Reviews for Lifted Masks

The average rating for Lifted Masks based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-11-05 00:00:00 Ian Wellsby Rhialto the Marvellous closes the initial collection of Dying Earth stories, as chronicled by Jack Vance, a master of invention who took me on an incredible journey through eons of history, hundreds of lost civilizations and quirky cultures, multicolored vistas of exotic lands, weird trees and chimaeric wildlife, magic invocations and last, but not least : deeds of daring, craft and cunning to tax credibility . Even if none of the later books quite recaptured the lyrical, melancholic atmosphere of the first one, preferring instead a more humorous, adventure oriented approach, the series kept me glued to the pages until the very last morsel. And then I wished I could spend more time in the company of the characteristic amoral, arrogant, opportunistic and unreliable scoundrels that usually lead the way around the Dying Earth landscape. Rhialto is not a simple reincarnation of Cugel the Clever: he is a fussy dresser and a cad where women are concerned, but as a wizard he is quite proficient in the art, and as a trickster he is less easily fooled by other magicians, demons or villagers he meets on his quests. Both heroes have supersized egos, but where Cugel ended mostly on the losing side in every intellectual endeavour and got by only through bravado and a lot of luck, Rhialto is deviously planning ahead and outsmarting his adversaries in a Sherlock Holmes manner. It took a good portion of the book to get me interested in Rhialto, and finally it was his sarcastic wit and elaborate form of polite expression that conquered me: Always disposed to create a favorable impression before members of the female sex, so long as they were of an age and degree of vitality to notice, Rhialto leaned an arm against a stump, disposed his cloak so that it hung in a casual yet dramatic style. The girls, preoccupied with their chatter, failed to notice his presence. Rhialto spoke in melodious tones: "Young creatures, allow me to intrude upon your attention, at least for a moment. I am surprised to find so much fresh young beauty wasted upon work so dull, and among brambles so sharp." I have already accepted the fact that the series abandoned almost all the science-fiction elements after the first book and developed as a magic intensive sword & sorcery adventure. If Cugel was more adept with a sword that with a spell, Rhialto relies very little on physical exertions and deploys almost exclusively his magic-fu. The magic theory of the Dying Earth is briefly presented in the introduction of the novel ( Magic is a practical science, or, more properly, a craft, since emphasis is placed primarily upon utility, rather than basic understanding.), with a few choice examples of spells that had me chuckling in anticipation of seeing them deployed later in the book: Looking into (for instance) Chapter Four of Killiclaw's Primer of Practical Magic, Interpersonal Effectuations, one notices, indited in bright purple ink, such terminology as: Xarfaggio's Physical Malepsy Arnhoult's Sequestrious Digitalia Lutar Brassnose's Twelve-fold Bounty The Spell of Forlorn Encystment Tinkler's Old-fashioned Froust Clambard's Rein of Long Nerves The Green and Purple Postponement of Joy Panguire's Triumphs of Discomfort Lugwiler's Dismal Itch Khulip's Nasal Enhancement Radl's Pervasion of the Incorrect Chord. Actually, very few on the list made it into the proper adventure, but it was fun to imagine them in action. The one spell that is put to repeated use is one that I believe every one of us imagined at one point in his life being in control of: the power to stop time for everybody else, and move freely about the frozen population. Here it is used primarily for mischief or for getting the hero out of tight corners. Coming back to the book, there are only three novellas in it, but the middle one is quite extensive, and I didn't feel shortchanged in any way by the limitation. Having the same set of protagonists (a conclave of wizards that are constantly quarelling among themselves, reminding me fondly of the masters of the Unseen University on Discworld) in all three parts of the book helps with the continuity and with the character development. The Murthe is a hilarious farce about the wizards phobia towards womenfolk. Their 'boys only' club falls prey to a specter from a terrible past, when women had ascendancy: The Murthe is at large among you, with squalms and ensqualmations. The series had its less savoury moments, especially when Cugel was involved, with women treated as sex objects and as fickle creatures. The panic of the wizards as they contemplate serving under women is a refreshing reversal, and their bafflement regarding their true nature is illustrated in the following extract: Calanctus likens a woman to the Ciaeic Ocean which absorbs the long and full thrust of the Antipodal Current as it sweeps around Cape Spang, but only while the weather holds fair. If the wind shifts but a trifle, this apparently placid ocean hurls an abrupt flood ten or even twenty feet high back around the cape, engulfing all before it. When stasis is restored and the pressure relieved, the Ciaeic is as before, placidly accepting the current. Do you concur with this interpretation of the female geist? Fader's Waft follows the quest of Rhialto to recover the Blue Perciplex: a precious prism containing the rule of law governing the Wizard Conclave. The prism is hidden in the past, and Rhialto must time-travel back accompanied by a couple of recalcitrant indentured demons. He meets twenty footed blue aliens from Canopus, witnesses epic battles between long lost empires, damzels in distress, venal construction workers, villagers with peculiar eating habits: Must your disgust be so blatant? True: we are anthropophages. True: we put strangers to succulent use. Is this truly good cause for hostility? The world is as it is and each of us must hope in some fashion to be of service to his fellows, even if only in the form of a soup. The humour mixed with the rich history of the past/future Earth and with the flowery prose made for a very pleasant pastime indeed, and too quick I arrived at the last story: Morreion has the wizards traveling in a floating palace to the edge of the Universe searching for 'nothing' (aka : the nonregion beyond the end of the cosmos). There they hope to rescue one of their colleagues who left ages ago in search of precious, magic infused IOUN stones (and relieve him of this treasure, if possible). Some of the passages describing the journey came very close to the marvelous prose that first attracted me to Jack Vance: Through clouds and constellations they moved, past bursting galaxies and meandering star-streams; through a region where the stars showed a peculiar soft violet and hung in clouds of pale green gas; across a desolation where nothing whatever was seen save a few far luminous clouds. Then presently they came to a new region, where blazing white giants seemed to control whirlpools of pink, blue and white gas, and the magicians lined the balustrade looking out at the spectacle. But every ship or floating castle eventually reaches harbour and the weary traveler must disembark, wave goodbye to his companions and go his own way. Morreion, the lost wizard, remarks at one time to his colleagues: Before you came my life was placid; you have brought me doubt and wonder. The same applies to me, and I know I will come back to sail once more with Jack Vance on the boundless oceans of his imagination.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-04-22 00:00:00 Navinchandra Mehta And so things end on a bit of a wistful note, in a volume that kind of splits the difference between the original Mazirian the Magician: and the Cugel books. Again, as with Cugel, it's a collection of short stories about the same character (the eponymous Rhialto); in this case, it's three longish stories (one, "Fader's Waft", is long enough that it probably could've been published as a standalone back in the 1960s) and, unlike Cugel, there's no larger narrative connecting the stories. Rhialto is one of a group of magicians living in the last aeon of Earth's existence. The magicians are all ... well, "eccentric" seems entirely too mild a term. In a lot of ways, they reminded me of the wizards of Pratchett's Unseen University, albeit slightly less ridiculous. Rhialto himself, although a bit of a popinjay, is probably the most normal. (He's also much less of a sociopathic scoundrel than Cugel, at least in what we're shown here.) Interestingly, much of the book happens in places other than the Dying Earth proper -- in "Fader's Waft", Rhialto spends much of his time several aeons in the past, and in the final story, "Morreion", he and the other wizards end up traveling across space to the very edge of the universe. (To do so, they all gather in one wizard's palace, which he then causes to fly.) As always, much of the joy is in Vance's prose -- slightly stilted and formal, the dialogue filled with circumlocution, and with not infrequent moments of true beauty: Through clouds and constellations they moved, past bursting galaxies and meandering star-streams; through a region where the stars showed a peculiar soft violet and hung in clouds of pale green gas; across a desolation where nothing whatever was seen save a few far luminous clouds. Then presently they came to a new region, where blazing white giants seemed to control whirlpools of pink, blue and white gas, and the magicians lined the balustrade looking out at the spectacle.