Roadmarks

By: Roger Zelazny

Narrated by: Matt Godfrey

The Road runs from the unimaginable past to the far future, and those who travel it have access to the turnoffs leading to all times and places - even to the alternate time-streams of histories that never happened. Why the Dragons of Bel'kwinith made the Road - or who they are - no one knows. But the Road has always been there and for those who know how to find it, it always will be!

Dizzying in its virtuosity, gripping in its kaleidoscopic treatment of time, character, and action, Roadmarks is a dazzling achievement.

About the author: Roger Zelazny was a science-fiction and fantasy writer, a six-time Hugo Award winner, and a three-time Nebula Award winner. He published more than 40 novels in his lifetime. His first novel, This Immortal, serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under the title ...And Call Me Conrad won the Hugo Award for best novel. Lord of Light, his third novel, also won the Hugo award and was nominated for the Nebula award. He died at age 58 of cancer. Zelazny was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010.

©2019 Roger Zelazny (P)2021 Recorded Books, Inc.

Reader lacks understanding of the material

This is one of Zelazny's most delightful books. I've read it often enough that I just rolled my eyes at the lousy French accent; but the mechanical voice of the sophisticated AI was one of many poor choices in vocal characterization that made this whole listen kind of a wince.

Finally finished!

I started reading ( ACTUALLY reading ) this book approximately 35 years ago. I lost it about three fourths of the way through it. I swore I would find another copy and finish the damned thing, buuut , one thing lead to another…. anyway, it never happened. I had nearly forgotten the thing, until I stumbled upon it the other night and purchased it! It was as much fun as I remember it being! Zelazny isn’t Tolstoy, to be sure, but he is a helluva good time! I like how this book gave us a preview of the PDA long before they were dreamed of by regular folks ( y’know, the squares… ). Great read, um, listen! I wholeheartedly recommend this book! Have fun!

a road story without boundaries

I remember reading this years ago. it is an excellent tale of sci-fi fantasy with vision yet uncomplicated enough to be relaxing

Science Fiction Classic

Prefiguring elements of the better-known Amber series, this imaginative tale of a traveler on a highway that stretches through time at the center of a road system that maps to probabilistic alternate histories is a classic. The narrator is excellent.

Time Travel Mayhem

You are thrown into this story with no premise whatsoever. Eventually some of the context will be explained.

As a story goes it is entertaining. I was constantly trying to figure out what was going on. There are several nauseating historical figures that appear, I found that unsettling. Much of the story is unsettling, I don't know that I got the point or context of the story. The ending is odd and fairly unsatisfying.

There is much to mull through. I am not sorry I listened to this, I just wish that many of the story gaps were closed by the end.

Entertaining

Not my favorite Zelazny book, but it’s an enjoyable listen and typical of his style. I liked the narrator.

A Sparkling Gem by a Master of Sci Fi & Fantasy

Roger Zelazny has been one of my favorite science fiction and fantasy writers since I first read his "Nine Princes in Amber" series back in high school. He challenged me to think more deeply about characters, and to expand my vocabulary by looking up definitions for his precise but poetic wording. I remember having to look up "ziggurat" when I first read this book. (it's a step-sided pyramid from Babylon) I always came away from his stories feeling deeply satisfied and wiser.

Roadmarks moves along briskly, which is good because it is rather baffling at first, before the disparate parts come together like a jigsaw puzzle, revealing a larger picture. Alas, it is a novella, when the myriad themes could easily have supported a much longer story, or even a series. Zelazny fans will recognize the theme of an absent father triggering his son's search for understanding and connection. There are also very Zelazny-ish lyrical passages about shifting imagery during travel though different dimensions and timelines. Likewise, there is the haunting longing of the protagonist to find his lost home, no matter the cost.

Along with the poetic pieces are fun action sequences, and more than a little mayhem, as well as great deadpan humor. I think all that even happens simultaneously in a scene with the Marquis De Sade taking a tyrannosaur for a ride. All in all, a terrific little gem of a story, which only whets my appetite for more Zelazny tales. It looks as though more of his work is coming to Audible, and I hope his funniest romp, "Doorways in the Sand" may soon join the collection.

Very original and fun

Very original story. Fun book. The reader is outstanding. He really creates distinctive characters with his voice.

Fast Moving

Roger Zelazny likes heroes who don’t know who they are. The most famous is Corwin of Amber, but he also uses this idea in Creatures of Light and Darkness and again here in Roadmarks. The idea behind the Roadmarks world is that branch universes are created at every decisive (and possibly all the other) moments of history and that these branch universes are connected by some powerful race in the past so that there appears to be a road network connecting them. Certain people can travel these roads and the travelers come from the whole range of history and cultures. One of the travelers (our hero who doesn’t know who he is) has another traveler acting out on a vendetta against him by hiring a large number of assassins to track him down through time and kill him. To make matters a bit more complicated, the storyline advances in two timelines. It’s a fast moving, fun story, but not one of Zelazny’s best.

Super cool concept

It was a fun listen, light full of intriguing ideas and characters. It wrapped up too quickly, in a slightly silly or slightly funny way. The journey was better than the destination.