The Blue World
By Jack Vance

An old Jack Vance novel (published in 1966) and another I enjoyed immensely. Nothing taxing about this, just a thoroughly good adventure set on a water world with humans battling monsters.

Here, the "monsters" are gigantic fish-like creatures with big appetites. They call these things "Kragens" and the largest and most troublesome they call "King Kragen". Over the years, they have been placating the "King" so that it keeps other, smaller creatures away. They do this by by feeding it: this has helped it grow to an enormous size and gives them even more trouble because of that.

The people here are the descendants of survivors from a spaceship that crashed a few hundred years before. In what seems to be typical Vance humour, there are various "castes" with names like: the Bezzlers, the Anarchists, the Swindlers. We also have the Advertisermen (yes) and many others. Perhaps survivors of some sort of banishment or perhaps prison (consider the founding of Australia). The descendants of rebels then, they have managed to build a working civilisation from bare bones on a planet devoid of solid ground, rock or metal. Spread out on the ocean over dozens of floating islands, the top-most pads of vast tree-like plants, they survive and thrive - except for the problem with the predators. Some among them are sick of this and are prepared to do something about it.

I like Vance's conciseness and the directness of his prose. It is a pleasure to read. There is no padding but this means little world building. What we learn is intriguing, such as the surviving but fragmentary diaries and documents of the "first" people, but this is not gone into deeply. In addition, I like the characterisation but this too is superficial. However, having said all this, it is a short book and gets to the point; in that sense it is very refreshing (considering the "door stopper" books published nowadays). A caveat I would mention though: it ends quite quickly. I would have liked for it to be extended a bit: indeed, maybe even padded a little.

Jack Vance is an author I wish I'd discovered years ago, especially in my teenage years. I will certainly be reading more.