The same is true for “The Last Castle,” which pretty much made Vance’s reputation and was at least arguably his first true masterpiece.
That series, too, embraces a kind of apartheid message. The same is true for the laboring class in the Cadwal Chronicles, who are essentially illegal immigrants who have grown too numerous to be deported. The moral lessons do not echo well to us today. Not a very subtle context from an author I was growing to admire.Īgreed. The parallels to US and the Indian history and US slavery were a bit too close to ignore with “might makes right” is reality so suck it liberals" taking center stage. It’s basically making a positive argument for apartheid. The aboriginal, serf like (human) natives who were conquered by the more technologically advanced barons are third class citizens and portrayed variously as violent and duplicitous or faithful and subservient vassals. The (human) land barons conquerors who stole the land by force from long term settlers who had gone nativist are the morally superior good guys with their vast plantation style ranches. Vance always seems to be making some kind of tangential political point but in this novel it was front and center and the usual tropes got turned on their head. I’ve been getting into Jack Vance lately and after “The Cadwal Chronicles”, read “Tales of the Dying Earth” which I quite enjoyed and then took up “The Gray Prince”.
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