Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Re-Read.

It was years ago when I first devoured a whole slew of Zelazny's books shortly after reading Lord of Light, one of my all-time favorite SFs, and I may have read Creatures of Light and Darkness right after, cementing it as NOT AS GOOD AS the other in my head. I know. Silly. But understandable. Since then, having read so many other of his books, including the great Amber series, this book STILL continued to suffer being read after the other.

Fast forward decades later. I finally get around to re-reading the MFer and I'm suddenly thrilled and truly enjoying the hell out of it. After so many years and so much SF consumed, it's a real joy to read something so short, so light, and yet so vast as SF.

The God of Death and the God of Life got their avatars out into a far-future SF universe full of six alien races, evolving from a mystery and a man-hunt to a Hector vs Achilles all-out battle that destroys continents.

The funny part is the funny parts. Zelazny has a truly quirky personality. Between a priesthood that worships shoes to a future-reading priest reading his own entrails and bitching about his successor's ability to read his guts, there's so much to grin about.

It also has a real Stargate vibe.

Of course, this was published in 1969, so it's really the reverse. Stargate has a Zelazny vibe. :)

I'm thinking I'm going to go on something of a Zelazny re-binge soon. It's definitely worth it. Especially now. It was a brighter time then, and the humor is just about perfect.

View all my reviews