The far side of time, thirteen original stories Book

4.5 stars. Book 4 of the excellent, and under-rated, Demon Prince series by Jack Vance. In this installment, Kirth Gersen, our revenge seeking hero, searches out the "demon prince" known as Lens Larque.

Vance is a master story-teller with an incredible imagination and a talent for concise, descriptive writing that immerses his readers in the worlds he creates without needing a lot of pages to do it. Each of the Demon Prince novels are only around 200 pages but every page is so filled with the history, the culture, the economy, the governments and the people of the Oikumene (the universe setting in which these stories take place) that authors with 600 pages coukd provide this much depth. Yet such information is so seamlessly interwoven into the plot, that you never get the "info dump" feeling that can sometimes detract from the pace of the story.

Bottom-line, Vance is rightfully considered one of the best writers of science fiction's golden age and this is a superb example of why. Highly Recommended!!!!