Posted by Dennis Chan on August 22, 1998 at 13:10:28:
In Reply to: Re: Comments on Vance Villains posted by justin moretti on June 30, 1998 at 23:15:43:
: : I would have to vote for the Demon Princes. They have a grandeur of their own. They seem to be amoral, totally egocentric or socially autistic rather than evil as such. Their monomanias are rather admirable in a strange way; nothing they do is on a petty scale and their schemes are carried through with great elan. I think it is the pettyness of the motives and actions of Madame Zigonie and her cohorts in the Cadwal books that makes them so thoroughly despicable.
: : Howard Alan Treesong would have to be my absolute favourite. Mad as a hatter of course - but who wouldn't secretly like to emulate his poetic vengeance at his old-school reunion!
: Amen to that! I used to READ Book of Dreams at school and wish for the day... His goal, in the end, was not so evil (though it was megalomaniacal - emperor of human space, indeed!) and as one of the other co-respondents to this point said, you almost have to feel sorry for his being thwarted.
: I agree to a point on Zigonie and co. from the Cadwal books, except that I have to disagree on the point of pettiness. It was not just the fact that they committed so much evil for what purely appears to be material gain but that they did it TOTALLY unaware (except perhaps for Namour) or uncaring (including Namour) that what they were doing was actually wrong. For example, Floreste's "murder as art" on the remote island.
I agree with both the above comments. Howard Alan Treesong, besides having a chillingly eerie name (something Jack Vance must clearly have known, as witnessed both by the introduction to The Book of Dreams as well as Daswell Tippin's brief paean to the power of names in The Face) is one of the most complex villains in SF literature. My only slight disappointment was that The Book of Dreams never quite realised my expectations. Having had to wait for so long for the book, I had generated all sorts of ideas about the nature of Treesong, based on all the previous hints "chaoticist" "inscrutable, devious and almost certainly insane". Also, I feel that the depiction of his chidhood and background humanized this Demon Prince and therefore made him appear less fearsome than, say, Lens Larque or Kokor Hekkus, whose respective psychologies are never explained and thus retain an elemental quality.
I also feel a twinge of sorrow whenever I read The Book of Dreams. I keep wishing that Howard Alan Treesong would prevail.
Worrying, I know.