Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight-Jack Vance novel, book review

Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight-Jack Vance novel (author’s preferred title)

AKA: Cugel’s Saga

Tales of the Dying Earth, Book III

Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight was first published as a novel in 1983 under the title Cugel’s Saga.  Two of its subchapters or stories were published previously.  The Seventeen Virgins was first published as a novelette in October, 1974 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  It is the last story Vance published in a magazine.  The Bagful of Dreams was first published as a novelette in May, 1977 as part a hardcover anthology titled Flashing Swords! #4: Barbarians and Black Magicians.  Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight is a great novel.  It is one of Vance's finest and most creative works and is very highly recommended.  As of this writing the novel is available in a high quality, 301 page trade paperback edition by Spatterlight Press under the author’s preferred title “Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight.”

Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight continues the storyline about Cugel that began in the novel Cugel the Clever.  Cugel the Clever was a fix-up novel because all of the stories except for two had each been published as stand-alone pieces prior to the novel.  Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight is composed of 13 related stories and only two of these were previously published.  So Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight is only a partial fix-up novel and it reads like a novel rather than like a collection of stories.  Since it continues the storyline of Cugel the Clever, that novel should be read first to fully appreciate Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight.  My editions are 281/301 pages so it is longer than the 157/188 page Cugel the Clever.  But the adventures in Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight, despite its greater length, are fewer than in its companion novel.  In Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight the adventures are just more detailed and developed; some readers might find them more mature.  Both of these novels are simply amazing and Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight is, if anything, even more interesting and imaginative than Cugel the Clever. I’ve read both multiple times and rated both of them a 5. 

There are six chapters to Cugel's Saga. Each chapter has subchapters:

I. From Shanglestone Strand to Saskervoy has two sections:

1. Flutic

2. The Inn of Blue Lamps

II. From Saskervoy to the Tustvold Mud-flats has three sections:

1. Aboard the Galante

2. Lausicaa

3. The Ocean of Sighs

III. From Tustvold to Port Perdusz has two sections:

1. The Columns

2. Faucelme

IV. From Tustvold to Port Perdusz has two sections:

1. On the Docks

2. The Caravan

V. From Kaspara Vitatus to Cuirnif has two sections that were previously published as novelettes:

1. The Seventeen Virgins

2. The Bagful of Dreams

VI. From Cuirnif to Pergolo has two sections:

1. The Four Wizards

2. Spatterlight

In Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight we again join Cugel, a self-serving, con artist, anti-hero, gambler, trickster character who calls himself “the Clever” but often does not live up to his self-titled name.  Cugel's behavior is almost always manipulative and often dishonest.  When he does behave decently, with no apparent ulterior motive, it usually backfires on him.  Once he faces an adversary or is threatened, Cugel usually demonstrates some very determined survival skills.  Sometimes he simply uses his sword or other force but usually he plots an escape or revenge.  Vance often infuses wry or sardonic humor into situations that involve Cugel.  Cugel also blunders so many times that it becomes comical.  He even casts spells incorrectly and ends up being his own victim. 

In the previous novel Cugel had attempted to cast a spell upon others but because of a "misplaced pervulsion" he ended up sending himself across the Ocean of Sighs to the far northern sea where he sat on the beach called Shanglestone Strand looking out across the sea.  (Pervulsion appears to be a word invented by Vance

In the previous novel Cugel had attempted to cast a spell upon others but because of a "misplaced pervulsion" he ended up sending himself across the Ocean of Sighs to the far northern sea where he sat on the beach called Shanglestone Strand looking out across the sea.  (Pervulsion appears to be a word invented by Vance.) 

Flutic

In the sequel Cugel is no longer gazing across the sea but has stood up and is striding back and forth, shouting and cursing.  He has no money or magical devices to assist him so he hopes to find work and eventually return home to get revenge on Iucounu.

Cugel declares himself the nemesis of Iucounu and wants to return home to seek revenge.  After traveling by foot he reaches a place called Flutic which is a “large and elaborate manse of archaic design” and knocks on the door to seek shelter for the night.  It is the home of Twango who denies Cugel shelter but does offer him a job as a “supervisor.” Here Cugel meets Weamish, the mischievous imps Gark and Gookin, and others who work for Master Twango. The main business at Flutic is diving into a watery muddy pit to find valuable scales from the demon Sadlark.  Many years ago Sadlark plunged into the earth and created a pit.  He became disassembled in the pit but is reported that he would be alive again if he was put back together again.  Cugel soon finds that as the supervisor he has no authority over others and is expected to supervise “the comfort and convenience of his fellow workers.” He is treated like a servant by Twango and all the other employees.  He is also charged outrageous amounts of money on credit for food so that he is soon in debt to Twango.  To earn more money Cugel begins diving into the pit for scales during what little spare time he has.  All divers hope to earn money from Twango by finding demon scales.  Some scales are more valuable than others with one of the more prized being "an interlocking sequalion for either turret or pectorus".  This most valuable and highest prized scale of all is the one of a kind “Pectoral Sky-break Spatterlight” that is reported to be the key scale that locks all the other scales together and brings Sadlark back to life.  Twango pays his employees a set amount for the scales they find and then sells them to a distributor named Soldinck.  One of Soldinck’s main customers is Iucounu, the wizard, who collects these scales and pays large amounts of money for them.  This story is a humorous, creative, fascinating adventure where Cugel meets his match as a conniving swindler.

Inn of the Blue Lamp

Cugel leaves his job at Flutic and returns to town where he sells the scales he has in his possession.  Later he inquires about passage on the ship called the Galante but finds it is too expensive so he inquires about a job working on the ship.  Unfortunately the only job opening was as the supercargo and another man named Bunderwal was just given the job.

Bunderwal is present as Cugel learns this so Cugel begins a comical back and forth verbal exchange with Bunderwal, each coming up with odd accusations of why the other is disqualified for the position.  Later that day at the Inn of the Blue Lamp, in a Marx Brothers like skit, Bunderwal and Cugel begin a series of bizarre bets, with the mutual agreement that the winner will get the job as the supercargo.  In a twist at the end the winner of the bet has and unexpected surprise.

Aboard the Galante

Three days later Cugel begins his job on the ship Galante as a worminger where he is in charge of caring for and supervising two of the four giant marine worms that are strapped to the bottom of the ship to propel it. Cugel initially tries to pass himself off as a guest of the owner so he can be assigned a better cabin but the crew find out that he is the “weird lank-limbed outlander” who is to serve as an under-worminger and he is given austere quarters “far forward in the bilges.” He receives instructions from the master worminger about the nobility of the profession and the devotion expected of practitioners who forgo sleep, eat the simplest of foods and do not mind being wet and cold.  He also receives instructions about how to ride the enormous worms to get them in place and guidelines for the care and grooming of the worms once they are propelling the ship.  Baskets of bait are hung eight inches in front of all four worms to motivate them to swim with zeal.  Cugel is attentive to his duties and keeps his two worms in top shape but lacks the “style and harmony” of a master worminger.  He also has to contend with the man, Lankwiler, who controls the other two worms but who is too lazy to maintain his worms properly and resorts to deception and subterfuge to undermine Cugel’s efforts.  The amazing details of this whole process of being a worminger are ripe with humor and creativity

Lausicaa

Later the ship has a stopover at an island called Lausicaa that is reported to have rejuvenating springs and where men wear black veils so they don't over stimulate the women who seem obsessed with sex.  The women live in their own quarters and have signs in front of their dwellings offering free food to men to try to lure them into their homes. To accept the free meal a man merely walks to the women’s quarter, detaches a sign in front of one of the houses and carries it into the house.  Once he enters it is difficult or nearly impossible to make a graceful exit.  The owner of the ship wants to meet one of these women but Cugel is up to many tricks and disguises which is made especially easy for him since all men, even visitors, have to wear veils or hoods to cover their faces.  The owner also needs to purchase a fourth giant worm because one of them escaped during the voyage and Cugel, who hears he is to be fired and abandoned on the island, decides to sabotage the purchase process with clever intrigue and deceit. There is much more to this complex and very funny story, but it would disclose too much to discuss it in more detail.  It is a very humorous, interesting and imaginative subchapter.

The Ocean of Sighs

Cugel fleas the island of Lausicaa by stealing the sailing ship Galante.  Only the owner’s wife, Madame Soldinck and his three teenage daughters are on board so he assigns duties to each of them.  The wife is in charge of steering the ship while the daughters are assigned mainly to cooking for and entertaining Cugel. Madame Soldinck protests “I name you an oppressor! A monster of evil! A laharq, or a keak!” To prevent a mutiny or his being poisoned Cugel devises for explosives to be detonated if he does not tend the matter on a daily basis.  The Soldinck’s genteel manners contrast with Cugel’s crude behavior but that does not stop the family from conspiring against Cugel.

The Columns

Cugel eventually ends up off the ship, without money and stranded in the village of Tustvold where he meets the quarry caretaker named Nesbit.  Nesbit uses magic antigravity boots (We later find that the magic is in the boot polish and not the boots.) to build columns of rock where the men of the community spend most of their time sitting out under the faded sun on top of their personal pillar of rocks where they attempt to absorb the healthful flux from the sunlight.  The men think that the “higher the column the more pure and rich is the flux.”  Their wives “are consumed with ambition for the altitude of their husbands.” The women do all the work in the village and each tries to have the tallest column for her husband, the highest being the most prestigious for the family's reputation.  They pay Nesbit for each rock for their pillar, but he is unable to keep up with the demand so Cugel joins as an assistant in his enterprise.  Even with Cugel’s help and some cheating, though, they are unable to keep up with the demands of the women who become increasing hostile, insisting on increasingly higher towers for their husbands. It is a very funny, weird adventure that is quite entertaining.

Faucelme

After leaving Tustvold Cugel has a brief encounter with some “tree-tower folk” who are little weasel like creatures who fling filth at him and try to capture him in a net.  Later Cugel notices a stone tablet with an strange old inscription on it mentioning the name “Faucelme.”  After being cheated by two men who have a broken wagon wheel Cugel learns that the only place that might offer him shelter for the evening is Faucelme’s home and he is a wizard who is a noted trickster.  This leads to a comic narrative of Cugel trying to obtain overnight lodging by outwitting Faucelme.  We soon encounter a magical rope, a floating bed and a giant pelgrane bird that wants to eat Cugel.

On the Docks

Cugel tries to obtain passage home to Almery on a small ship called the Advventura but ends up being cheated by a fake ticket agent. He then learns that the ship is not going to Almery and cannot afford a ticket. He finds a caravan that is going to Almery but again cannot afford passage. They also need no new staff so he can’t join the caravan as an employee.  Finally Cugel devises a scheme that involves floating the sailing ship Advventura by using antigravity boot polish, tying the floating ship to the caravan and renting out rooms in the ship as “premier class” passage that doesn’t bounce on the road and is above the dust stirred up by other caravan wagons. 

The Caravan

Cugel’s dealings with the passengers, who expect ultimate luxury at their “premier class” rates, provides for a series of comic encounters where Cugel attempts to minimize his costs while accommodating the demands of the passengers. This includes dealing with three maiden passengers who are mischievous mimes and never speak but instead dance and gesture to communicate.  They take Cugel’s cabin and refuse to leave. Then there is the strange woman named Nissifer who when upset emits powerful “taints” that are “an acrid stench so vile and incisive that his teeth felt tender in their sockets.”  The passengers are so upset by their food and accommodations that they regularly make humorous, insulting comments about Cugel while dining.  When the caravan is forced to take a detour they are warned that they might encounter rock goblins, wind-stick devils and dangerous savage nomad bands who rob travelers.  Because Cugel’s ship floats above the ground he has the best viewing vantage and is asked to be the lookout for dangers, but Cugel keeps seeing rock goblins and gangs that either disappear or don’t exist when the caravan stops to check them out.  Every night a new passenger mysteriously disappears.  It is a colorful and humorous story.

Seventeen Virgins

After crossing the desert Cugel ends up in the town called Gundar where the last remaining “Solar Emosynary” exists.  This is a device that is a "contrivance of lenses above the fire" aimed toward the sun.  The people of the town believe the sun will die out if they do not continue to direct their lenses and mirrors toward the sun to stimulate its vitality.  They also believe that a number of other locations around the planet do the same thing under the “World Wide Order of Solar Emosynaries.”  Cugel makes a few innocent comments about some of these places no longer existing and this is misinterpreted. The local people think he is calling their work useless and challenging a tradition that has been continued for many centuries.  Cugel inadvertently causes social unrest and finds himself in trouble with the local citizens.  It doesn't help that he tried to cheat the proprietor with a money bag that he filled with rocks or that he used his own card deck in a game where he readily won money from the locals.  He also set up a booth and advertised himself as “The Eminent Seer Cugel” who could answer any question for a fee of three terces.  In order to answer questions for people he does not know, Cugel develops a clever plan. It is another scam to cheat others so he can raise enough money to leave town.  Although Cugel is sometimes blamed or punished for innocently offending local customs or religions, more often he simply behaves like a scoundrel and deserves the consquences.  He is much more Cugel the Troublemaker than Cugel the Clever.

Cugel wants to leave the town of Gundar by joining a caravan but he can't afford the fee even after acquiring money as a so called seer.  So he develops a plan that involves forcibly detaining one of the caravan's new employees so that Cugel can be hired in his place. After doing so Cugel obtains the job as the night armed guard for a caravan of young maidens who are called the Seventeen Virgins of Symnathis.  They are being transported to grace the annual Grand Pageant in the city of Lumarth.  Cugel eventually gets into trouble again on two different fronts, one with the employee he detained and secondly over his amorous behavior as a night guard. 

Cugel is taken into custody after having ruined the Grand Pageant for the people of Lumarth.  But they are called Kind Folk and subscribe to the Doctrine of Absolute Altruism so they offer only a mild punishment.  In order to repent and redeem himself Cugel is required to perform the charitable mission of meeting with a giant demon named Phampoun to convince him to change his ways and behave kindly. Cugel is to see that Phampoun "be instructed in kindness, consideration and decency; by making this effort, you will know a surge of happy redemption."

After he is escorted to the demon's temple Cugel inspects the huge demon who is fast asleep.  He has fingers that are three feet long, a head as large as a wheelbarrow and eyes the size of dishpans.  Cugel also sees a small creature peering forth from Phampoun's mouth.  This tiny homunculus is named Pulsifer and he grows on the end of Phampoun's tongue. Pulsifer engages Cugel in conversation while Phampoun sleeps.  Cugel learns that when Phampoun awakes, he will ask Cugel to confess his crimes and will then devour him.  If he is to survive, Cugel will have to live up to his epithet "the Clever" and use his wits to try to outsmart or trick Phampoun and Pulsifer.  This encounter with the Kind Folk, Pulsifer and Phampoun is fascinating and very creative. 

Bagful of Dreams

In this story we find Cugel sailing down a river in a skiff until he reaches the village of Troon where he sells his skiff and accepts unpleasant employment as the town butcher. He did so well in this capacity that he was asked to prepare the feast for an important religious festival. Unfortunately he makes the mistake of using two sacred beasts for the festival meal and when the citizens find out about this Cugel has to flee the town to avoid the “hysterical mobs.” 

After hiding out all night he encounters water-wefkins call out to him by name “using sweet voices of unhappy maidens” to try to lure him into the marsh. Just before nightfall he find an inn where he spends the night.  The next morning the innkeeper offers sell him “a large dun-colored beast with powerful hind legs” which he claims is a “hybrid of dounge and felukhary.” He says it feeds on waste, is notoriously loyal and is easy to ride. Cugel offers him far less than the asking price, thinking he is getting a real bargain, but after riding a short distance from town the beast bucks Cugel off and returns home.  Cugel grumbles “A loyal creature indeed!”  “It is unswervingly faithful to the comfort of its barn.” 

Cugel walks until late afternoon when he finds a village with a dozen mud huts where a man and his family offer him hospitality and advice.  The man tells him about a town two hours ahead but warns him that the people there are peculiar because “they make obeisance to Divine Wilio with the right hand, not on the buttock, but on the abdomen, which we here consider slipshod practice.”  He then shows Cugel how to make a sacred stone blessed by the Divine Wilio that can protect him from harm from the many dangerous creatures that wait ahead in the Plain of Standing Stones. 

Cugel makes a stone for himself but takes a shortcut when preparing it so that when encounters an asp with eight fangs the stone does not work and he is nearly killed.  After escaping, Cugel prepares another stone but does so properly. Later in the day Cugel performs one of his few kind acts by rescuing a man named Iolo from a huge, predatory bird called a pelgrane.  But his good deed does not go unpunished and the man he rescues betrays him so that Cugel ends up being held by a large tentacle that reaches up out of a hole.  (He later finds out that it is attached to a huge creature in the Overworld.)  The adventure continues with the story of how Cugel deals with the tentacle and the man who betrayed him.

Cugel learns that that Iolo is on his way to the yearly competition called Duke Orbal’s Grand Exposition of Marvels where contestants present their entries for a one thousand terces prize for the most wondrous.  Iolo plans to enter his Bag of Dreams which contains “a number of pure unadulterated dreams, coalesced and crystallized.”  Cugel decides to enter the contest himself using the huge tentacle and hole to the Overworld as his entry.  But Cugel learns that he has some strong competition from the Bagful of Dreams, military marching cockroaches, singing fish and other strange entries.

The Bagful of Dreams is such a mind boggling and inventive adventure that I rarely thought about an ending.  Vance does provide us with one, but the journey, strange encounters, satire and humor are really what is so captivating. 

The Four Wizards

While traveling home to Almery Cugel encounters the man, Bazzard, who had the singing fish and is invited to the man’s home for shelter and to meet the man’s four fathers.  His fathers turn out to be one time wizards who ran afoul of Iucounu the Laughing Magician, the same magician who brought so much trouble and grief to Cugel, and from whom Cugel is seeking revenge.  While talking with Bazzard’s four fathers they are all very careful to watch out for Iucounu’s magical spies, something that is made easier by the spy detector that alerts them with a hissing noise whenever a spy, similar to a “wisp of smoke” is in the air.  Each time they are alerted to the floating spy, the conversation changes from complaints and plotting regarding Iucounu to generous praise of him.  Cugel discusses the Spatterlight scale that he carries and how it has “already absorbed a pelgrane and a female hybrid of bazil and grue,” two creatures that tried to kill him.  When Cugel presses the scale to an enemy it makes them disappear.  The former wizards and Cugel devise a plan to make a fake Spatterlight scale to attract Iucounu to get close enough to him to press the real Spatterlight scale against his body

Spatterlight

Cugel leaves Bazzard’s home and suddenly encounters Iucounu standing along the wayside.  Iucounu immediately comments on the decorative ornament on Cugel’s cap. This is the fake Spatterlight scale. The real one is in Cugel’s pocket.  Iucounu indicates that he wants the scale but Cugel insists on retaining it.  Cugel tells Iucounu that he no longer has any grievances toward Iucounu and plans to retire to live a simple life in a cabin where he might read Stafdyke’s Comprehensive Survey of All Eons, “a treatise to which everyone alludes, but which no one has read.”  He depart and takes a room at the Inn of Five Flags.  The story continues with Iucounu trying to steal the Spatterlight scale from Cugel or to trick him in to giving it to him.  This pits Cugel the Clever against Iucounu the Laughing Magician in witty, comical scenes that lead to a final confrontation and conclusion.

Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight is one of the greatest fantasy novels I have ever read, a product of an amazingly imaginative genius who has the writing skills of a magician and a whimsical sense that never quits.  I loved reading Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight, have read it numerous times, and will continue to read it regularly in the future.  As with many of Vance's writings, it just keeps getting better each time I read it, and there is always something new that I missed previously.  It is a marvelous novel and a true fantasy masterpiece. Rating 5.