Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god. A holy war rages across the heavens and mankind's fate hangs in the balance.

Some Hindu gods are discussing to reincarnate the Buddha in a whorehouse in order to conceal him for some reason. Oh, but don't call it a whorehouse because you will offend the goddess of brothels?

The prose didn't click with me, the story did not interested me. There was no effort to introduce a likeable character, which should be the first thing the author establishes.

Read 43/11:15 6%

Beautifully creative world/setting with an interesting interplay between sci-fi and religion, with a good mythic story overall.

But:

The storytelling is disjointed
The characters are difficult to keep straight
The characters don't feel real
Sometime the prose doesn't give enough info to know what's happening. Other times it's excessively verbose or flowery.

All of this makes it a very non-compelling read

One of the best SF&F novels ever. Zelazny in top form.
Recursive and complex, close reading is required.
I am amazed at how much story Roger Zelazny was able to pack into 319 pages without making it seem rushed. I reckon some very popular writers (not naming names, but initials RJ and GRRM come to mind) would have required three big books to tell this story.

In a comment below, I added some snips of text that caught my attention as I was reading. (Doubtless were I to read LoL again, other bits would catch my attention.)

The idea behind this story is something a fantasy-addict like me can't help but love. The execution was, however, somewhat lacking. I kept hoping Zelany would shed some light into how the world, that the new Buddha lives in, came to be, but alas! This story sticks like superglue to a short (relative) time-frame.

This same lack of information extends to characters as well. I really would have liked to find out how the gods came to their powers, but other than hints dropped here and there, distant background information is utterly absent. Zelany teases us by inserting the real names of the god-humans in a few sections of the story, and then... nothing. Other than making it obvious that our protagonist knows a whole lot more than he's speaking (or even thinking) of, we're left high and dry.

Still, this is a book that no sci-fi / fantasy lover can ignore. The meat of the book is highly satisfying, and while the thus-spake-thee speech becomes boring after a while, it's easy to appreciate the contrast between the old-style speech of the future and the modern speech of the past in the few places they occur.