The stories included in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of
wisdom and beauty, lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of
eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells. We meet the melancholy
deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies
and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. Each
being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are
dangerous. All are at home in Vance's lyrically described fantastic
landscapes like Embelyon where, "The sky [was] a mesh of vast ripples
and cross-ripples and these refracted a thousand shafts of colored
light, rays which in mid-air wove wondrous laces, rainbow nets, in all
the jewel hues...." The dying Earth itself is otherworldly: "A dark blue
sky, an ancient sun.... Nothing of Earth was raw or harsh--the ground,
the trees, the rock ledge protruding from the meadow; all these had been
worked upon, smoothed, aged, mellowed. The light from the sun, though
dim, was rich and invested every object of the land...with a sense of
lore and ancient recollection." Welcome.
"The Dying Earth and its sequels comprise one of the most powerful
fantasy/science-fiction concepts in the history of the genre. They are
packed with adventure but also with ideas, and the vision of uncounted
human civilizations stacked one atop another like layers in a phyllo
pastry thrills even as it induces a sense of awe [at]...the fragility
and transience of all things, the nobility of humanity's struggle
against the certainty of an entropic resolution." --Dean Koontz, author
of the Odd Thomas novels
"He gives you glimpses of entire worlds with just perfectly turned
language. If he'd been born south of the border, he'd be up for a Nobel
Prize." --Dan Simmons author of The Hyperion Cantos
