Reviews for The face

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

Review # 1 was written on 2012-04-07 00:00:00 Brian Hicklin This book is book 4 of 5 in Demon Princes series. The plot is like before Kirth Gersen is hunting down one of the Demon Princes who destroyed his family and homeland when he was a boy. Lens Larque is not the weirdest, most dangerous of the villains Gersen has faced in his quest for revenge. He was smart enough be a real challenge though. What made this book great is the witty, clever way Vances makes fun of human behavior with the Darsh culture and the Methlen culture. The Darsh are ugly people, have a caotic way of life, disgusting cuisine and the Methlen are vain snobs who look down on every other human in the Universe.The Darsh also have an exciting game of survival called hadaul. There is also Kirth Gersen's inner struggles with part of him that wants to settle down to happy normal life and the single minded, ruthless part of him that wants to live only for killing the famous criminals who destroyed his family. Vance is not the kind of writer that writes straight SF thriller. Vance usual high level writing plus character like Kirth Gersen and the way he seemlessly created far future human cultures and says something about human condition is the landmark of his SF works in novels or short stories.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-05-16 00:00:00 Patrick Garcia 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!!!!