Songs of the Dying Earth is, first story to last, very enjoyable. However it is never quite brilliant, and I believe that is precisely because the writers are all working in another writer's world. (Not that that is a bar to brilliance -- Orson Scott Card's "The Originist," to name just one example, is a magnificent story set in Isaac Asimov's Foundation future.) Still, this is 600 plus pages of entertaining work... well worth the money.

There's no point going over all the stories... I'll mention some highlights. Several of the writers seem to be trying to mimic Vance's style to a degree, with varying degrees of success. Perhaps the most interesting of the stories in this vein is one that seems more a blend of the writer's style with Vance's -- Lucius Shepard's "Sylgarmo's Proclamation," perhaps my favorite piece here. I tend to find Shepard's prose a bit overwrought. By contrast, one of the sometimes unappreciated aspects of Vance's writing is that despite its reputation for ornateness, his sentences are clear and crisp, even as the words may be unfamiliar and the tone ironic. To my mind, Shepard, while still writing in his own voice, modulated his style in a Vancean direction in "Sylgarmo's Proclamation," to very good effect. The story itself is fine -- as the Sun appears ready to finally "quit the sky" a certain Thiago is approached by certain individuals desiring revenge on Cugel the Clever, and he is induced to guide them to a remote tower to confront the him.

I also greatly enjoyed the longest of these stories, Dan Simmons's "The Guiding Nose of Ulfänt Banderõz." Shrue the Diabolist and a group of travelers (including Derwe Coreme, who appears as well in Shepard's story) try to reunite the title magician's library, which seems to be in two universes -- and in so doing forestall the final expiration of the Sun. A couple of the shorter stories have a different tone -- reflecting their authors more than Vance, while still properly hommages to the master: thus, Howard Waldrop's "Frogskin Cap," which shows us how Tybalt became the last Curator of the Museum of Man, and Neil Gaiman's "A Question of Incuriosity," which intriguingly links our own time with that of the Dying Earth.

Other highlights: Elizabeth Moon's "An Incident in Uskvesk," an entertaining story, sort of a caper piece, about a dwarf and roach racing, of all things. Kage Baker's "The Green Bird" is another Cugel story, and very true to the spirit of the originals, as Cugel is shown again to be quite clever, but not as clever as he thinks he is. And finally I'll mention Elizabeth Hand's "The Return of the Fire Witch," in which the title character impugns a fellow witch to help her get even with the royal family that had exiled her.

It's a big book, and there are many further stories. We meet many of Jack Vance's familiar characters, and many new ones; we revisit many familiar locales, and some new ones, and we encounter again some of Vance's amusing fauna, such as Deodands and Twk people. The stories, as I have said, entertain almost to a one. It might be that leisurely reading is best, as there is some repetition of theme, style, and setting -- but it will be entertaining reading.