Details:
- author: Roger Zelazny
- full title: Roadmarks
- narrator: Matt Godfrey
- genre: sci-fi, fantasy
- topics: #timetravel
- publisher: Recorded Books
- publish date: 30.11.2021
- timing: 5:13:00
My Rating of the Audiobook:
- content: 💙💙💙.5
- narration: 💙💙💙💙.5
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| Goodreads |
People do it every day. Why else would they travel the Road? Everywhere they go, they alter the branches some way or other.
But the Road has always been there, and those of us who can travel it always have.
My Thoughts:
I didn’t read anything by Roger Zelazny before. So I didn’t know what to expect. The premise of this book is promising: time travelers, so count me in. But I saw quite early in the book that this is not a novel all sci-fi fans would like. The story is very good and highly imaginative, but different.There is a road that leads anywhere or better anytime. So you can travel anywhere in time: past, future, and even in alternative versions of history. All you have to do is find the right exit.
A wild set of characters: from humans, and AI, to dragons. All the chapters are named two and one. And we start with chapter two. This is the first confusing thing, and there’s more. For most of the book, you don’t know what is going on. There are pieces of the story, same people in different timelines. Only towards the end, things become clear.
There is one narrator for the entire audiobook. He changes his voice and tone to suit the story. I liked his narration.
I think this novel could be better if it was longer.
About the Author:
Roger Zelazny made his name with a group of novellas which demonstrated just how intense an emotional charge could be generated by the stock imagery of sf; the most famous of these is A Rose for Ecclesiastes in which a poet struggles to convince dying and sterile Martians that life is worth continuing. Zelazny continued to write excellent short stories throughout his career. Most of his novels deal, one way or another, with tricksters and mythology, often with rogues who become gods, like Sam in Lord of Light, who reinvents Buddhism as a vehicle for political subversion on a colony planet.
The fantasy sequence The Amber Chronicles, which started with Nine Princes in Amber, deals with the ruling family of a Platonic realm at the metaphysical heart of things, who can slide, trickster-like through realities, and their wars with each other and the related ruling house of Chaos. Zelazny never entirely fulfilled his early promise—who could?—but he and his work were much loved, and a potent influence on such younger writers as George R. R. Martin and Neil Gaiman.
He won the Nebula award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo award six times (out of 14 nominations). His papers are housed at the Albin O. Khun Library of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).
