Creatures of Light and Darkness

By: Roger Zelazny

Narrated by: Matt Godfrey

The author of more than 50 books and winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, the incomparable Roger Zelazny remains one of the most revered names in SF and fantasy. Set on a faraway world, the seminal tale of a battle between Ancient Egyptian gods, Creatures of Light and Darkness is a grand display of the imagination, wit, and audacious genius that has placed Zelazny eternally alongside Heinlein, Asimov, Phillip K. Dick, and other legendary genre masters.

©2022 Roger Zelazny (P)2022 Recorded Books

Uninspiring reading of fantastic material

This has always been one of my favourite Zelazny pieces. The reading is clear and intelligible, but the voice is very uninspiring. It does not do justice to the imagery and the music of Zelazny’s poetic prose. I suspect he was chosen because his voice is reminiscent of Zelazny himself. There is audio of Zelazny reading several of his own works. Generally the audio quality is poor. Zelazny is mostly clear and of course he has the enormous advantage of knowing precisely what is meant by the prose. You can hear the smile in his voice as he reads some of his own jokes. But Zelazny had no great power or presence in his voice. He was not a voice actor. It does not help that the reader makes very questionable choices of pronunciation. It might be a Zelazny internal joke that the protagonist is named “wake-him”, but it matches a real world name pronounced “wah-keem”.

Classic

Weaves together a wide variety of writing practice to form a brilliant story. One of my all-time favorites!

A unique gem.

This book is a psychedelic romp spiced with mythology and ridiculous ideas. Short and packed with fun - if that happens to be your cup of tea.

I've always loved this book

like I said, I've always loved this book.

But this was just the wrong voice to read it.
From cadence to timber, the narration was just a nope.
I can't express it enough.
The narration was completely off.

A niche classic

This book and others by Zelazny, Moorcock, PKD are the youthful literature of the early progressive rock, Krautrock, space music kids of the 1970s. Read in and around school often to the accompaniment of a vinyl LP. Books far more influential than the drugs that were rumoured more than ingested. To have an audio version of the worn out mouldering paperbacks in the trunk, guitar csse or on the shelf is a pleasure that I can’t describe, it is like social affirmation. This book is wonderful.