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The Languages of Pao [Paperback]


4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0575073470
  • ISBN-13: 978-0575073470
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,798,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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› Visit Amazon's Jack Vance Page
Jack Vance
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars "Language determines the pattern of thought ..." 8 Sep 2004
By Bill Matheson
Format:Paperback
Pao is a largely agricultural backwater world, with a docile yet stubborn populace ruled by their Panarch. Upon this ruler's death, Beran, heir to the throne, finds himself immersed helplessly in a devious scheme to divide and conquer his world.

A story of both overt and covert manipulation, this is a fine tale, rich with many common Vancian themes : an ordinary but capable hero; a convoluted and sinister plot; a malevolent and often capricious adversary.

It is doubtful if any other fantasy writer can lay claim to having fathered even a fraction of the wonderful myriad of worlds that Vance has created.

This is yet another great example of his craft.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars vintage vance 2 May 2006
By RAMON
Format:Paperback
As always with Vance, science fiction is an excuse or a landscape to develop his stories. Vance in this tale deepens in his intuitions, which are the main theme of all his work: that human kind is always changing, that adaptation to multiple enviroments provokes different cultures and mentalities, that the pressure of evil is great and can only be quenched by some good few.

A mad scientist wants to take over the peaceful world of Pao, by killing the ruler and kidnapping the heir. The core of the novel is an experiment to produce three different kind of tribes in Pao in order to disrupt its social structure, based on engineered languages is fanciful, nice, fantastic, baroque... truly Vance
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4.0 out of 5 stars A book about the power of language 30 Jan 2011
By John Middleton TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Its kind of fitting that Jack Vance wrote a story in which the use of language is key. After all, if any living writer deserves to be called a wordsmith, its Vance. The Languages of Pao is one level a fairly standard sci-fi adventure - young prince robbed of his birthright by an usurper, and spirited away for safekeeping, where he learns the necessary skills to reclaim his throne. That last sentence, while not actually incorrect in any way, however bears only faint resemblance to the story in fact told.

There are so many quirks and grey areas here that you are always a little off balance - for instance, in the opening paragraph or so we are told that on the quiet, rural planet Pao, the standard methods of population control are forced resettlement and infanticide, which is widely accepted. The story is truly about language, and how language affects the way we think, and therefore act. New languages can be created to instil desired traits in those who speak them, and a populace altered as a result.

In this frame a rousing adventure is told, of Beran Panasper, the rightful Panarch of Pao, and his conflicts with the usurper Bustamente and enigmatic sorcerer Palafox, but the theory never goes away, and nor does it cause the book to drag (although at 170-odd pages, it is only a short read to begin with).

Vance has written a truly sci-fi tale about ideas here, presented through a fairly standard storytelling medium to make it accessible. It is well written and gripping, although the dialogue is perhaps not as "Vancian" as his later works. Some scenes are striking: there is one which clearly references the appearance of the gom jabbar testing in Dune: except that Pao was written in 1958 and Dune in 1965, so it appears that Herbert likely read this story and expanded the concept greatly.
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