The Anome

Gastel Etzwane is a little more clueless and weak than the protags of the Planet of Adventure and Demon Princes series. Yet this work has the trademark weirdness of settings--the 50-odd cantons of Shant--that are even better developed than Tschai, and Gastel is only weak because he is clueless. The concept of the faceless man, the inflexible (and because faceless, inhuman) upholder of never-changing "values" agreed upon by the citizens of Shant in some long-ago convention as a way to keep them from destroying their own society, is not far off from the robot Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still. The Durdane trilogy is the most consistent of Vance's series, strong to the end. He explores the theme of freedom, as always, but also the value of knowledge--it isn't always power, after all! An alternate and actually more common title for this work is _The Anome_.

The Faceless Man, also known as Anome or Durdane, is like a typical Vance novel in that it features a strapping young adventurer pitting wit and candor against opposing forces in exotic and debaucherous locales. Vance revels in describing the cultural customs and mores of the characters that people his work. The Faceless Man, the first in the Durdane trilogy, is no exception. While the central chacter Etzwane does not stick out among the protagonists of Vance's many novels, music is a central theme of the book and Vance, a musician, excels in his descriptions of alien musical interludes and compositions. I work in a library in Florida, and this book was very hard to find. We had to request it from a Library in Omaha Nebraska. Vance's work is elusive and unknown but highly suggested for those that enjoy Science Fiction with a more fantastic element.