This 1960s fantasy novel (previously published as The Eyes of the Overworld) is the second book in Vance’s Dying Earth series, set in a distant future where the sun is cooling, the earth mostly barren and home to decadent civilisations, and magic is common. Vance’s series gave its name to a Dying Earth sub-genre of fantasy, a notable early contribution to which is the largely 1930s Zothique cycle by Clark Ashton Smith, echoes of which seem to me to be present in Cugel the Clever, though the two authors have very different writing styles. The Vance novel is actually a fix-up novel created mainly from stories previously separately published.
Cugel, a deeply amoral opportunist and skilled thief, is persuaded by a merchant acquaintance to attempt a robbery of the manse of a powerful magician. Cugel is captured by one of the magician’s traps and in return for his freedom has to agree to acquire an artefact for the magician, a sort of lens called an Eye of the Overworld. This is to be found in a remote land, to which the magician transports Cugel, having first implanted a small alien entity inside him to guarantee fidelity. A rather picaresque series of adventures follow as Cugel tries to fulfil his mission and make the long, perilous journey back, all the time plotting revenge against the merchant and magician.
I found this novel, the first thing I have read by Vance, immensely entertaining and enjoyable. A large part of this is due to the character of the eponymous anti-hero. Although regarding himself as cultured and of superior cleverness, he is generally self-serving, callous and vicious; and there is a strong element of black comedy as his own greed and poor judgement get him into one difficulty after another. On a trivia note, the Dying Earth series was a major inspiration during the early development of the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, and Cugel appears to be the prototype of the rogue class used in that game.
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