Customer Reviews

If at Faust You Don't Succeed

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If At Faust you don't Succeed is the second book of a trilogy made by Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley. Though this book wasn't nearly as good as the first, I must say that it was still a worthy sequel. In this book, there is a contest being held between good and evil, and the victor gets to rule over mankind for the next thousand years. In this book, a human named Faust was chosen to represent mankind, but a thief named Mack accidentally got put in his place. So Faust goes off in search of Mack through time and space so he can switch places with Mack and gain his rightful place in the contest. If at Faust you Don't Succeed seems to be a bit more serious than the book before it (Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming), so some readers may be turned off by this fact. Other than that, it is still a great book and worth reading if you were a fan of the first book.

8/13/01 I have read both Zelazny's and Sheckley's books:"If At Faust You Don't Succeed"(timed in the middle ages with the wrong apothecary being kidnapped by the evil forces in error) and "Bring Me The Head Of Prince Charming", where body parts of the dead, are used to reconstruct a Prince (using legs of a coward who'd run away during a battle which gave the legs the magic of 'speed').They had credit cards from the supernatural world for their expense account to be able to pay for the services and supplies they needed from 'dark humans' who dealt in darkness with the occult,etc.The bottom line in these millenium wars between good and evil was that the good would default if they used any dishonest means to win the power of 1000 years and the bad would default if they used anything but their atypical deceptions to win the power to influence the world for 1000 years.. Although you're almost sure from the beginning who'll win, the book has enough slapstick humor to make you want to go the route with them as the baddies feel they've got their scheme in place this time.

Unlike its predecessor, "If at Faust" is not funny, the characters are entirely unformed--even the ones we met in the prequel--and there are many agitating inconsistencies in the plot. This is supposedly about a contest between good and evil which takes place at the close of every milennium. It was pretty clear when the first book took place, but this one is less certain. Are we in the year 2000? There's no indication. If we are, why do the contestents concern themselves so much with the medieval and renaissance cultures? Demons in the contemporary world might have been fun. And if this is not the year 2000, why in the world is there a contest? Several stages and characters are set up and introducted and then are just left alone, never developing into anything important or interesting. Basically, nothing happens, and it's just not funny. It's missing the absurd adorability and enchanting ingenuity (and humor) of the first book, "Bring Me the Hea! d of Prince Charming." All I can say in it's favor is that it's a very quick read.

This book is GREAT!!! It is just as good as Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming. I laughed and laughed! I couldn't put it down!