title) was originally published in two parts in the December 1963 and February 1964 issues of Galaxy magazine. It won the 1963 Hugo award and is the first of the five-volume Demon Princes series.

Please note that spoilers for the book's plot follow.

As is characteristic of all the Demon Princes books, each chapter of The Star King begins with an interesting epigraph drawn from various sources within the setting (books, speeches, court transcripts, etc.), most of which offer some insight relevant to the unusual cultural practices, characters, or locales mentioned in the chapter at hand. (I have to admit that the significance or relevance of a few slipped show more over my head and were just a little bizarre.)

The setting for all the Demon Princes books is the Oikumene, a more or less standard kind of space opera setting that Vance later came to call the Gaean Reach (which also appears in the three Alastor books, the Cadwal Chronicles, Emphyrio, Night Lamp, Ports of Call, Lurulu, and possibly The Gray Prince), in the year (approximately) 3500 AD. Our protagonist is a young man named Kirth Gersen. Gersen and his grandfather are the sole survivors of the "Mount Pleasant Massacrre" in which their small colony was destroyed by a temporary alliance of five master criminals, the so-called "Demon Princes," who killed or enslaved everyone but the two Gersens. Kirth's grandfather takes him to Old Earth and other places around the Oikumene training him in all the skills he may need to seek out and destroy the five Demon Princes in turn. By the start of The Star King, Gersen's lifetime of training is complete and he has begun to track the first of the Demon Princes, one Attel Malagate. Unlike the other four, this Demon Prince is a nonhuman, a member of an enigmatic species known as the Star Kings, who can craft careful disguises to appear as a human.

At the start of the novel, Gersen finds himself in the Beyond, a lawless area outside civilized space where he encounters a man who has discovered an unusual, pristine wilderness world. The man refuses to surrender its location to Malagate and his henchmen, and Gersen ends up with the coordinates, though he lacks the encryption key to unlock them. Gersen begins backtracking Malagate's location, managing to evade the Star King's assassins, finally narrowing his search of Malagate to three possible candidates in a university department. (I know several university officials I suspect may be renegade Star Kings, so I understand Kirth Gerson's suspicions.)

He convinces the three to accompany him on a journey to find the utopian world, though he doesn't know which of them is the Star King. Gersen is an honorable fellow and along the way must also undertake a side mission to rescue a university receptionist he had gone on a first date with, the delightful Pallis Atwrode, who has been kidnapped and abused by one of Malagate's lieutenants. He succeeds, but I'm not sure the woman will ever be the same after her misadventure. In the end, Gersen manages to emerge victorious due to his own cleverness and planning. One down and four to go.

Kirth Gersen is an extremely clever, competent adversary to these fiends, and he has a one-track mind. Interestingly, as Gersen explores the planet Alphanor, meeting various inhabitants, we see him wistfully desire a "normal" life, rather than his path of vengeance. Ultimately Gersen lets nothing deter him from his vengeance and he puts aside these feelings, but it is nice to see these natural, very human feelings appear in a committed avenger like Kirth Gersen. Plus, Gersen is an intensely good, chivalric individual, who temporarily delays his quest and risks his own life to rescue a woman who he hardly knew, simply because she was threatened because of her brief association with him.

This is a short, entirely straightforward tale, though it is entertainingly told, and is archetypically Vance, though it is not by any means his best or most complex work. It would serve as a decent introduction to Vance, though I'm not sure that there aren't better first Vances for the novice reader. I give The Star King 4 out of 5 stars.

Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers show less

More than anything, its Vance's writing that keeps me captivated. The soft flowing nature of his prose takes the reader into a fantasy SF world, rich with charm and adventurous plots. There are few writers like Vance. However, I suppose he's not for everyone. If your looking for Hard SF, I don't think you'll be satisfied. Still, Vance is classic SF. A good read for anyone who loves the classics.

This is a very well crafted mystery/suspense in space novel. The Star Kings are a quintet of bad guys who thrive on competition, and have not the slighted scruple about killing or enslaving humans to help them gain power. As a boy our protagist Gerson saw his family slaughtered by a group of Star Kings who wanted to make a point, and has spent his entire life training to deliver revenge and searching for the culprits.

In this book Gerson runs across the trail of one of the bad guys, and sets out to determine the star king's hidden identity and deliver his revenge. On the way he muses about what he has missed in his life, and falls for an innocent young woman (who he subsequently has to rescue from the clutches of the star king's show more sadistic henchman). The characterisation is effective, if not particularly deep, and the plot moves along quickly. We visit several interesting and varied worlds. If you are looking for an old fashioned, scifi adventure book by all means give this one a try. show less

Jack Vance is certainly a classic sf author, and has written a couple of classic sf novels. But Star King is not one of them. However, Vance has always been a singular voice in sf, and I've always liked his books. So sticking one of his titles on the list for my 2009 Reading Challenge was a no-brainer. And I decided to choose one I'd not read for many years - for a couple of decades, even.

Star King is the first book of the Demon Princes quintet. The series' story follows Kirth Gersen as he wreaks his revenge on five interstellar criminals who were responsible for enslaving his town when he was a child. Each novel details his revenge on one of the criminals. The first criminal is Attel Malagate the Woe, a member of an alien race known as show more Star Kings.

Read the rest of the review at: http://justhastobeplausible.blogspot.com/2009/03/reading-challenge-3-star-king-j... show less