Cheap Changeling (Book) (Roger Zelazny) Price

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Customer Reviews of Changeling

Read me before buying!
Before I go ahead, a caveat: This is NOT a compilation of both Changeling and Madwand. It is only Changeling. That said, you'll probably be better served buying the two from a used-book store (the good Mr. Zelazny is passed away, so I don't much care about enriching whomever owns the copyrights at this point). It's unfortunate iBooks has decided to start milking the great man's work for every dollar by no longer offering compilations of at least two novels.

This is perhaps the most fun for any fan of Zelazny to read; it lacks the density and breakneck pace of Creatures of Light and Darkness and Lord of Light or the tiresome rehashing of his later Amber books. The blend of science and technology is never done better. Hand this to a kid who thinks there's nothing in wizardry beyond Harry Potter.

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Zelazny lets a potential masterpiece slip away
This is a modest fantasy/adventure featuring a burgeoning sorcerer and an overachieving master of technology who have been switched at birth. Pol Det is the inheritor of Randoval, the lordly castle of a magical kingdom in another dimension, and Mark Marakson is the genius of engineering and technology. Old Mor, a wizard from the magical realm, switches these two as babies, hoping to avert a recurrence of the cataclysm that has so often ravaged his world. In the technological realm, Pol is a guitarist, a detached dreamer who never seems to fit in. In the magical world, Mark's mechanical inventions frighten and anger a community that associates science with destruction. Only the beautiful Nora seems to understand Mark's passion, skill, and frustration. Will these two young men ever discover the secret of their linked destinies? If so, will they become fast friends or mortal enemies? And what role will be played by the mysterious thief who has purloined some valuable figurines, and the hidden caverns full of sleeping dragons?

Overall, this is a modest entertainment with a fascinating setup that too-quickly deteriorates into just another tale of spells and dragons and talismans and so on. Zelazny's fiction is notable for its experiments in form as well as substance, and this book shows every promise of being much more than it finally turns out to be. He effectively defines the process used to work magic spells, he creates characters with a little more than just one flat dimension, he pits his magician against technological forces that go well past swords and catapults, and manages to surprise us more than once, but still doesn't quite deliver the kind of masterpiece we feel the story merited. We expect more from Zelazny, and we almost think we are going to get it, but around page 80 or so, he abandons subtleties like character study and opts instead for the more prosaic quest-for-powerful-weapons-to-defeat-the-bad-guy material. From that point
on this book is pretty average, almost as though the author tired of struggling to keep his story innovative and original and just went ahead with standard dragons-and-sorcerers fare. This is not to say that fantasy fans won't enjoy it; this reader's disappointment rather stems from the recognition of just how close Zelazny came to revolutionizing the whole form, before frittering the opportunity away.

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Zelazny in a fugue?
This mass market 'youth' novel is Zelazney writing for the kids who ride to school in the short bus. This book is so bad it is a veritable "Planet Nine From Outer Space" in print.

I don't have the adjectives to convey its insipid characters, tediously dull plot, politically correct dialog and lack of both romance and adventure. Hero and villain are not only changelings they are interchangable, even in the ennui deadened eyes of the heroine. The obligatory firebreathing dragon is a sissy!

Despite its flaws it is worth reading if for no other reason than to see what the first draft outline of a novel must look like. The outline is laid out naked without very much padding so it is very easy to see the bones and even easier to imagine what should have been done to make a story.

This book would be greatly encouraging to young writers who are themselves struggling with the muse. Zelazny must have been a very brave man to have published this and reading it would bring renewed hope to the soul of anyone who has ever received a publisher's rejection letter.