The Dying Earth cover art

The Dying Earth

Tales of the Dying Earth, Book 1

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Dying Earth

By: Jack Vance
Narrated by: Arthur Morey
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £18.99

Buy Now for £18.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

The stories in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of wisom and beauty - lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells. We meet the melancholy deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. Each being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are dangerous. All are at home in Vance’s lyrically described fantastic landscapes, like Embelyon, where, “The sky [was] a mesh of vast ripples and cross-ripples and these refracted a thousand shafts of colored light, rays which in mid-air wove wondrous laces, rainbow nets, in all the jewel hues....”

The dying Earth itself is otherworldly: “A dark blue sky, an ancient sun.... Nothing of Earth was raw or harsh—the ground, the trees, the rock ledge protruding from the meadow; all these had been worked upon, smoothed, aged, mellowed. The light from the sun, though dim, was rich and invested every object of the land ... with a sense of lore and ancient recollection.” Welcome.

©2010 Jack Vance (P)2010 Brilliance Audio, Inc. Action & Adventure Anthologies & Short Stories Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Sword & Sorcery Adventure

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Mote in God's Eye cover art
Suldrun’s Garden cover art
Solaris cover art
Swords and Deviltry cover art
Elric of Melniboné cover art
The Black Company cover art
City cover art
Planet of Adventure cover art
Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian cover art
Elfshadow cover art
Chosen of the Gods cover art
No Return cover art
Tesser: A Dragon Among Us cover art
Ubik cover art
Master of the Hunt cover art
Snow Crash cover art

Critic reviews

“ The Dying Earth and its sequels comprise one of the most powerful fantasy/science-fiction concepts in the history of the genre. They are packed with adventure but also with ideas, and the vision of uncounted human civilizations stacked one atop another like layers in a phyllo pastry thrills even as it induces a sense of awe [at] ... the fragility and transience of all things, the nobility of humanity’s struggle against the certainty of an entropic resolution.” (Dean Koontz)
"There are few enough of the writers I loved when I was 13 that I can imagine myself going back to in 20 years from now. Jack Vance I will read forever.” (Neil Gaiman)
All stars
Most relevant  
Just listened to the audiobook. Fantastic imagination far ahead of his time and with writing that draws you in and takes you away to a far off land with such vividness. I have read the book at least twice when I was younger. I have read over 30 of Jack Vance's books, most more than once.

One of greatest writers of the 20th /21st centuries

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The story was great and imaginative and lives up to its reputation, however the narration was so weirdly formal it felt like I was listening to a lecture or someone reading bible verses.

Interesting story but off-putting narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
.., and despite what others have said, I thought the performance really fitted the book perfectly.

Really enjoyed this…

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This truly is a classic of the first water. No wonder it inspired the creation of Dungeons and Dragons!

Phantasic!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
No part of this is great prose or great literature, but it certainly is an original idea and a unique vision of the future.

It's different

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Imagine cooking together some Grimm Fairy Stories alongside a Dungeons and Dragons spell book, and then adding a flavour of the Canterbury Tales for good measure. Baste well and roast to perfection. The result is earthy, colourful and very engaging. I really loved it.

Ripe with ideas and peculiar characters

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is a real gem. The sun is dying and mankind has evolved. There are strange creatures & men have learned magic. My biggest annoyance, and it it not resticted to this series, is that this series is in 4 parts. Parts 1 & 3 are availlable in audible. What about part 2," the eyes of the overworld"? I have purchased this on amazon, so it is availlable. What is the point of making part 3 availlable and not part 2.

Classic Sci Fi

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is the worst piece of story telling I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. Characters so thin, they barely exist. Worlds so undeveloped, you stop caring before they are even briefly described. Stories so ineptly told, you just lose the will to carry on. Naming of characters and places is lazy & derivative. There's someone called Thrang! I was stuck in a car listening to this drivel and used it as a study of how not to write. He uses the word 'suddenly' for impact. His stories seem to obsess about capturing women and putting them in cages. Not one likeable character in the whole misguided journey. Completely impossible to suspend your disbelief. Don't waste your time on this. It is unfathomably awful.

There was one moment of humour with 'Chun the Unavoidable' who as it turns out lives up to his name. Doesn't make up for the rest of it though.

So bad it was good? No - just awful.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.