SOJALS rating:

Good (3/5)

I first read this in 1971 and most recently on the 2nd November 2019

In which Lo Lobey searches for his lost Friza, haunted and accompanied by Kid Death, Green Eye and Spider. Of course there's an awful lot more to it that.

An astonishing, hallucinatory and lyrical novel. I'm sure I thought it was brilliant when I first read it, but now, my intellect decayed to a scrap smaller than the sawdust on the floor of my study, I'm simply bewildered and enraptured. Algis Budrys, author of what is currently No 2 on my best book list, thought it was exceptionally good and so do I.

But if I had this much trouble on re-reading this short novel, how am I going to finally manage to re-read and review Delany's "Dhalgren"? I've been gearing up to it now for a number of years. I even started on "Triton" last year by way of a warm-up. I recall "Dhalgren" was a stunning novel first time around, and once reviewed I may rank it so high that it displaces Zelazny's "Lord of Light" as No. 1 on my best book list, and consequently shifting the wonderful "Michaelmas" by the afore-mentioned Algis Budrys to No. 3.