The jaunty and amoral Liane the Wayfarer has no idea that he's in way over his head (even including the long red feather blinking and winking in his green cap) as "The red sun, drifting across the universe like an old man creeping to his death-bed," begins to set. with a sense of lore and ancient recollection.” Welcome. The light from the sun, though dim, was rich and invested every object of the land. Nothing of Earth was raw or harsh-the ground, the trees, the rock ledge protruding from the meadow all these had been worked upon, smoothed, aged, mellowed. The dying Earth itself is otherworldly: “A dark blue sky, an ancient sun.
All are at home in Vance’s lyrically described fantastic landscapes, like Embelyon, where, “The sky a mesh of vast ripples and cross-ripples and these refracted a thousand shafts of colored light, rays which in mid-air wove wondrous laces, rainbow nets, in all the jewel hues.” Each being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are dangerous. We meet the melancholy deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. The stories in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of wisom and beauty - lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells.
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