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A review by jmercy
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
3.0
3/5. I'd say it's on the same level as ring world but 'lord of light' by Roger zelanzyzyysyey has a much worse first 100 pages.
It has non-linear story telling which I don't mind, it's a good pick for the story but that doesn't excuse the first 100 pages.
It is not a sci-fi book or a fantasy book, it's slipstream. The first 100 pages are the worst about that, they won't fucking cough up any details on how the world actually works behind the scenes.
There are 3 page long dialogues by a single character, there are pages of back and forth conversation with no indication of who is talking (I'm sure this could be bad for some people, if you really hate it, listen to the audiobook as you read, that fixes all of it.)
There are long long monologues especially toward the beginning where it's just pseudo philosophy stuff.
The story reminds me more of a fable, religious text, or ancient story rather than a fucking novel at times. It has influences from Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and even has references to the monkey King journey to the east or whatever at the end. All of that is cool.
I am not completely unaware of the hindu gods and some of the stories, but I wouldn't say I know them, if someone started telling me them I could probably guess the gods name involved. If I lovedddd that shit or atleast knew more of it, this book would have been better, but still it has other faults not originating from my lack of background knowledge.
I almost DNF'd it so many times during the first 100 pages, I am not even particularly happy I finished it to be honest. I find it was an 'okay' novel, I see why some people would love it and I am not saying it's objectively bad but it definitely wasn't great for me.
Does it deserve to be called the greatest science fiction novel of all time like I have seen a few times? Fuck no, you are smoking dicks.
The whole story wraps up very quickly at the end too. Sort of in a rush.
Should you read it? Idk, maybe try it.
It's like Ringworld, I want to know what the fuck is going on, and it takes forever, and then when they do explain some of it, it's not as cool as I hoped.
I think the whole idea could be much more entertaining, but Roger had his own vision, and that's fine.
I think it'd be more interesting to see how they have changed and modified the pantheon along with I'm sure there are allusions and similarities I missed because I am not deeply knowledgeable on that religion. I saw many Christian allusions and even it felt like some for scientology.
Infact, I wanted to discuss the relation to scientology more. I wonder if anyone has explored that angle or thought of it. The energy being shit, the mind probe and karmic system.
The founders lying to everyone even the new Gods to some degree.
And in relation to breaking the 'actual lore', isn't that sort of the point? The characters are reenacting Hinduism for their own benefit. It would never be a complete and accurate retelling of the stories.
And as for the philosophical stuff, yeah I don't mind it and even can enjoy it in a book when it's good, the problem was it was somewhat front loaded and shoved at me before I should care about the book.
The weird setting is awesome, like I said, I'd have rather explored the setting in a more 'hard scifi' novel or something, I guess Roger is new wave like PKD and doesn't like doing that sort of stuff but I wanted to stick around and explore the world.
It has non-linear story telling which I don't mind, it's a good pick for the story but that doesn't excuse the first 100 pages.
It is not a sci-fi book or a fantasy book, it's slipstream. The first 100 pages are the worst about that, they won't fucking cough up any details on how the world actually works behind the scenes.
There are 3 page long dialogues by a single character, there are pages of back and forth conversation with no indication of who is talking (I'm sure this could be bad for some people, if you really hate it, listen to the audiobook as you read, that fixes all of it.)
There are long long monologues especially toward the beginning where it's just pseudo philosophy stuff.
The story reminds me more of a fable, religious text, or ancient story rather than a fucking novel at times. It has influences from Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and even has references to the monkey King journey to the east or whatever at the end. All of that is cool.
I am not completely unaware of the hindu gods and some of the stories, but I wouldn't say I know them, if someone started telling me them I could probably guess the gods name involved. If I lovedddd that shit or atleast knew more of it, this book would have been better, but still it has other faults not originating from my lack of background knowledge.
I almost DNF'd it so many times during the first 100 pages, I am not even particularly happy I finished it to be honest. I find it was an 'okay' novel, I see why some people would love it and I am not saying it's objectively bad but it definitely wasn't great for me.
Does it deserve to be called the greatest science fiction novel of all time like I have seen a few times? Fuck no, you are smoking dicks.
The whole story wraps up very quickly at the end too. Sort of in a rush.
Should you read it? Idk, maybe try it.
It's like Ringworld, I want to know what the fuck is going on, and it takes forever, and then when they do explain some of it, it's not as cool as I hoped.
I think the whole idea could be much more entertaining, but Roger had his own vision, and that's fine.
I think it'd be more interesting to see how they have changed and modified the pantheon along with I'm sure there are allusions and similarities I missed because I am not deeply knowledgeable on that religion. I saw many Christian allusions and even it felt like some for scientology.
Infact, I wanted to discuss the relation to scientology more. I wonder if anyone has explored that angle or thought of it. The energy being shit, the mind probe and karmic system.
The founders lying to everyone even the new Gods to some degree.
And in relation to breaking the 'actual lore', isn't that sort of the point? The characters are reenacting Hinduism for their own benefit. It would never be a complete and accurate retelling of the stories.
And as for the philosophical stuff, yeah I don't mind it and even can enjoy it in a book when it's good, the problem was it was somewhat front loaded and shoved at me before I should care about the book.
The weird setting is awesome, like I said, I'd have rather explored the setting in a more 'hard scifi' novel or something, I guess Roger is new wave like PKD and doesn't like doing that sort of stuff but I wanted to stick around and explore the world.