The Star King (Demon Princes, #1)

Jack Vance · ★★★★

The "Oxen in the Sun" section of Ulysses really threw me off any momentum I may have been gaining this summer and I had to take a step back from that tome just for my own sense of joy. So I turned to an option that I thought might be fluffy but not inane. Fortunately, I was spot on! I've never read Jack Vance before so this was my introduction to the writer. He has a prose style that lies somewhere between the hard boiled chop that James Ellroy likes to emulate and something more patient and reflective - though that may simply be in contrast with our sped up era. Vance constructed this novel, the first in a series of 5 called the Demon Princes, along a charmingly straightforward progression: two men meet in a rough tavern at the end of the universe and from there one secret after another is revealed while each of the characters pursue their objective. That's as broadly as I can summarize without spoilers, which I would protect if you were thinking of starting this series, because the plot twists make up a lot of this book's momentum. Plot isn't everything, however, and though this entire story is told in something like 160 pages, there is plenty of room given over to the sublime. The themes of the story implicate the nature of our place in the universe, the underlying naturalism of the universe and how that needs to be recognized and protected. There is also a darker notion: a recreated original sin that found curious but not inappropriate given the context of a book published in 1964. It appears the 5 books in this series are really just one long tale only separated perhaps because of the publishing constraints or (readerly appetites) of the time. I enjoyed this a lot so I'll probably finish off the 4 remaining novels before I get around to returning to Joyce (my own heroic journey!).