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A review by stephenmeansme
Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny
4.0
A quick, freewheeling, Jack-Kirby-comic-cover / prog-rock-album-cover of a book. Zelazny is great with words, and a great plunderer of mythologies: in this case, (mostly) Egyptian. Ostensibly the plot is about a cosmic war between post-human demigods over the "Powers" and Life and Death and maybe killing God? But various little interludes and vignettes demonstrate that Zelazny is nowhere near taking himself as seriously as all that. Some of the scenes were as if Monty Python did sf. The "serious" sfnal images and concepts are pretty cool, though - for example, Zelazny's hallucinatory description of "temporal fugue" combat.
And at less than 200 pages, it doesn't overstay its welcome, either. I think I actually liked this better than LORD OF LIGHT; that was a fine story, but I think a lot more of it was borrowed and refined by later authors so it didn't feel as fresh. Whereas, even though Egyptian mythology has been done to death, its familiarity allows Zelazny to throw piles of weird sf goodness on top.
Overall, 3.5 stars rounded up to 4. Read for a fun trip.
And at less than 200 pages, it doesn't overstay its welcome, either. I think I actually liked this better than LORD OF LIGHT; that was a fine story, but I think a lot more of it was borrowed and refined by later authors so it didn't feel as fresh. Whereas, even though Egyptian mythology has been done to death, its familiarity allows Zelazny to throw piles of weird sf goodness on top.
Overall, 3.5 stars rounded up to 4. Read for a fun trip.