Ok, so the other night I finished The Gray Prince by Jack Vance and have to vent my frustrations with it. The premise of the story is you have a planet colonized by humans ages ago, then more sophisticated, advanced humans conquer some of those “native” humans and establish a semi-legal domain over their lands and people. The whole thing is very much a stand in for colonialism and especially the status of Native Americans and whether they should have the right to regain their seized lands.

Through most of the novel, the narrative seems to approach this with nuance and faults that affect both sides of the debate. On the onset it seems like you are getting into a situation with many shades of gray nopunintended. However, quite steeply in the later part of the book, Vance goes through great lengths to strip the scenario of any nuance and paint the ruling “land barons” as unequivocally right. Really, looking back the whole book was a fraud. It never intended to handle this topic with any complexity, but sneakily wanted to make a might-is-right wet dream scenario. The land barons only look racist, but actually they’re wholly 110% benevolent and actually understand and respect the native cultures far better than the naive and idealistic liberal urbanites. And the natives unconquered by the barons are savage and unredeemable whereas the same people under the land barons are civilized and happy. ... ugh. The narrative itself was enthralling enough but the substance was grotesque and left me with a betrayed feeling upon finishing it.