Showing posts with label Maske: Thaery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maske: Thaery. Show all posts

Sunday, June 8, 2025

Book Review: Maske: Thaery

Book Review: 'Maske: Thaery' by Jack Vance
5 / 5 Stars
 
'Maske: Thaery' (216 pp.) was published in hardcover in 1976. This Berkley Books paperback was issued in September, 1977, with cover art by Ken Barr. 

It has been some time since I last had read a Vance novel, so the initial twenty-five or so pages of 'Maske' were slow going as I tried to reacquaint myself with Vance's idiosyncratic prose style:
 
Jubal borrowed Trewe's old ercycle and rode thirty miles up the side of Eirse Mountain, through forests of stunted ebane and tall thin thyrse, across stony glades and dark dells, and finally arrived at Vaidro's antique house: a rambling, tall-roofed structure of dark wood. Vaidro, a somber man, compact and economical of movement, came out to meet Jubal and conducted him to a shaded terrace. They sat in wicker easy chairs, and a Djan maid brought a silver tray with a carafe of wine and a dish of biscuits. Vaidro leaned back in his chair with a goblet of wine and studied Jubal through half-closed eyes. "Yallow has changed you, more than I might have expected."
 
Eventually I settled into familiarity with Vance's prose and its flourishing collections of invented nouns and unusual adjectives. It does help that Vance keeps his plot straightforward, as if in compensation for the ornate prose. 
 
Thaery is the foremost nation on planet Maske, and our protagonist, Jubal Droad, is at a disadvantage, being born a Glint, a member of the lumpen proletariat, a class looked down upon by the native-born residents of Thaery. Nonetheless, Jubal is determined to be more than a simple laborer, and makes his way to the Thaery capital city, Wysrod, hoping to leverage a family connection into a position with the patrician Nai the Hever. 
 
Nai is one of the five leaders of Thaery. While outwardly he is of elitist and dismissive bearing, internally, Nai is troubled by the maneuverings of one Ramus Ymph, a nobleman with considerable political ambition. Nai suspects that Ramus is involved with offworld polities, to the detriment of Maske. 
 
Seeing Jubal's rough and ready bearing as something of an asset, Nai assigns him a billet in Department Three, the Sanitary and Hygiene Office. Jubal is chagrined at the idea of spending his working life inspecting taverns and inns for cleanliness. But it turns out that the Office actually is a front for the Thaery intelligence service. And adventure, intrigue, and danger await Jubal Droad !
 
'Maske: Thaery' is a Five Star novel from Vance. At heart it's an adventure novel, with a fast-moving plot propelled by sharp little episodes of violence. The people and cultures depicted in the book all have a quirky originality that demonstrates Vance's imaginative approach to world-building. 
 
The novel's central theme, of the ambitious, 'Outsider' young man who contests with a close-minded, self-perpetuating establishment, is one that occurs frequently in Vance's works. Jubal Early is the counterpart of Sklar Hast from 'The Blue World,' Ghyl Tarvok from 'Emphyrio,' and Gastel Etzwane from the 'Durdane' series. 
 
As with those novels, in 'Maske' the denouement does bring with it a long-awaited confrontation between our hero and the adversary (or adversaries), and is satisfying without being predictable. 
 
Summing up, 'Maske' shows that Vance, a veteran author in 1976, was able to frame a work that accepted the aesthetic of the New Wave era, while staying true to his own ideas of how science fiction should be composed and written. Fans of Vance, and the New Wave era, will want to have this book in their collection.