Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny

1. Zelazny’s storytelling appears messy and barely legible. This isn’t neccesarily a fault: David Lynch practices non-linear storytelling and gets away with it easily, in my book. So my question is not whether Zelazny’s storytelling is good or bad, it’s whether the puzzle he creates is worth it for the reader or not. Let me describe the storytelling first.
—Zelazny jumps around quite a bit: short chapters, a number of characters, and various places all contribute to this sense of jumping around. He also begins chapters with no introduction. There is almost no intro-info-dump in any chapter, and what little there is simply describes the environment of the scene to come. However, there are so many places involved in this novel, and Zelazny’s method of description is so mysterious that even these descriptions do little to increase reader comprehension. Chapters also follow different characters, jumping back and forth. And it’s not always clear which character is which right off the bat because of Zelazny’s descriptions. Again, I want to stress that mystery is not a negative to me. But Zelazny jumps around. He does appear to be moving linearly though.
—So what is Zelazny going for? Why the mystery? Options typically include: attempting to impress the reader with the author’s intelligence, trying to give the reader that “ah ha” moment partyway through the novel, poor storytelling, and attempting to win a certain audience by being mysterious. This novel seems like mystery for mystery’s sake—trying to attract and keep readers who like having their mind working while they’re reading. And it pulls this off.
—Does it pay off? I simply don’t know. I was personally left with a desire to have more understanding at the end, but I enjoyed the journey quite a bit. There’s something to be said for that, but I know a lot of people who would hate this book.

2. Zelazny’s mysterious descriptions rely on perception almost entirely. Zelazny warns the reader of the coming mysteriousness in the first lines of the first chapter:

The man walks through his Thousandyear Eve in the House of the Dead. If you could look about the enormous room through which he walks, you couldn’t see a thing. It is far too dark for eyes to be of value.

For this dark time, we’ll simply refer to him as “the man.”

There are two reasons for this:

First, he fits the general and generally accepted description of an unmodified, male, human-model being—walking upright, having opposable thumbs and possessing the other typical characteristics of the profession; and second, because his name has been taken from him.

There is no need to be more specific at this point.

This description tells us three things explicitly: the man exists, has no name, and is at his Thousandyear Eve; he is in the House of the Dead, which might be where he spent the last nine hundred and ninety-nine years; and Zelazny sees no need to be more specific yet. However, this isn’t much information, nor is it very illuminative to the reader. Who is this man? What is the House of the Dead and what is it made of? Where is it? Why are we following him? Why should specifics be left for later? How does he not have a name? Four of these six questions are answered later. I’m still unsure why specifics needed to be left, and I’m also unsure what the House of the Dead is made of. Throughout the novel, even explanatory descriptions continue to be focused on perception:

Listen to the world. It is called Blis, and it is not hard to hear at all: The sounds may be laughter, sighs, contented belches. They may be the clog-clog of machinery or beating hearts. They may be footsteps, footsteps, the sound of a kiss, a slap, the cry of a baby. Music. Music, perhaps. The sound of typewriter keys through the Black Daddy Night, consciousness kissing paper only? Perhaps. Then forget the sounds and the words and look at the world.

First, colors: Name one. Red? There’s a riverbank that color, green stream hauled between, snagged on purple rocks. Yellow and gray and black is the city in the distance. Here in the open field, both sides of the river, are pavilions. Pick any color—they’re all about.

This example shows Zelazny’s typical descriptive technique. He describes a perceived aspect of the thing in order to set the mood: here it’s a riot of colors and noises. But the descriptions are mysterious because Zelazny sticks mostly to showing. Sure, he later tells that Blis is busy and full of people, but at the time of the description, this riot of colors and life could be for many reasons: it could be a penal colony, a life-rich world, a place where people have loud voices and love colors, or Zelazny’s instruction to forget the sounds could signify that this world is lifeless, as if the people there have left. It’s open. He narrows it later, but initially all is left open. In other words, Zelazny relies upon showing instead of telling, and only uses telling when he needs to narrow the possibilities to hint at the plot: like when Anubis explains the function of the House of Life and the House of the Dead, or when Zelazny tells us that Blis is crowded. Confusing this is how Zelazny often dips into second person and tells the reader what he is showing them. In short, his mysterious writing supports the mystery of the storytelling and plot.

3. The characterizations are weak: there are a lot of main characters for only two hundred pages of novel: the Prince, the poet, the Steel General, the Witch, Magra, the Warrior Priest, Anubis, Osiris, a sentient dark horse shadow—you get the idea. Each secondary character also has goals that come into play, like the Minotaur and Cerberus. This keeps the novel busy, but doesn’t allow the characters to really be developed fully. This could be viewed two ways: either Zelazny didn’t build his characters well, they’re still two dimensional; or he is trying support the mystery of the plot through having all these characters and goals.

4. And the plot might be why Zelazny is so evasive in this novel: it’s a mythical mystery novel set in a science fiction world that takes the form of Egyptian Cosmogony. Both Horus and “the man” are sent forth to kill a man of many names who was once a Prince and nobody knows where he is. Certain characters are both brothers and fathers to each other due to time travelling. The plot is a mystery and the strangeness of the storytelling and descriptions and characters all feed directly into that, supporting the unknown and making it seem planned rather than random, despite the jumping storyline.

5. However, the writing is superb. I’ve given two lengthy examples already, and will only add that the quality continues throughout. Zelazny, with word choice and sentence structure, is continually interesting and beautiful. The writing breaks into poem at times. Repetitions are spread throughout the novel, and one is even explained. He’s a wonderful writer and that is why I enjoyed the novel as much as I did.

6. The theme here is difficult to nail down, with all this mystery. So maybe it is the mystery itself: maybe the theme is that the world and God both work in mysterious ways. God is referred to as that Whatever who may be or may not be. The mystery is probably the theme here: it exists and must be worked with to be successful.

7. I think I’ve given a good overview of what it’s like to read this novel: strange and mysterious and beautiful. And that’s about all I can say. I was enjoying myself so much that I read it in two sittings. But the novel is ambiguous and if you need to know what’s happening, this novel is not for you.