Book the Review

Hey,

So over the weekend, I finished up Nifft the Lean by Michael Shea. It won the World Fantasy Award in 1982 and it's pretty easy to see why. Mr. Shea is heavily influenced by The Dying Earth material of Jack Vance (indeed, he wrote an authorized sequel to Eyes of the Overfiend, which I think I have to look into), but he doesn't mindlessly ape the material. He fuses in the more earthy elements of Howard or Leiber and his stories are set in an aeon before the bloated sunsets of Dying Earth.

This book contains four stories concerning Nifft the Lean, master thief and roving adventurer and his friend Barnar Ox-Hand wander the Earth and get into all kinds of scrapes. What makes the book especially good is that most of these scrapes involve encounters with the supernatural, from running a con game on a vampire queen, to a rescue mission in a demon sub-world, to a delivery to the afterlife. In all of these encounters, Shea's imaginative description of the people and places are just outstanding. There's not a lot of flabby exposition, each paragraph evokes a solid image and then draws you into it. In particular, the adventures through the land of the dead are disturbing and creepy.

Nifft himself is both clever and courageous. He's no stranger to violence although he rarely employs it when a bit of trickery will do the job. In a clever touch, the book is purported to be a collection of tales entrusts to Nifft's friend Shad Margold who is printing them now after the master thief's death. So the tales often have slightly different writing styles and Shag himself provides a forward to each story that is both entertaining and which serves some world-building purpose as well. Even though the book does not come with that staple of all fantasy literature, the map, you still get a good feel for the world Nifft inhabits.

Overall this was a really fun book and I'd recommend it to my fantasy-loving friends.

later
Tom

Book the Review

Hey,

So over the weekend, I finished up Nifft the Lean by Michael Shea. It won the World Fantasy Award in 1982 and it's pretty easy to see why. Mr. Shea is heavily influenced by The Dying Earth material of Jack Vance (indeed, he wrote an authorized sequel to Eyes of the Overfiend, which I think I have to look into), but he doesn't mindlessly ape the material. He fuses in the more earthy elements of Howard or Leiber and his stories are set in an aeon before the bloated sunsets of Dying Earth.

This book contains four stories concerning Nifft the Lean, master thief and roving adventurer and his friend Barnar Ox-Hand wander the Earth and get into all kinds of scrapes. What makes the book especially good is that most of these scrapes involve encounters with the supernatural, from running a con game on a vampire queen, to a rescue mission in a demon sub-world, to a delivery to the afterlife. In all of these encounters, Shea's imaginative description of the people and places are just outstanding. There's not a lot of flabby exposition, each paragraph evokes a solid image and then draws you into it. In particular, the adventures through the land of the dead are disturbing and creepy.

Nifft himself is both clever and courageous. He's no stranger to violence although he rarely employs it when a bit of trickery will do the job. In a clever touch, the book is purported to be a collection of tales entrusts to Nifft's friend Shad Margold who is printing them now after the master thief's death. So the tales often have slightly different writing styles and Shag himself provides a forward to each story that is both entertaining and which serves some world-building purpose as well. Even though the book does not come with that staple of all fantasy literature, the map, you still get a good feel for the world Nifft inhabits.

Overall this was a really fun book and I'd recommend it to my fantasy-loving friends.

later
Tom

Separated at birth

Hey,

Notice how you never see bryant and Bruce Sterling in the same place at the same time? It makes you wonder.

later
Tom

Separated at birth

Hey,

Notice how you never see bryant and Bruce Sterling in the same place at the same time? It makes you wonder.

later
Tom