The Killing Machine cover art

The Killing Machine

The Demon Princes Series, Book 2

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About this listen

Five intergalactic criminal masterminds raid the tranquil world of Mount Pleasant, leaving behind only ruin and slaughter—and the orphaned child Kirth Gersen, who comes to manhood swearing to take bloody revenge. Now Gersen roams the galaxy, bringing vengeance to the Demon Princes one by one, in Jack Vance’s classic series of hardboiled space opera.

Someone is stealing the children of the galaxy’s elite, and Kirth Gersen suspects that the kidnapper is Kokor Hekkus—second of the Demon Princes. Deciphering a complex pattern of clues and coincidences, Gersen tracks his quarry to a barbaric world, where Hekkus is protected by an invincible war machine. To confront Hekkus, Gersen must resort to a desperate plan.

©1966, 2005 by Jack Vance (P)2022 by Blackstone Publishing and Skyboat Media Science Fiction Space Opera Fiction Interstellar Revenge Royalty
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Jack Vance is one of my all time greatest science fiction authors and I consider the Demon Princes series amongst his best work. His worlds are evoked vividly using concise prose, the characters varied and believable and the story line engaging from first page to last. Stefan Rudnicki does a fine job as narrator, evoking the novel’s multifarious characterisations with ease. I can’t wait for the next in the series.

A long awaited classic…

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Big JV fan having read most of his books over 45 years. Great mix of a future verse with detective development of the chase to capture and …. No spoilers but as this is book 2 of 5, you can guess.

Love these books

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dry and spare to the point of callousness

extremely spare for the most part-sometimes it seems a scene or an exchange has been reduced to an outline, a skeleton, a sketch

Vance's style herewon't be for everybody.

subject matter may also be offputting

Revenge story, female characters of restricted agency used as bargaining chips, extreme acts of violence and abuse alluded to and occasionally foregrounded. (though blessedly bled surprisingly thin in their depiction by the style)

with these rather large caveats, I give 5 stars on all listed metrics. If you like Vance's ostentatiously dry and spare style, and esprcially if you liked the star king, this one is as artful precise insightful and deviously humourous and clever-in-retrospect as the first.

not for everyone

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