Throy

by Jack Vance

End of the Cadwell trilogy. Pretty good effort, wraps things up and gives a final sendoff that's anticlimatic and yet feel substantive. It's shorter and less creative than the previous volumes, doesn't seem to have nearly as much energy, and in some ways feels like too much of a concluding effort to be a great book in its own right. As well, some of the wider troubling things with the series and gender as well as the Yip servitude remain, by my view, under-developed. Since it has to actually deliver resolution to the arching story and universe there’s not the sense of fun and raw, rolling creativity as in the second volume, and in multiple ways the more grim tone don’t fit the narrative structures as well.

Worse than: Ecce and Old Earth by Jack Vance
Better than: Big Planet by Jack Vance