Abercrombie Station

Abercrombie Station by Jack Vance
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The rare Jack Vance story with a female protagonist – women are usually peripheral (and objectified) in his works. Jean is a gold-digger who has to take her clothes off in the very first scene, so the objectification continues, but she is also a femme fatale who has buried a few bodies to survive, and Vance tries to generate some existential pathos to her obsession with getting rich. Ultimately she is about as well-rounded as any other Vance character, which is not very. The story moves in an unexpected and quite scary direction, cleverly subverting the expectation of more salacious content.

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