mostly harmless books

This is one big OMG. How did I miss it?

Via FBS: a new novel by Roger Zelazny, called Dead Man’s Brother, will be published in February 2009. There are some details here and an excerpt here. It’s published by Hard Case (which, for me, as someone who doesn’t read crime novels, means “the guys who published King’s Colorado Kid“).

The excerpt is yummy, typical Zelazny. I loved the way he used hardboiled elements in his fantasy, it should be really interesting to read a whole crime novel from him.

This makes me happy. I thought the amount of Zelazny books I could read was finite (the downside of your favorite author being dead), but yay! for new (old) books.

I think it’s fitting that the first real entry on this blog should be about my favorite writer.

Last month’s reading highlight: I read Lord of Light and I liked it.

Why is that unusual? It needs a little (personal) history lesson.

I discovered Zelazny around 1996. I was 12 and I think me or my brother got Nine Princes in Amber (the translation) as a present at the end of the school year. I was already a voracious reader and had just started discovering speculative fiction via my parents’ collection (which included stuff like Dune and Foundation). So, I read Nine Princes in Amber and I loved it. Then re-read it. And again. I honestly think I must’ve read it 10 times. Thing is, 1996 Romania didn’t have two things that are important for me now: many SF/F books and internet. So it took me 7 or 8 years until I got online and found out there were 9 more books in the series! You can imagine my joy.

Anyway, back to the story. I determined that Zelazny was a very cool writer and set out to find more books by him. Until 2007, only four of his books were published here: Nine Princes in Amber, Lord of Light, Damnation Alley and This Immortal. (In 2007, Tritonic started publishing The Amber Chronicles and they’re up to book 6 at the moment.)

So I read Lord of Light (knowing that it was considered Zelazny’s best by many) and was dissapointed. I just couldn’t see what the fuss was about. A few years later, I read it in English (maybe something had been lost in the translation). Nope, the translation was fine, I just didn’t get it. Then, last month, I re-read the book as part of a book club and lo and behold, it was amazing!
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