The Lord Of Light

With Gods, duels, battles, repartee and cleverly sewn plots and subplots, this Hugo award winning, Nebula award nominated masterpiece deserves a mantelpiece of its own. Zelany is a wizard at weaving ancient myths with the distant future to create surreal results. It was a pleasure to be led by the author as he builds different worlds going back and forth in flashbacks and cleverly written episodes. At times, just keeping up is a cerebral exercise but it has a charming, unputdownable aspect to it with several puns, jokes, and riddles. It’s hard to put the pieces together at first but the dappy dialogue and craftily constructed situations grip your attention. Reading the Lord of Light was a strangely exhilarating experience, perhaps made richer by the fact that the premise was built around the Hindu and Buddhist pantheon that I’m more familiar with. This is a 6/5, and if you like science fiction, there is a high likelihood that you will love this book.