Review of "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" by Roger Zelazny

(This review has also been posted at www.fantasyliterature.com) 

My experience with Roger Zelazny has been hit or miss, and while I consider The Doors of his Face, the Lamps of His Mouth a miss, it’s not terrible.  The main fault of the fifteen stories is that characterization remains uniform throughout.  The same cigarette smoking, coffee drinking, detective noir Joe Cool hero populates the main character role of seemingly every story.  Though likeable, this lack of variety gets monotonous.  Secondly, that the outcome of every story has the hero victorious and triumphant, albeit in occasionally surprising ways, the general predictability likewise undermines the integrity of the collection.  Smoking butts, throwing never-miss left hooks, and having the suave line for the ladies are par for the course of this short story collection.  

There are strong points, however.  Zelazny excels as a stylist. Dialogue wonderful and emotion fully shown rather than told, the predictability of the plots can be overlooked by the ease with which the narratives develop.  Thematic content is also respectable. Ideas routinely touched upon in the stories include the long term evolution of culture and societies, man vs. the elements, and the social motivation for individual’s major life changing decisions.

In the end, I would say that if you are already a Zelazny fan, this book will undoubtedly be of interest.  Every story is fully in line with the other works of his I’ve read.  If you enjoyed some of Zelazny’s works, but not others, then this book will probably not open your eyes to anything new.  And if you’ve never read anything by him, then it would probably be best if you started somewhere else.  Taking full advantage of his strengths as a writer, Lord of Light or ...This Immortal are among the best science fiction produced after WWII, and are a better starting place, if not better, more distinguished writing. 

Review of "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny

The scholar Brain Atterbery in his book Strategies of Fantasy writes that works of science fantasy can be divided only one of two ways: the beautiful and the damned.  No middle ground to be had, technology and the supernatural remain relative to the era, and combining them disastrous to the point of comedy or successful to the point of being a mind-opening experience.  Falling into the latter category, Lord of Light, unlike much of Zelazny’s other works of science fantasy, is a flawless blend of the archetypes of science fiction and the mythologies of Hinduism and Buddhism.  The result is simply the peak of imaginative literature.

 

Working with Indian history, particularly the time of Buddhism’s rise to rival the teachings of Hinduism, Zelazny plays off this opposition to tell the story of Sam, the man who was a god but wasn’t.  One of the original members of a spaceship crew stranded on an unknown planet, Sam rejects the totalitarianist ways of the crew who have made themselves out to be gods, ruling the populace with superior technology while satiating their own desire for worship and power.  Forming alliances with demons and gods, Zelazny brings the Hindu pantheon to life in his fight against it, the Buddhist doctrine of right to life to the masses emphasized in his attempts to crash the gods’ party.  Sam does not always survive the epic battles, but then again reincarnation is just a matter of technology.  The novel divided into several sections that do not follow upon another logically, this cyclical story of Sam’s triumph must be pieced together like mythology itself, the story unable to be told another way.

In short, everything about Lord of Light works.  The vivid imagery, narrative structure, the dialogue, the use of Buddhist and Hindu folklore, character motivation, the colors, the crackle, the connection to culture – everything propels Lord of Light into the highest ranks of science fantasy.  Quite simply, it’s a masterpiece that anyone calling themselves a fan of speculative fiction must read. 

(This review has also been posted at www.fantasyliterature.com)