Star King

Star King, the first book in Jack Vance’s Demon Princes series, is a superb sci-fi space opera. The story centers on a young protagonist named Kirth Gersen, whose aim is to track down a group of alien criminals who destroyed his home planet when he was a boy. The plot is a bit of a one-note revenge story, but Vance is a science fiction writer of unusually high quality, with vivid scenes and memorable descriptions of alien landscapes. Recommended.