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draackje 's review for:
Lord of Light
by Roger Zelazny
I'm just amazed by this book. Really amazed. It's in my top 3 of favorite scifi books. Probably in my top 10 books ever, but I need to let it sink in a little before I can make a statement like that. I had no expectations and no knowledge of the story before I started. It's entirely different from other scifi books I've read so it's difficult to compare; it's not action-packed like Enders game, it's not a space opera like Hyperion, but it's.. mythical.. This book could actually be the bible story of a future civilization. I was curious to see what other people thought of it, and stumbled onto a review that describes exactly how I feel about it, way better than I ever could, so I'm just gonna link you there:
Aerin's review of Lord of Light
And quote my favorite part of it:
Aerin's review of Lord of Light
And quote my favorite part of it:
On page one of Lord of Light, Zelazny drops the reader smack into the middle of an epic and eternal struggle, taking place on a distant planet in the distant future. It's an incredibly disorienting way to enter a story, especially one as bizarre and complicated as this one is. The structure of the novel is no help, either - it's divided into seven long and loosely-connected chapters, presented out of chronological order with no way for the reader to know, at first, that this is the case. The prose is grandiloquent and old-fashioned, which matches the book's mythic themes, but does nothing for clarity. And the overall premise of the novel is revealed only gradually, in broken bits and pieces throughout the narrative. As such, I spent the first half of this book having no idea what was going on.
So it's fair to say that overall, this is a dense, confusing, and difficult book. It is also, in retrospect, an extraordinary book, and I look forward to reading it again now that I know what it's all about. I can't think of any other book I've read recently that so demands to be reread.