a magnificent feast, and peasant women are princesses — "seeing the world through rose-colored glasses" on a grand scale. The people are not willing to just give Cugel an Eye, but insist that he be on a many year-long waiting list for one. Cugel gains an Eye by trickery, and makes a perilous escape from Cutz. He then undertakes an arduous trek back to Iucounu, cursing the magician the entire way; this forms the principal part of the book. Cugel voyages across mountains, wastelands, and water, encountering unusual characters with curious beliefs and customs. He faces many challenges, including bandits, ghosts, and ghoulish creatures. Using a Machiavellian mindset, he survives by tricking or betraying the people he encounters. He joins a religious cult and tricks them into crossing a vast desert, which leads to many of his comrades dying. Cugel also falls victim to the trickery of others, such as when he is fooled into being locked in a watchtower in a lakeside town or when he is lured into imprisonment in a cave by the devious Rat People. Finally, he gets a spell that magically returns him home. After many pitfalls, setbacks, and harrowing escapes, including a voyage back in time a million years, ending in the eviction of Firx from his system, and a grateful wizard speeding him by a spell back home, Cugel returns to Iucounu's manse, where he finds the wizard's volition has been captured by a twin to Firx. Cugel manages to extirpate the alien, subdue the magician, and enjoy the easy life in the manse, until he tries to banish Iucounu and Fianosther (who himself has come to pilfer from Cugel) with the same spell that the magician had used on him. But Cugel's tongue slips in his hubristic attempt to utter the incantation, and the flying demon seizes him instead, delivering him to the same isolated spot as before. Author Michael Shea wrote an authorized sequel, A Quest for Simbilis (DAW Books, NY, 1974). Vance's own Cugel sequel was published as Cugel's Saga in 1983. Cugel's character Cugel is a classic Vance anti-hero; though he fancies himself an aesthete and a superior being to those around him, in his actions he is a liar, a cheat, an inveterate thief, a charlatan, selfish, greedy, vicious, and so on. However, Cugel has always lived a life of poverty and often needed these attributes for survival.