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Back Seat Book Club Shows

Back Seat Book Club – Book Twenty: The Eyes of Overworld/Cugel the Clever

Author: Jack Vance

Published 1966

Ace Books

Plot Summary – Scoundrel Cugel is sent far away, by a magician he has wronged, to retrieve magical lenses that reveal the Overworld. Goaded by a homesick monster magically attached to his liver, he journeys across wastelands home to Almery. With a cult group on a pilgrimage, he crosses the Silver Desert, and meets more danger and betrayal as he betrays others.

Quick Thoughts:

  • The End (of the reading list) is nigh, suggest something
  • Bastards
  • Evil wizard stuff
  • Demon stick, no demon carrot
  • Achievements
  • Botched somatic components
  • ambiguous rape
  • antique language
  • Inevitable Tolkien comparison

“Excellent; all is well. The ‘everlasting tedium’ exactly countervenes the ‘immediate onset of death’ and I am left only with the ‘canker’ which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions.”

Your Hosts:

  • Jim
  • Scott

Recorded 03/31/14

Next Time: the master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

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