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Book Review - Doorways in the Sand
All right, I just finished Doorways in the Sand by the incomparable Roger Zelazny. And I don't use the word incomparable lightly... it's just that in this case I kind of wish there was something to compare this book to.
The book relies on a fairly annoying structural premise; every chapter begins en media res, with the rest of the chapter spent catching up to the first paragraph. This is a perfectly acceptable literary device, but come on-- you can't expect to get away with that any more than three times in a doorstop-sized novel. The continual scene-shifting didn't really serve to disconcert me so much as aggravate me, especially considering that RZ went out of his way to make the beginning of each chapter as preposterously different from everything else in the book as possible.
The story is fragmentary, loopy, and generally about as well-put-together as your average robot on Junkyard Wars. It feels like RZ just threw together a bunch of random plot elements (psychic plants, reversal of biochemistry, telepathic teletype, aliens dressed as kangaroos) and shook weakly until the novel plopped out. There's not a lot of coherence, and the characters aren't all that likable either.
The only real redeeming factor of the novel (at least to my anarchic mind) is the sort of lassez-faire hero that Zelazny excels at creating. Fred Cassidy is not by any means your standard evil-bashing hero... but nor is he a focused-on-protecting-number-one antihero. He's pretty much unique, and out of the whole book he's the only thing I'm going to remember in six months.
Rating: ** (out of four)
Recommendation: If you're looking for a modern Tales of the Weird-style story to entertain your overactively imaginative kids, this one will keep them rooted to their chairs trying to guess what happens next. If not, find one of RZ's other, better books.
The book relies on a fairly annoying structural premise; every chapter begins en media res, with the rest of the chapter spent catching up to the first paragraph. This is a perfectly acceptable literary device, but come on-- you can't expect to get away with that any more than three times in a doorstop-sized novel. The continual scene-shifting didn't really serve to disconcert me so much as aggravate me, especially considering that RZ went out of his way to make the beginning of each chapter as preposterously different from everything else in the book as possible.
The story is fragmentary, loopy, and generally about as well-put-together as your average robot on Junkyard Wars. It feels like RZ just threw together a bunch of random plot elements (psychic plants, reversal of biochemistry, telepathic teletype, aliens dressed as kangaroos) and shook weakly until the novel plopped out. There's not a lot of coherence, and the characters aren't all that likable either.
The only real redeeming factor of the novel (at least to my anarchic mind) is the sort of lassez-faire hero that Zelazny excels at creating. Fred Cassidy is not by any means your standard evil-bashing hero... but nor is he a focused-on-protecting-number-one antihero. He's pretty much unique, and out of the whole book he's the only thing I'm going to remember in six months.
Rating: ** (out of four)
Recommendation: If you're looking for a modern Tales of the Weird-style story to entertain your overactively imaginative kids, this one will keep them rooted to their chairs trying to guess what happens next. If not, find one of RZ's other, better books.