Lord of Light

I finished reading Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny early Sunday morning and I'm just now getting around to posting about it. Part is blamed by Prince Caspian coming out in theaters and Eddie Izzard being the voice of Reepicheep, and subsequently, the amount of Eddie Izzard I've watched in the past 2 days. The other part of my lack-of-postness is because I had no clue where to start on this book. None whatsoever.

I made the mistake of picking up the book, getting through the first 2 chapters, and having to set it down. The beginning chapters is the end of the tale and it isn't that apparent. The other mistake I made in regards to Lord of Light is by not reading the back of the book first.

"Earth is long since dead. On a Colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rules their world as the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them: he who was once Siddhartha and is now Mahasamatman. Binder of Demons. Lord of Light"

Yes, there is technology present all throughout the book, but I'm apparently pretty dense this week as I didn't realize until halfway through that the gods were ruling with technology alone. That it was the technology that made them gods as opposed to actual god-powers, whatever that is. Gods made themselves immortal by machines constantly placing their lifeforce into new bodies, much like in Biting the Sun.

Once I sat down, restarted Lord of Light and really focused on the book itself, I enjoyed it. There is a huge cast of characters to play in this book, all which can reincarnate through technical means. Not to mention if certain gods aren't reincarnated, their co-gods fill in. So God A dies, God B changes bodies and names to be like God A, and yet still has the same personal interaction as God B originally did. This book is not straight forward whatsoever. Its not the smoothest read either. Zelazny goes off on random tangents. One such is about a rajah and how this particular rajah collects taxes, and the only part of that tangent that holds anything relevant to story line is that the rajah rules the city which is a 5 day journey from the mountain named Channa. Pardon the mini rant, but it irked me slightly.

The beginning isn't too straight forward, theres a bit of confusion with all the body switching, and a couple of detours. The war between the gods though, awesome. Each one has their own cool superpowers, and your archivist gets turned into a monkey. There are a couple of good quotes in there as well.

"For six days he had offered many kilowatts of prayer, but the static kept him from being heard On High."

The above quote seems to be out of the geeks version of the Bible. Off to read something else, as since watching Eddie Izzard on Youtube was too addicting.