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Rating: 
Summary: Unique in the Sheckley canon
Review: Sheckley's world is populated with flesh-and-blood creatures, but all the same it reminds me of Lem's "Cyberiad". I'm sure it reminds everyone of Lem's Cyberiad. And yes, Lem is better. Now that that's out of the way ...King Dramocles discovers on his fortieth birthday that he has a Destiny, but he doesn't yet know what it is; and thereafter the book is the story of one triggering mnemonic after another, each one bringing to light an earlier memory which, usually, gives Dramocles reason to disregard all the previous mnemonics. A contemporary reviewer said that Sheckley "pulls rabbit after rabbit out of his hat, trying to fool us into thinking that hat is really a Russian doll." Well, it seems I was fooled. The book doesn't consist of deus ex machina; it's ABOUT deus ex machina. (Sorry I don't know the plural of the Latin.) The plot twists seemed like true plot twists, because Sheckley never tries to pretend that the story is spontaneous ... the only constancy the reader can cling to is this: whatever is going on, it isn't spontaneous. It's written in the latterday Sheckley style, where Sheckley shows evidence of boredom with his slick magazine writing of the 1950s ... sometimes resulting in slipshod work, but sometimes, as here, resulting in something more fresh and interesting. Not his best book, but one of his sweetest.
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