Rhialto the Marvellous

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

If you???re a fan of Jack Vance, of course you???ve read, or plan to read, Rhialto the Marvellous, last of the Dying Earth books. If you???ve not read any of Mr. Vance???s work, you can start here ??? it isn???t necessary to have read the previous installments.

Rhialto, who has earned the cognomen ???Marvellous??? (this has something to do with him being a bit of a dandy) is one of the last of Earth???s magicians, a small group of selfish and unscrupulous men who sometimes work together and sometimes oppose each other as it suits their individual inglorious purposes. The other magicians don???t care too much for Rhialto because he is aloof, popular with women, arrogant, and generally unflappable. Rhialto the Marvellous contains three stories which feature Rhialto working with and against his colleagues.

Rhialto is more passive than Cugel the Clever and not as dastardly, so he doesn???t drive the plot or leave a swath of destruction in his wake like Cugel does. Plus, he has to share the stage with several other strong personalities, making him not as vibrant as we???ve come to expect from Vance???s main characters.

Nonetheless, this novel is still chock full of the ludicrous circumstances and strange humor that Jack Vance fans love. The first story, ???The Murthe,??? introduces my favorite made-up Vance word: ???ensqualm??? ??? which means to turn a man into a woman. That story was hilarious as it seemed to poke fun of feminine behavior while actually ridiculing men. Arthur Morey, who narrates Brilliance Audio???s production and has become one of my favorite audiobook readers, is at top form here as he narrates Vermoulian???s dream (AXR-11 GG7, Volume Seven of the Index) in which Vermoulian meets a group of ensqualmed men and describes their behavior:

I found myself in a landscape of great charm, where I encountered a group of men, all cultured, artistic, and exquisitely refined of manner??? ???We dine upon nutritious nuts and seeds and ripe juicy fruit; we drink only the purest and most natural water from the springs. At night we sit around the campfire and sing merry little ballads. On special occasions we make a punch called opo, from pure fruits, natural honey, and sweet sessamy, and everyone is allowed a good sip??? Ah, the women, whom we revere for their kindness, strength, wisdom and patience, as well as for the delicacy of their judgments!...???

He had me laughing out loud already, but when he read their answer to Vermoulian???s questions about how they procreate, I nearly spit my Starbucks onto the steering wheel. I went back and read this in my print copy ??? it was funny, yes, but Arthur Morey made it even better.

Rhialto the Marvellous is the last of Brilliance Audio???s Vance collection so far, and that makes me sad. I sincerely hope they???ll soon be adding more Vance titles to their catalog and that Arthur Morey will be reading them. If so, I promise that I???ll be reviewing them!

I absolutely adored the previous three books in The Dying Earth, but I feared that the last book would not have the same magic as the previous three.

Unfortunately this was exactly the case. Rhialto is not a bad story - in truth a set of three short stories where the characters are the same but are otherwise independent of one another - but it lacks both the personality of the Cugel books and the soul of the 1st collection of stories.

As with the other books, it's a comedy of manners where the absolute worst people you could ever meet do monstrous things to one another and the world around them for the pettiest of reasons, but it's all couched in polite, understated observations and flowery language. Old men more powerful than gods bicker and prank one another like a college frat while decorum is staunchly upheld or carelessly discarded depending on the mood.

It remains funny and novel and very weird. The problem is that we've seen all this before, only with much more interesting characters with better stories and journeys. Rhialto himself - despite the flamboyant title - is boringly mundane. He's a straight man in a setting that does not need one.

This book falls into the same trap I see a lot of long-in-the-tooth stories get stuck in, which is that it tries to revive a tired setting by introducing some new idea never hinted at before and then immediately concluding it. These self-contained story arcs feel disconnected from both themselves and the previous books, and you're left with the feeling that they were completely unnecessary.

This is in fact the opposite feeling you want to have when finishing a series. The rest of the series is fantastic, but skip this one.