Jack of Shadows

Rating:
Summary: great sci fi tale
Review: Any one who has ever read any of Zelaznys books (and enjoyed them) should try and get a copy of this one .The story is pure genius, although the plot has a few holes in it.It is the character Jackwho sets the book apart from the normal sci -fi ennui -You get half way through the novel and actually like Jack, even though he is a thief , murderer, out and out scoundrel. I actually wanted to meet him! I actually wanted to be himAlas! that was the magic of Roger ZelaznyTaken before your time Roger. I would have liked to have had the chance to meet youI hope somewhere you found Ambe

Rating:
Summary: You'll thank me in the morning..
Review: Instead of breaking down the story piece by piece, I'll just save you the time and tell you what I personally thought of Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows.

This was a great stand-alone book with a cliff-hanger ending that (unfortunatly) does not get resolved with a sequel, but I loved the way it read. This is the kind of book that draws you in right when it starts and keeps beckoning for you to pick it back up for more! Casual readers especially can trust me on this. The character "Shadow Jack" is an anti-hero, but one you'll remember forever and love. This book is never too "light" or too "dark" which makes for the perfect blend and would definitely appeal to all readers.

Anime fans who loved the movie "Vampire Hunter D" will especially find this book extremely cool and one for the keeping. The characters and the setting are so weird/unique that a live action movie and or anime, assuming that it be done correctly, would be an instant success! Why hasn't this crossed the minds of Hollywood? Read Jack of Shadows and you'll be plagued with the same questions..

Rating:
Summary: A good read that might have been great
Review: This book seems like the last hurrah of Zelazny's early
writing career. Roughly contemporaneous with the first
couple of Amber books, it's a fast-developing science-fantasy,
told with a lot of poetic imagery, and (for the most part)
well written. As was common for a lot of his work of this
period, the language seems to echo Elizabethan and Jacobean
poetry, and the author's control is always good. In pattern,
it resembles a Jacobean period revenge tragedy--another
feature of his early work.

The characters, the fantasy milieu (sort of scientifically
justified), and the plot are good. At this stage in his
career, Zelazny seemed to throw this sort of thing off in
an almost offhand manner.

I like this book a lot. The first half is, I think, among the
best things Zelazny wrote of this sort. There are problems
with the second half of the book, though. The protagonist,
Jack, almost a supernatural force in human form, relocates
to the quotidian world to perform research "undercover" as
it were. This is a nice notion. It's interesting to note
how the sense of shadow and darkness that accompanied Jack
seems to follow him even into the "daylight" world in the
form of mood and verbal imagery.

The color and inventiveness of the book almost carry the
reader away--but not quite. Unfortunately, after a
good beginning of the second part of the book, it feels as
if Zelazny was in too much of a hurry: the storytelling seems
too perfunctory. I think he could have gotten a lot more
out of Jack's life in the daylight side. Here the book feels
almost like an outline for a novel rather than the novel
itself.

The final section, when Jack has returned to the dark side,
works out with a certain inevitability, but I think it
became a little too predictable.

A good book, for all these qualms. I'd give it a 4.5 for the
first part, then a 3-3.5 the rest of the way. It's useless
to complain about what the writer might have given us. We've
got all that Zelazny wanted to write on this subject. I'm
happy with the final product. I think admirers of Zelazny
will mostly feel the same.