I've known for quite a while that George RR Martin thinks highly of Jack
Vance and
The Dying Earth and last year I had the opportunity to read
his anthology,
Songs of the Dying Earth, where a number of authors wrote short stories set in
The Dying Earth universe.
I
loved it. It remains, and easily so, the best anthology I've ever read.
And that only meant one thing, I had to read the original tales.
I'm
also very glad I read the anthology, even though one of the stories in
The Dying Earth was spoiled a bit by it (actually, the title alone
spoiled the story, but not bad at all). It was great to have an
understanding of some of the world, the peculiar wordings, and some of
the creatures. This usually isn't a problem, and I don't think will be
for you, it's just that audiobooks make it harder to get into something
that takes a while to explain things.
With my busy schedule
(graduated law school Saturday, studying for the bar, my wife was just
put on bed rest and we have a two-year-old, and twins in
August...hopefully), I don't always have time to read everything I would
like to, so I've become a huge supporter of audiobooks. This gives me
somewhat of a chance to make a dent in my to-be-read pile.
With
that in mind, the narrator can make or break a book sadly, but
The Dying
Earth's narrator was pretty much perfect for the job. This is a unique
place and deserves a unique voice for all its characters and the land.
The
Dying Earth is one of those magical places that doesn't exist in this
new age of gritty, realistic fantasy. The dialogue is clever and full of
vocabulary words to look up. Luckily I've read Steven Erikson, not to
mention the anthology mentioned above, for some heads up.
The
land is full of fantastic beasts and peoples and wizards and magic. The
spells are so complicated, a wizard can only keep up to five in his or
her head at a time. The story is full of riddles and extraordinary
circumstances and I may have mentioned this before...magic.
This
is the first book in
The Dying Earth series of four books, called
simply
The Dying Earth. Instead of one long narrative it's just a
collection of short stories that are loosely connected by the land of
the dying earth and the stories are titled by the character the story
follows.
As I understand it, the rest of the books in the series
are also short stories collected into one volume, but unlike this first
volume, the rest of the books each follow a certain character for the
entire book. I'll keep you updated as I continue.
Do yourself a
favor and pick up
The Dying Earth. I know gritty and real are the
buzzwords of the day, but while
The Dying Earth is nothing of the sort,
it's full of magic and whimsy and I now realize how amazing work the
authors of
Songs of the Dying Earth actually did.
4 out of 5 Stars (Loved it)
The Dying Earth ToC:
Turjan of Miir
Mazirian the Magician
T'sais
Liane the Wayfarer
Ulan Dhor
Guyal of Sfere
