F/SF

This was a re-read of a book that I remember loving when I read it years ago as a teenager. Unfortunately, it hasn't really stood the test of time, and maybe I'm a more critical reader too.

The beginning is great - Zelazny makes no attempt to set the scene - we are just dumped into a situation and have to make sense of it as the story goes along. The anti-hero Jack also known as Jack of Shadows or Shadowjack is a long lived being from the dark side of the planet who has been caught hanging around with intent at a games where a fabulous gem is on offer as prize. He is denounced to the organiser by two contestants and the organiser has him executed immediately, solely on the basis of his reputation as thief. The contestants work for one of the Powers who rule darkside: the Lord of Bats. By the end of chapter one, Jack is resigned to his beheading, but vows that he will come back - though from a ghastly place called the Dungpits of Glyve - and will wreck vengeance on his list of enemies which includes the two contestants, the executioner, the games organiser and the Lord of Bats himself.

Next, Jack wakes up in the pits and has to regain his senses and travel back through great dangers, showing resourcefulness and also an amoral lack of compassion or sensitivity, possibly because all darksiders lack souls. Only the light siders who have only one life believe they have souls. So Jack's response to a beautiful singing bird is to eat it as a snack.

Eventually Jack's vengeance quest takes him to the light side of the planet where a society very similar to early 1970s USA (the book was published in 1971) exists, including the type of vast computer where you had to book time to run a program. And Jack takes up smoking which he proceeds to do a lot.

I won't say whether Jack achieves his vengeance or lives to gain a type of morality and to regret his deeds. The main problem with the book despite its inventiveness - and I do love the idea of someone who can take strength from shadows - is that there is no real development of the characters and some are just ciphers so that it isn't possible to feel any sympathy for them. Jack is developed more, but given his casual cruelties doesn't engage this reader at least. So although I like some aspects, the book doesn't live up to my memory of it. ( )

paperback

I first read this Zelazny novella a lifetime ago; I liked it then and I like it now, though I'm certain I see it in a different light given that lifetime's experience. Zelazny was enamoured of mythology, and that's what he presents here: a myth. It's trifle of a story, really, but like all good myths, speaks to deeper truths.

"Jack of Shadows" tracks as if the story of Prometheus mingled with "How the Leopard Got its Spots," and a _Just-So Stories_ version of the world reborn through an antihero came to be. There's a not-too-subtle similarity in "JoS" to the conflict and relationship between Ged and a wandering spirit of his doing in Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea" to Jack's own through the last half, but with a very distinct role reversal. It is, frankly, satisfying. Though Jack is an unsavory and unreliable narrator, his is the best p-o-v for this telling since Zelazny's gift was to make 'dark wry' the best loaf of all. ( )

Not one of my favorite Zelazny books, for sure. When we first meet our main character, he seems like the sort of rougish hero Zelazny does so well—he’s a thief on a mission, caught before he’s had a chance to do anything, and surrounded by opponents… who execute him.

But it turns out he’s immortal, sort of, and he is resurrected