Roger Zelazny Book Review: Donnerjack, part one: All Patience

In our world, called the Verité, he is a Scottish laird, an engineer, and a master of virtual reality design. In the computer-generated universe of Virtù, created by the crash of the World Net, he is a living legend. Scientist and poet with a warrior's soul, Donnerjack strides like a giant across the virtual landscape he helped to shape. And now he has bargained with Death himself for the return of love...

I'd been reluctant to review Donnerjack because I think it will mark the last of my favorites. I mean, I like just about everything Zelazny has written, but there are some that I just adore and Donnerjack is right up there.You'll see that I gave it a better grade than A Rose for Ecclesiastes, something that will get me lynched by other Zelazny fans, but there it is.

I've never encountered a fan of the book. I was talking to a science fiction author who says that Nine Princes in Amber is his favorite book, and who told me how influential Zelazny was on his style. As of four years ago, he said he hadn't read the book, but that he'd probably get around to it some day. That's the kind of tepid response it seems to engender.

I picked it up because we were flying to the UK and I wanted a long book to read on the plane. I'd been burned by the other book posthumously completed by Jane Lindskold, (Lord Demon), but figured I'd take a chance on Donnerjack.  It's huge for a Zelazny book, but that's because it was originally supposed to be a trilogy.

I bought it at a Barnes & Noble, though I was shopping on eBay for a used copy. I noticed that somebody was auctioning an autographed copy, which was a neat trick. (The auction explained that Zelazny had autographed a sticker, which was later placed inside the book.) I went from being open to the book to mild interest, to incredible excitement in the first chapter.

I love it. I think it's the best thing he's written in thirty years. I even like the photo on the back of the hardcover!

Oh, man, where to start?!

The opening lines are as good as any he has ever written:

In Deep Fields he dwelled, though his presence extended beyond that place through Virtù. He was, in a highly specialized sense, the Lord of Everything, though others might lay claim to that title for different reasons. His claim was as valid as any, however, for his dominion was an undeniable fact of existence...He could assume any form, male or female, go where he would, but he always returned to his black-cloaked, hooded garb over an amazing slimness, flashes of white within the shadows he also wore...There was no other like him in all of creation. Known by thousands of names and euphemisms, his most common appellation was Death.

The story begins when Death is wandering Deep Fields, and one of his servants, a black butterfly named Alioth, informs him of intruders. (My wife tells me that all of Death's servants,  Mizar, Alioth, Phecda and Dubhe are all names of stars in the Big Dipper.)

"What desecration is this?'' Death inquired, raising his arms, his shadow flowing toward them. "You dare to invade my realm?"

The one with the sack straightened and the man dropped the light, which went out instantly. A great babble of voices and strident sounds filled the air as if in synchrony with Death's ire. There came a small golden flicker from within the trench as his shadow reached it.

Then a gate opened, and the figures passed through it, just before the shadow flooded the trench with blackness.

I really liked that passage above. It reminded me of when Jack escaped from the Lord of Bats.

[Death] "Yet all patience is but an imitation of my ways, and even in the highest realms I am not unknown."

Dubhe sprang to his shoulder and settled there as Death rose up out of the trench.

"I believe that someone has just begun a game," Death said as he headed across Deep Fields through a meadow of blackest grass, black poppies swaying at the passage of his cloak, "and, next to music, they have invoked a pastime for which I have the highest regard. It is long, Dubhe, since I have been given a good game. I shall respond to their opening as none might expect, and we will try each others' patience. Then, one day, they will learn that I am always in the right place at the proper time."

I love that line. "All patience is but an imitation of my ways." Death is mythic, man! I was talking with a friend a few years back, and he was big into heavy metal music. He said that Iron Maiden had come under fire for their album Number of the Beast, but they denied any kind of occult influence, with Bruce Dickinson saying  "Metal isn't the type of music where you talk about prancing in the tulips.  It is epic music where you talk about epic battles like God and Satan."

I was never huge into metal, but I've got to respect that. Roger Zelazny set up an epic here, and he succeeded brilliantly.

After the scene in Deep Fields, we meet the title character of the book,

John D'Arcy Donnerjack loved but once and when he saw the moiré he knew it was over.

I love that too. The rhythm of that sentence sets the scene well and makes us feel like we're in a fairy tale. Virtù is, as the name suggests, a virtual world. Some time ago, the Internet crashed for a short time, and when it came back up, it was completely different. There had been hundreds of virtual years of warfare and evolution among the programs, even though little time had based in Verité. This event was called the Genesis Scramble.
 
Donnerjack had thought his love was a real woman projecting into Virtù, but when he sees the distortion effect of a moiré, which precedes the failure of a program, he realizes that she is not. This in no way diminishes his feelings for her, however, and he resolves to enter Deep Fields and bargain with Death himself for her return.

(Ayradyss is similar enough to Eurydice that I have to assume that that was intentional, considering they're both led out of their respective underworlds. Also, Donnerjack plays Politian's Orfeo for Death, which is an opera of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.)

"I know you, John D'Arcy Donnerjack. I am an admirer of your work. I am especially fond of the delightful fantasy of the afterlife you designed based on Dante's Inferno."

"The critics liked it, but the public proved somewhat less than enthusiastic."

"It is generally that way with my work, also."

Donnerjack stared, not certain of how to respond until Death chuckled.

The conversation continues. Death offers to release Ayradyss in Verité rather than in Virtù, but Donnerjack doesn't believe it possible.

"If I am to violate one law of existance for you, why not another?"

"But the principles which govern this place would not permit it. There is no way to manage the 'visit' effect permanently, fully either way."

"And if there were?"

"I have made a lifetime study of this."

"A life is a shallow place in time."

"Still..."

"Do you think me a proge-generated simulacrum? Some toy of human imagination? I came into being when the first living thing died, and I will not say where or when that was. Neither man nor machine ever wrote a program for me."

Donnerjack drew back as a moiré flowed between them.

"You make it sound as if you really are Death."

The only reply was the continuing smile.

Death's price for her return is construction of a palace, and Donnerjack and Ayradyss's firstborn. Donnerjack agrees pretty readily, which is really, kind of stupid. Has he never read a fairy tale at all? I mean, or even fucking heard of one? Because that whole firstborn thing is really pretty boilerplate. He's not convinced that what Death is what he claims to be so, he agrees to the terms right away, because he doesn't think that there is any chance of a child resulting from their union, and this causes some trouble down the line. But, as Faust said, if one imaginary thing exists, then all imaginary things must exist. Meaning, if you're dealing with a creature thought to be impossible, and he asks for your firstborn and you say "sure!" because you think that's impossible too, well, maybe you could have stood to be more prudent.

Slowly, other characters are introduced. I'll expand on them later in the second part of this review, but the big ones are Arthur Eden, "tall, very black, his beard shot with gray, heavily muscled in the manner of an athlete somewhat past his prime, which he was -- was a professor of Anthropology at Columbia's Verité campus." I like how Zelazny just offers up "Verité campus" too, with the reader being left to infer that there are campuses that exist only in Virtù. Also, Zelazny didn't write a huge amount of African American characters, so it's nice to see one here. He's going under cover to research a church that has sprung up out of Virtù, whose adherents sometimes seem to manifest special powers.

We also meet Tranto the phant, a rogue elephant proge and the unfortunately named Sayjak of the People (could you come up with a name that doesn't make me think of Wheel of Fortune?), as well Lydia Hazzard, a teenage girl with jungle green eyes.

It's fantastically complex, and there is a hell of a lot going on. The bit above is just from the first chapter and a half. In some ways, I think it's Zelazny's most ambitious work and in some ways I think it's better even than Lord of Light.

Okay, that was just laying the ground work. I'll be back in another day or two for the second part of this review.