The Lyonesse Trilogy front covers - various editions
A review of the "Lyonesse" trilogy, by Jack Vance
John Holbrook "Jack" Vance was born in San Francisco in 1916 and died in Oakland in 2013 at 96! He had worked in a wide variety of jobs but despite writing numerous short and long stories from the 1940s onwards was not able to earn enough to fully support his family with his chosen craft until the 1970s. He wrote mysteries, science fiction and fantasy tales which were published in magazines and pulps. His SF novels are the most numerous, comprising many short stories and various series with the popular "Planet Of Adventure" quadrilogy released in stages during the late 1960s. His fantasy catalog consists of the "Dying Earth" series of short and long stories, set in a distant future where magic rules and the "Lyonesse" trilogy, set in pre-Arthurian times in the fictional land of Lyonesse west of France and south of Ireland, published at various stages during the 1980s.
In the 70s and 80s while most authors of heroic fiction were slavishly copying Tolkien, (badly), Jack Vance was busy perfecting his fantasy masterwork: Lyonesse, in an entirely different style. While Tolkien's style was heavily influenced by the ancient Scandinavian sagas, Vance's was influenced by the chivalric legends of King Arthur, Irish folklore, European fairy stories and modern fantasy as told by masters such as Edward Plunkett, Andrew Lang, L. Frank Baum and Hans Christian Anderson. Is it better than Tolkien? Not necessarily, but it is different and original and excellent in its own right! And that is something that Tolkien's legion of imitators such as Guy Kay, Terry Brooks & George Martin cannot say, no matter how many books they sell.
I began reading Vance's works in the early 80s starting with his rollicking, old-style, SF ride: "Planet Of Adventure". An inventive and compelling tale with an admirable hero. Certainly fun to read but not great in a literary sense. I read more of his SF, such as various books in the "Demon Princes" and "Alastor Cluster" series as well as some of his earlier material such as "The Narrow Land". Creative stuff indeed but it was his magical fantasy tales that really won me over and I read and bought all the "Dying Earth" books as well as his signature work: "Lyonesse". I have read Lyonesse 3 or 4 times and imagine I will read it again at some future time. There are few books that I have read 4 times! It has to be something that really hits the spot!
Jack Vance
"Lyonesse" is a work of heroic fantasy and it is therefore in the same category as "The Lord Of The Rings" and although they are both set in a fictional land and both contain fantastic creatures, castles and magic and both feature epic battles for control of those lands, yet they are very different, both in style and tone.
Where Tolkien's elves are shining noble beings with great kingdoms similar to that of men, Vance has capricious fairies that live in a meadow in a wood. Where Tolkien's magic is used only for matters of swingeing import and limited to a handful of immortals of great power, in Vance's world it is used by fairies and wizards on a daily basis for all matters, mundane to great.
Where Tolkien's LOTR takes place over an area the size of Europe and is buttressed by references to a history extending for many thousands of years into the past and peopled with the gods themselves, Vance's Lyonesse is a little smaller than France and there is little reference to history there and nor to the gods.
Where Tolkien makes no mention of sex or even of adultery, Vance's characters exhibit the full gamut of sexual proclivities. The evil characters are not adverse to securing sexual favours or perversions by influence, money or brute force and the good characters are keen to pursue sex for its own sake, albeit of the more consensual variety.
Tolkien uses a solemn, dramatic language which gives appropriate weight to his ponderous tale whereas Vance uses a more lively, clever language, reminiscent of PG Wodehouse and Jeffery Farnol and redolent with archaic and invented words. The styles are completely different. Both are surpassingly excellent and original and the world is the better for both of them.
Where Tolkien has invented an entire mythology and history and peppered his tale with various invented languages and scripts, Vance draws on existing myths for his background and uses smatterings of existing languages to give colour to his tale. The extra layer of inventiveness gives LOTR a greater originality and weight than Lyonesse but to be fair Lyonesse would not benefit from extra weight. Its charm lies in its lightness of touch and witty badinage.
It is not necessary to compare Lyonesse with Lord Of The Rings, nor is it fair. They are vastly different in style, tone and substance; one would be comparing apples with oranges. I only put this section in to demonstrate that Vance is not producing a Tolkien derivative, unlike so many other Fantasy writers. In fact, there are so many Tolkien derivatives out there that almost the ENTIRE modern fantasy genre was basically created by them.
One of the joys to be found in reading this work are in the names of people and places. They ring true even when they have simply been made up. For example "Faude Carfilhiot" sounds like a French aristocrat even though "Carfilhiot" doesn't appear to be a name in the real world. The same goes for Sartzanek, Coddefut, Snodbeth etc who for some reason just sound like the names of sorcerers.
However, many of the names are either actual names from various languages or slight modifications of actual names. Credit to Mr Vance for using obscure words from Irish, Welsh, English, French, Spanish and Latin for his proper nouns. These are the nations that surround Lyonesse and that have supplied its people. It is entirely appropriate therefore that its proper nouns should come from those lands.
One can well imagine the fun that Vance must have had in creating these names from existing words, changing a syllable here, adding a word there, giving his tale the linguistic grounding that creates believability. This is similar to the process that Tolkien went through, although in his case most of his foundation languages were completely made up.
I spent a few hours on the net chasing up the proper names listed below. I used various search engines and websites and Google translate. These sources are not infallible so there may be some errors below that are not of my making. In any event the results are interesting. If Vance had had the resources of Google Translate when he was writing this work he may have chosen different names...
One of the distinctive elements of Jack Vance's style is his attention to accompanying elements not pertaining to the plot. His descriptions are marvelous in their style and variety. They are pithy, succinct and often feature entertaining sidelights. Without seeking to limit the scope of the man there are 4 elements in which he particularly excels and they are food, objects, clothing & colours, (often the latter 2 go together).
No one eats in the tale without a comprehensive description of the food. (Note that Vance keep his foods historically accurate. There is no mention of new-world foods such as potatoes, tomatoes, chillies or sugar.) Some examples:
The portly woman brought their supper: quail, pigeons and partridge on slabs of bread soaked in the grease of the frying; cuts of roasted lamb which exhaled a fragrance of garlic and rosemary, in the Galician style, with a salad of cress and young greens: a meal far better than any they had expected.
Entering, the travellers found the table laid as usual with a bounty of excellent comestibles: a roast of beef with suet pudding; fowl fresh from the spit and fish still sizzling from the pan; a ragoût of hare and another of pigeons; a great dish of mussels cooked with butter, garlic and herbs; a salad of cress; butter and bread, salt fish, pickled cucumbers, cheeses of three sorts, milk, wine, honey; fruit tarts, wild strawberries in clotted cream; and much else. The three refreshed themselves in basins of scented water, then dined to repletion.
The girls declared themselves willing to prepare a bountiful feast, of ham and sausages, candied currants, partridge pie, fine bread and butter and gallons of Arbogast’s best wine.
After a supper of leeks, preserved goose, white bread and butter and a rich plum-duff with wine sauce, the children gathered around the fireplace to crack nuts and sip cordials.
Clearly Jack Vance enjoys objects for their own sake and delights in providing a profusion of such in his text. In particular he revels in things which are beautiful, functional, unusual or bizarre.
Casmir considered himself a patron of the magical arts. In a secret chamber he kept a number of curios and magical adjuncts, including a book of incantations, indited in illegible script, but which glowed dimly in the dark. When Casmir ran his finger over the runes a sensation peculiar to each incantation suffused his mind. He could tolerate one such contact; twice caused him to sweat; thrice he dared not lest he lose control of himself. A griffin’s claw reposed in an onyx case. A gallstone cast by the ogre Heulamides gave off a peculiar stench. A small yellow skak sat in a bottle, resignedly awaiting his eventual release.
The rooms were seldom square and overlooked Lally Meadow through bay windows of many sizes and shapes. The steep roof, in addition to six chimneys, disposed itself in innumerable dormers, gables, ridges; and the highest verge supported a black iron weathercock, which served in double stead as a ghost-chaser.
At Tawn Timble Aillas traded a golden brooch set with garnets for a strong roan gelding, furnished with bridle, saddle and saddle-bags. At an armourer’s shop he bought a sword of decent quality, a dagger in the heavy-bladed Lyonesse style, an old bow, brittle and cantankerous but serviceable, so Aillas estimated, if oiled and drawn with a sensitive touch, along with twelve arrows and a quiver. At a haberdashery he bought a black cloak, a black forester’s cap. The town cobbler fitted him with comfortable black boots. Astride his horse he once more felt himself a gentleman.
Vance became legally blind in the 1980s, whether this sharpened his memory for clothing and colour and his desire to manifest it in his books I cannot say but certainly his descriptions of such things are far more prevalent in his later works, such as Lyonesse.
The under-chamberlain retired, to return with a tall young man of spare physique, wearing a smock and trousers of good cloth, low boots and a dark green cap which he doffed to reveal thick dust-colored hair, cut at ear-level after the fashion of the day.
Two bare-chested black Moorish boys, wearing turbans of purple silk, red pantaloons and sandals with spiral toes, helped him with his bath, then dressed him in silk small-clothes and a tawny-buff robe decorated with black rosettes.
In the morning he dressed in the costume of a wandering musician: a green brimless cap pointed at the front with a panache of owl’s feathers, tight trousers of green twill, a blue tunic and a nut-brown cape.
On the green lawn and against the sunny blue of the sky the colours of their costumes made a gorgeous display. There were blues both light and dark, of lapis and of turquoise; purple, magenta and green; tawny orange, tan, buff and fusk; mustard ochre, the yellow of daffodil, rose pink, scarlet and pomegranate red. There were shirts and pleated bargoons of fine white silk, or Egyptian lawn; the hats were brave with many brims, sweeps, tiers, and plumes. Lady Desdea wore a relatively sedate gown of heather gray embroidered with red and black flowerets.
There are other writers who pepper their works with visual detail but do they exhibit Vance's eloquent, concise, quirky and entertaining fruits? As a general rule I think not! And we can all be grateful to Uncle Jack if ever a movie should be made of this meisterwerk, because much of the visual design including people's faces, physique and clothing has already been supplied by the master himself.
It is not Jack Vance's unique literary style alone that marks Lyonesse as a work of genius, his attention to plot, personality, variety and timing are also notable and first rate, nevertheless it is his wonderful command of language that sticks foremost in the brain and compels admiration. It is this trademark way with words that give his later works their essential charm and elevate them high above the common ruck.
Vance's sentences are short but pithy, his adjectives likewise. This gives his sentences a sharp focus that one loses with more verbose language. In turn this effects a tight connection between the reader and the story, obliges attention and aids one's immersion into an imaginary world.
Also apparent is the frequent use of contrast, jumping from one perspective to another to achieve the purposes of humour or irony.
"This use of the knife," stated Tauncy, "is neither courteous nor knightly. It is, rather, the desperado’s resource, a ploy of the man who must kill to survive the evening. The thrown knife suffices to a range of ten yards; beyond, the arrow excels. But in cramped conditions, a battery of knives is a most comfortable companion
Fairies constructed viols, guitars and grass-pipes of fine quality, but their music at best was a plaintive undisciplined sweetness, like the sound of distant wind-chimes. At worst they made a clangour of unrelated stridencies, which they could not distinguish from their best. Withal, they were the vainest of the vain. Fairy musicians, discovering that a human passerby had chanced to hear them, invariably inquired how he had enjoyed the music, and woe betide the graceless churl who spoke his mind, for then he was set to dancing for a period comprising a week, a day, an hour, a minute and a second, without pause.
King Granice performed a cryptic gesture. "Ultimately, if we hold him off long enough, he must make peace with us, at our terms. Meanwhile, he struggles and squirms, and we try to read his mind. We puzzle over the despatches of our spies; we look at the world as it must appear from the parapets of Haidion.
At last, bored with boasting of his triumph over the insects, Grofinet developed a new caprice. He spent several days contriving wings of withe and yellow silk, which he strapped to his lank torso. Looking from his window Shimrod watched him running across Lally Meadow, flapping his wings and bounding into the air, hoping to fly like a bird. Shimrod was tempted to lift Grofinet by magic and flit him aloft. He controlled the whimsy lest Grofinet become dangerously elated and bring himself to harm. Later in the afternoon Grofinet attempted a great bound and fell into Lally Water. The fairies of Tuddifot Shee spent themselves in immoderate glee, rolling and tumbling, kicking their legs into the air. Grofinet threw aside the wings in disgust, and limped back to Trilda.
Murgen said: "The affair exudes the odor of Tamurello. If he defeats you he weakens me. Then, since he uses Melancthe, his agency cannot be proved. He toyed with the witch Desmëi, then tired of her. For revenge she contrived two creatures of ideal beauty: Melancthe and Faude Carfilhiot. She intended that Melancthe, aloof and unattainable, should madden Tamurello. Alas for Desmëi! Tamurello preferred Faude Carfilhiot who is far from aloof; together they range the near and far shores of unnatural junction."
Chief among the features of the language of Jack Vance is his amazing vocabulary. It is vast and frequently features archaic words and usages, but never inappropriately and not merely for the sake of demonstrating his cleverness, (as James Joyce was wont to do). These ancient forms create the charm that is Jack Vance. Pity the mal-educated who dips into Lyonesse, he or she must perforce keep a good dictionary at their elbow, for it will be required at every paragraph! For the cultured however, Lyonesse provides a unique treat, a chance to hear the full range of the English language from the middle ages to the present without ye olde spelling.
King Casmir brought the full impact of his round-eyed blue gaze to bear on Suldrun. "This is niminy-piminy petulance; I will not hear of it. Carfilhiot is a noble and handsome man! Your qualms are over-nice.
Casmir frowned down at Madouc. "Where did you learn this trick?" Madouc said bravely: "Sire, best for everyone's comfort if we regard the matter as my personal secret." Casmir looked down in astonishment. "Impudence again? Condescension from a foxen fluff of a girl! Ermelgart, bring me the whisk." Madouc tried to dodge and dart through the doorway, but King Casmir seized her and bent her over his leg. When she tried to hiss, he clapped his hand to her mouth, then thrust a kerchief between her teeth. Taking the whisk from Ermelgart, he struck six majestic strokes, so that the withes whistled through the air.
This must, therefore, for the nonce, be my last communication.
“It is a chance we must take,” said King Throbius. He stepped forward, fluttered his fingers over Madouc’s head, muttered a cantrap of nineteen syllables, touched her chin, then stood back. “The glamour is cast. To work its effect, pull at your left ear with the fingers of your right hand. To suspend the glamour, pull at your right ear with the fingers of your left hand.”
Clearly Jack Vance kept a thesaurus on hand and a few good dictionaries brimming with eccentric old words and idioms but sometimes these tools failed him and he was thrown back onto his own resource and forced to invent words! I have invented a number of words myself as required by my poetry and I appreciate it and enjoy it when an author essays this craft, provided it is done well.
No one invents words better than Vance! His grasp of the minutiae of etymology gives his creations the verisimilitude required to convince even the most discerning. Such invention is de rigueur for a fantasy writer in the area of proper nouns where his creations are impeccable (as previously detailed). However it is another kettle of fish entirely when the author ventures into the territory of the common noun. In nearly every case of invention I have had to check my dictionaries to confirm his authorship as his words sounded exactly right! I provide a selection of his innovations below:
"You would be as wrong as an umpdoodle’s trivet."
"Allow me to explain a few aspects of our beloved land. As a basis you must understand that we subscribe to three competing religions: the Doctrine of Arcoid Clincture; the Shrouded Macrolith, which I personally consider a fallacy; and the noble Derelictionary Tocsin. These differ in significant detail."
On the great table he found a silver penny, a dagger and a small six-stringed cadensis of unusual shape which, almost of its own accord, produced lively tunes.
"Come back, you raddle-topped little itling!"
At last reassured, he brought out his fiddle, extended the bow to its almost excessive length, tuned to a call of "Twiddle-dee-doodle-di-diddle-dee-dee!" then played a rousing selection of ear-tickling tunes: tantivets and merrydowns, fine bucking jigs and cracking quicksteps, rollicks, lilts and fare-thee-wells.
Murgen spoke: "Take the pair to the deepest pits of Myrdal, and seek out the hottest fires. There destroy them utterly, so that not even their last regrets linger in the flux. I will wait to learn of this final disposition." "You must be patient!" said the efferent. "A deed worth doing is worth doing well! I shall be at least ten of your seconds, with another two seconds for my ritual cleansing."
"pay no heed to this foolish blue-haired wiffet";
In my opinion, a novel is of little value if it doesn't tell a good story! You can decorate the action with flowery prose, detailed characters, real-life foibles and all the panoply of rhetoric but in the final analysis: If the plot is not compelling then neither is the book. Jack Vance honed his craft in the ruthless world of magazines and paperbacks. He churned out fiction to order and he produced stories to sell. All his work is strongly plot driven and Lyonesse is no exception. To be sure, the product of the mature craftsman contains numerous other superb qualities but they all hang off the skeleton that is the plot and this one has it all!
It is the story of the rise of a worthy young prince, of the conquest of evil, of success against all odds, of the liberation of the prisoner and the optimisation of a nation. It is also of the coming of age of the daughter of a fairy, of her resourcefulness and bravery against people far larger that herself, of her finding her true friends and her discovery of her true parentage. It is also the story of various romances although these are never the main focus. Behind this there is also the background of doom and the interplay of forces unguessed at, as the archmage Murgen fights against the gods themselves to save the land from its inevitable fate: drowned beneath the sea.
If one could reduce this sprawling roller-coaster to one thread it would be the reunification of the splintered land of Lyonesse back into a single kingdom thanks to the wise head, great courage, superb skill and plain good luck of the young Prince Aillas. The way in which he takes each successive little kingdom into his empire is both fascinating and deeply satisfying. It is like watching one's stock portfolio grow due to one's confidence, skill and good judgement.
A significant part of the book is concerned with Aillas' various unmerited imprisonments and misfortunes at the hands of various scoundrels and if a fault may be found in the plot it might be that poor Aillas was the victim of misfortune perhaps one time too many. Perhaps, but I am being picky. After all, Aillas was able to make good use of each and every imprisonment in his later actions and without all his imprisonments his later successes might not have been possible.
It is hard to find fault with such a masterpiece, the culmination of a life's work! And indeed, I can find no large or fatal flaw. The only significant question I might raise is that Jack Vance's sparkling dialogue employs the same voice no matter who is doing the talking. Whether it is a conversation between a goblin and a fairy, a farmer and a king or a cut-throat and a hero the character is the same. Conventionally, each character's voice would be of a different character and the more poorly educated would not display the scintillating cleverness and broad vocabulary of the rich and well educated.
Perhaps Vance could have assigned each character its own voice and the children, monsters and lower classes could have used plain and coarse language devoid of wit, but the book would have lost much of its charm. As I mentioned before: it is Vance's unique, shimmering language and repartee that make this work such a classic and much of that comes out in his brilliant persiflage. To restrict that charm to just a few well educated characters would deprive the book of much of its light. Yes, the work would be more realistic, more gritty and believable, but that's not really what the work is all about. It is a fairy tale after all, not a history!
Not all authors produce masterpieces from their first novel. Most develop their skill over many years and many works. At the end of either years or decades of development all authors reach a peak of skill. In many cases this is of no great moment as the peak is not high enough to excite the interest of the cognoscenti but on rare occasions an author that appeared unexceptional in his early works grows into greatness over a long time and reaches a height of excellence achieved only by a few. Such an author was Jack Vance. He began with mysteries and run-of-the-mill science fiction but ended up producing a shining confection of heroic fairy-stuff abounding in original style and concepts, founded in ancient European lore and language that challenges the reader's vocabulary, puts a smile on his face, hope in his heart and satisfaction in his stomach.
It isn't Tolkien but it isn't trying to be! It is a splendid and original piece of writing that happily stands on its own and sadly hasn't been fully accorded the recognition that it deserves. It is one of my favourite books and if I could only take 10 printed works to a desert island this would be one of them. I recommend it wholeheartedly and unreservedly.
score 5/5
Warren Mars - November 18, 2018