Customer Reviews

Donnerjack

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Reviews before me have noted the obvious correlation between the end of the first third of this book and the death of the author. Others have argued with such statements, and offered grand compliments to the entirety of Donnerjack.

Allow me to underline the sentiments of the first and blink oddly at the latter in honest confusion.

The first third of Donnerjack is a work of art. Not only to fans of Zelazny, which I do not really count myself as. Not only to science-fiction fans, or fantasy fans. It is a true mythological tale which is so rarely seen in any genre. Death seems to spring from the page. John D'Arcy is seared into our minds. Virtu itself seems to spring up around us.

It's astounding. It is one the better books in this decade.

And then, as you go along, your mouth gaping with unshamed awe, the author dies.

And so does the grand story, its porportions, its characters, and its quiet grace.

It is replaced with something that at times seemed to be a childrens' book, a bodice-ripper, and a book based on a D&D session.

I tried to go on. I honestly did. Having devoured the first part in a day, I continued slogging on for literally weeks. I dismissed obvious inconsistencies. I skimmed over plot holes. I even laughingly skipped over the multiple, multiple, multiple times the characters acted with simple childish /idiocy/.

And then I stopped, somewhere fifty pages from the end. Because I could not bear to go on. Donnerjack had died, a hundred and fifty pages ago. What was left wasn't worth the torture.

Donnerjack is amazing. It is an astounding story, astoundingly written, striking somewhere deep within the collective unconcious. But it only runs for 186 pages before it turns into something debasing and crude, and something inside you breaks at that loss.

I've never written a amazon.com review before, and I doubt I will again. But I had to write this one.

Donnerjack is amazing. Don't ever read it. You'll cry a little.

Donnerjack is best described as a crying shame-first because I was practically crying reading the beginning third of the book that was so obviously Zelazny-fast, witty, engaging, unique-full of weird characters and a new computer type of mythology which is so Zelazny-ish! It was great to be reading Zelazny again years after he had died! The shame part of the book is after the first third (ended as part one) we enter part two which is obviously not Zelazny! Wordy to the extreme-boring, stupid, stupid humor (if I read "he or she or it CHUCKLED one more time I was gonna scream!) and chocked full of explanations which is one thing Roger once stated in an interview--He hated explanations!!! No wonder the book took so long to come out--it took Jane years to write the next 400 pages! As another reviewer pointed out, read the first third of the book and then stop, you'll be glad you did--Or else do as I do and read it with a handy magic-marker, its great for blacking out all the unnecessary wordiness!

I read Zelazny as a teen, but never kept up with his stuff. A few years ago I got hooked on Jane Lindskold's SF and fantasies (I've now read all of her books), and I loved Lord Demon, her first collaboration with Zelazny. Inevitably I picked up Donnerjack, and what a great story! It's long, but it's never boring or slow.

A hero confronts Death to regain a love from his realm, in exchange for their firstborn. Donnerjack weaves together tales of computer programs and ancient prototypical gods, legends and 22nd century Americans, and manages to tie them all together with a satisfyingly pretty bow. It balances an incredibly dark subject matter (trying to beat Death and eventually to let go when one cannot - bear in mind that after a long illness Zelazny actually died before the book was finished) with great stories that inexorably twine together as the plot moves forward. While exciting, it manages to catch creepy on a really visceral level - I couldn't just blast through this book like my usual reads, but had to take it in bits.

Part of why Donnerjack is so distressing is that the subject of death touches us all, and the authors capture its horror in delicate ways as when a character's gradual deterioration necessitates the amputation of his leg. The authors present this in such an unapologetic and off-handed way that it feels uncomfortably personal - if this didn't come from life it certainly felt like it. This must have been a very painful book to write. The result is just wonderful, though. Because of the authors' real-life situation, the evolution of the book's presentation of Death from being a horrific chaotic factor to a necessary (and even well-meaning) part of the lawful order of things is particularly evocative.

Because of the masterful storytelling, Donnerjack's plot unravels like a mystery. I genuinely did not know what to expect from one chapter to the next. Perhaps because of the personal stuggles of the authors with death, this "scientific fantasy" is also a novel of horror. As the tale draws on, a force more sinister than Death is gradually revealed, the horror building as the reader considers the implications of this evil. Lindskold and Zelazny do this artfully; Donnerjack reminds me of Lovecraft, with a little less Poe and a lot more storytelling and character development. It's a riveting, wonderful book. I'm going to have to make sure I read all the Zelazny I've missed over the years.

In reading Donnerjack, I came upon feelings that flip-flopped and changed back and forth. Some parts were unbearably awkward, lame, and badly written, totally un-Zelazny and just plain unappealing. Then there were some parts that seemed to just flow by because they were so exciting. I know that a lot of readers have commented that Zelazny only wrote the first part, but I don't think that's true. Zelazny has a certain bold flair in his writing most of the time, as if he's utterly confident that what's he's writing won't be termed as lame or otherwise. There were certain sections in the second part of Donnerjack that I know weren't just Jane Lindskold, because Zelazny's style was so clearly stamped upon them. Although it's also true that Lindskold dominates much of the second half of the book, and her long and winding style is pretty apparent for any reader to see. I would recommend Donnerjack to only long-time Zelazny readers, or at least people who have read other Zelazny works, because this piece is definitely not his best one, and it is just so LONG and winding at times.

Roger and I had a complex and difficult relationship. For years he made light of me, gave me the bum's rush and the cold shoulder, even compared me to Tokyo Bay. Finally he put me in a musical comedy; that was the last straw. He defeated every demon I could muster, but he couldn't hold off the cancer long enough to finish DONNERJACK. I thought I'd won, but he defeated me in the end. Now he's an immortal, destined to live forever, while I'm only a shadow in cyberspace. Here's to you, Roger: indomitable.

Zelazny's Donnerjack is maybe one of the most complex books he wrote in his awesome carreer. Again he mixes fantasy and SF in a way only he seemed able to do. But this is a book you can read and think in many levels, enjoy only the story (a good one,as always), or the concepts and ideas behind it, too. You can think it as a cyberpunk adventure, or you can go deeper into the philosophycal and religious stuff that are present in the whole story. It's interesting to think that a book he wrote just before his death is a novel about a man and his son fighting Death himself. If you think this way, maybe Donnerjack is Zelazny's homage to himself, and a farewell legacy with his view of the world. Here he can explain the roles of technology, fantasy, religion and mythology in his own life. You can read Donnerjack and compare it with some other books such as Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and Huxley's Brave New World, which deals with the same questions. Donnerjack isn't a! book easy to read and understand, and I don't recommend it for beginners in Zelazny's or science fiction books. But I recommend it strongly for those who already love this kind of literature. Anyway, have a good reading. You are all welcome to tell me your opinions about the book after you have read it.

This collaboration between Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold, while not entirely seamless, is very smooth. As one would expect of a Zelazny book, the characters and settings are wildly inventive. The virtual world, populated by living programs and mythic deities, is attempting to take physical reality in the "real" world. This is only the background plot. Much of the opening deals with a deal with a devil -- or Death, and the rest of the novel is involved with the consequences. Not quite as taut as, say, Lord of Light, the novel is nevertheless excellent. The novel would deserve a five-star rating if I were comparing it to the work of almost any other writer, but Zelazny can only be compared to Zelazny.

I really wanted to like this book. I was a big fan of the Amber series and thoroughly enjoyed his writing. Donnerjack had huge potential but never seemed to get were you wanted it to go. I was bored through the first third of the book but because of the writer stuck in out knowing that he'd tie it all up in the end and make it really work for us. In brief, I barely enjoyed reading this and wish I would have made another choice for my 6 bucks! However, Roger Zelaznys passing has definately left a gaping hole in a genre that has consistenly failed to grab me like it did in the old days! Maybe it's just me getting old!

...I like long books, so its length did not trouble me. The voice of two people haunted by death are clear to hear in the pages, I had no quarrel with its emotional authenticity. I liked the combination of science fiction and myth and the humor exposed in many of the characters.

If I quarreled with it, I quarreled with some of the more dream-like sections-- things went by too fast, or were explained too little. There was too thin of a line between fascination and irritation in that respect.

Most of the time I am not a fan of posthumous completions. And I was very wary of somebody "finishing" work by Zelazny. I was pleasantly surprised. Recommended.

For the first 300 pages of Donnerjack I was in heaven. The Zelazny of "Lord of Light", "Jack of Shadows", and the original "Amber" series was evident. Strange places, myriad characters doing what they do, and why is up to, well, whatever you can deduce as the action goes on. The concepts of "Virtu" (the cyberworld) and "Verite" (consensual mundane reality) are pure Zelazny. The mystery surrounding the interaction of the two is pure Zelazny. The characters are pure Zelazny. Sometime around the middle third of the book the style underwent a significant change. The concepts were still fabulous, the characters still outrageous, but the style seemd very UNzelazny. The Zelazny of "Lord of Light", and indeed the first third of this book, does not reveal WHY the characters think and feel as they do. Enough background is supplied to allow the reader to deduce/intuit/project personal patterns and motivations. After the middle of Donnerjack, however, motives, attitudes and foibles are handily supplied in a pleasant, expository manner. The STORY does not suffer particularly from the stylistic change, although towards the last third of the book I found myself skipping pages of stuff. I've read several Zelazny collaborations that didn't work for me at all. This book, not a collaboration exactly, worked for me in all the important ways. However, I must say that the stylistic inconsistancy of the prose kept me from TOTAL and COMPLETE ecstacy in the presence of the master.