[Roadmarks] is a throwaway novel, I'm sorry to report. It reminds me of a half a dozen Philip José Farmer books in which brilliant ideas are presented, then left underdeveloped, trivialized, or just cast aside in pursuit of an irrelevant plot…. In this case, the central premise is one of those outrageously literalized metaphors which only work in science fiction and fantasy. In mainstream they'd be gibberish. Consider a "road through time". Zelazny's Road, which may have been built by dragons, runs from the far past to the far future…. With discipline and imagination, there's no limit to what a first rate author like Zelazny could have done with it.

Unfortunately he does damn little. There are two narratives, the main one (chapters labelled "One") and a subsidiary, out-of-sequence one ("Two")…. Frequently a lot of attention is devoted to characters whose roles are quite trivial, and often they're interesting characters, e.g., the Chinese monk whose prior personality as a super-competent killer from the future is slowly returning. (There's a novel in him.) When the hero finally meets the guy who is causing all the trouble, the villain's motivations are glossed over before they make a bit of sense. When the son and father meet, little happens to justify the space devoted to this "subplot". There are several deus-exmachinas all at once and one dragon-out-of-a-hat. The problems tend to solve themselves and most of the interesting questions are never resolved. As a result the best parts of the book tend to pull it apart. Something which looks interesting, develops a little ways then is abandoned, can only be distracting.

Roadmarks is, alas, second-rate Zelazny. It's failings are failings of storytelling and very serious ones. Now, I'm not one of those people who insist that Zelazny "lost it" ten years ago. After the work which established his reputation in the late 1960s, he shifted gears. He was writing in top form as recently as "Home is the Hangman" and Doorways in the Sand, even if it was a different form. But this new novel is just sloppy. It shows signs of haste and a lack of application. One hopes he will do a sequel in which he will make effective use of the marvellous potential inherent in the premise.