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econsidine's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
I don't know how to give this one a rating, because I really don't know what to make of it. I enjoyed parts of it, but it was also tricky and a lot of work to get through, and most of my enjoyment comes from meta-knowledge about the author and his influence so I'm not sure I would have liked it as much if I hadn't already had a connection to his work. Roger Zelazny was a SFF writer from the 60s and 70s, I read some of his other books growing up (Nine Princes in Amber and A Night in the Lonesome October, both excellent). He was hugely influential to a lot of big-name SFF writers like Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, and Andrzej Sapkowski, and there's a lot in here that, having read and enjoyed their work, is kind of cool to see the preceding threads of. I think it's a coincidence, but this plot is actually weirdly similar to the backstory of The Locked Tomb trilogy, just written 50+ years earlier, and I'm curious if Tamsyn Muir has read this.
Taken on its own, however, this book is hard to connect with since it's vague and written from a removed third person omniscient POV (like you're reading a retold legend) rather than from a particular character's POV, unlike his other books. It's about a group of people from Earth who have figured out immortality via reincarnation, colonized another planet, deliberately withheld knowledge of technology from the masses to maintain power, and stylized themselves as Hindu gods. If you don't know that info going in (it's written on the back cover), it takes a remarkably long time to understand that's what's going on. I didn't realize until 50 pages from the end that the book was almost entirely a flashback after the first chapter, and that's not even supposed to be a twist. A lot of characters have multiple names and titles used interchangeably with little explanation. "Earth" is never mentioned (only ~3 times is there reference to an "Urath") and all tech is similarly referred to as if it is magic even though it isn't (transmitters, plumbing, radios, etc). The actual backstory behind the characters' relationships with each other is almost entirely unexplained. Many of the most interesting characters have only a couple pages of actual lines.
This amount of restraint in providing context (and trusting that the reader can figure it out) is not new to Zelazny's books, but I'd argue it works less well here than in his other stories. Characters like Corwin (an amnesiac, NPiA) and Snuff (a dog, ANitLO) have particular reasons for not understanding everything that is happening, and writing from their POVs makes you, as the reader, join them in the tension of figuring out what's going on--that tension is the plot. When there is a seemingly omniscient, reflective POV, like here, it gets frustrating because you feel like you should get what's going on but don't. His dialogue is still wonderfully deceptive--he is fantastic at making conversations feel like intense action--but any actions scenes are hard to follow, and there are a lot of them here. There are also a lot of themes that feel important but are discussed in such a removed/veiled sense (colonization, theocracy & technocracy, the way that rhetoric shapes political power), it feels like the thoughts Zelazny is trying to put forth get muddled.
Again, I still loved a lot of this book. There's gender fuckery. There's love triangles. There's really dry humor. There's a ton of Hindu mythology. There's a guy excitedly inventing the toilet. If you're up for a challenge and want to read a major predecessor to today's big SFF books, Lord of Light might be for you.
Taken on its own, however, this book is hard to connect with since it's vague and written from a removed third person omniscient POV (like you're reading a retold legend) rather than from a particular character's POV, unlike his other books. It's about a group of people from Earth who have figured out immortality via reincarnation, colonized another planet, deliberately withheld knowledge of technology from the masses to maintain power, and stylized themselves as Hindu gods. If you don't know that info going in (it's written on the back cover), it takes a remarkably long time to understand that's what's going on. I didn't realize until 50 pages from the end that the book was almost entirely a flashback after the first chapter, and that's not even supposed to be a twist. A lot of characters have multiple names and titles used interchangeably with little explanation. "Earth" is never mentioned (only ~3 times is there reference to an "Urath") and all tech is similarly referred to as if it is magic even though it isn't (transmitters, plumbing, radios, etc). The actual backstory behind the characters' relationships with each other is almost entirely unexplained. Many of the most interesting characters have only a couple pages of actual lines.
This amount of restraint in providing context (and trusting that the reader can figure it out) is not new to Zelazny's books, but I'd argue it works less well here than in his other stories. Characters like Corwin (an amnesiac, NPiA) and Snuff (a dog, ANitLO) have particular reasons for not understanding everything that is happening, and writing from their POVs makes you, as the reader, join them in the tension of figuring out what's going on--that tension is the plot. When there is a seemingly omniscient, reflective POV, like here, it gets frustrating because you feel like you should get what's going on but don't. His dialogue is still wonderfully deceptive--he is fantastic at making conversations feel like intense action--but any actions scenes are hard to follow, and there are a lot of them here. There are also a lot of themes that feel important but are discussed in such a removed/veiled sense (colonization, theocracy & technocracy, the way that rhetoric shapes political power), it feels like the thoughts Zelazny is trying to put forth get muddled.
Again, I still loved a lot of this book. There's gender fuckery. There's love triangles. There's really dry humor. There's a ton of Hindu mythology. There's a guy excitedly inventing the toilet. If you're up for a challenge and want to read a major predecessor to today's big SFF books, Lord of Light might be for you.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Violence, Excrement, Animal death, Ableism, and War
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