The Palace of Love
Series: Demon Princes 3
Reviewed date: 2010 Apr 20
Rating: 3
189 pages
In Jack Vance's Demon Princes series, Kirth Gersen tracks down and kills the galaxy's five most notorious and secretive criminals. The Palace of Love is the third book in the series. Kirth Gersen tracks down and kills Viole Falushe, the frustrated celibate demon prince whose famed Palace of Love is renowned throughout the galaxy.
Gersen is fantastically rich, due to having swindled Interchange out of 10 billion SVU in the previous book. So why does he haggle over a few hundred SVU in one chapter, then spend 1 million SVU on a party in the next? I can't help but wonder if Vance lost track of the plot. Or maybe it's the human inability to comprehend really large numbers: a few hundred SVU was an expensive proposition that Gersen could understand and rebel against. One million SVU is unimaginable, and once Gersen was resigned to throwing the party he ignored the cost because it literally was incomprehensible.