Reads of 2017 - A Night in the Lonesome October
There are books I enjoyed reading, books I enjoyed and have stayed with me ever since, and then there are books that I absolutely love and read over and over again. Roger Zelazny's A Night In The Lonesome October falls into that later catagory. It is one of my all time favorites that I have read over and over again. It was the last book Zelazny ever wrote and it features illustrations by Gahan Wilson. The book concerns a gathering that happens whenever there is a full moon on Halloween known only as the Game. The Game consists of Openers, who want to bring Lovecraftian Elder Gods to Earth and end our world as we know it, and Closers, who want to prevent this from happening. The Players of the Game change constantly, but out protagonist has lived an unnatuturally long life and seen more than a few of these Full Moon Halloweens.
The novel is told through first person POV of our Protagonist, who is named Snuff. He is a dog.
His master is a man named Jack, who is probably Jack the Reaper and also probably Cain, cursed to walk the earth forever (along with his dog of course), but we only ever get to know him as Jack. He is a Closer, and so far the Closers have always won, or at least the Openers have never actually been successful, as can be seen by the fact that the world is full of people and not non-Euclidian squishy alien demonoids. We don't know whether the other players in the Game are Openers or Closers until we get closer to the end of the month. The novel itself starts on October 1st and ends on the 31st.
Snuff's best friend is a cat who works for a witch named Crazy Jill. The book also features appearences by Count Dracula, Doctor Frankenstein and his Monster, Larry Talbot the Wolfman, Sherlock Holmes, and a few assorted cultists and mad men. Each of the players has an animal familier who have an uneasy alliance of sorts unti it comes time to declare sides and either open or close the rift between worlds.
So we have a monster mash with lovecraftian evil told from a dog's POV, which is what sold me to begin with. A monster mash, or any kind of vast cast of hommages, is not so easy to pull off, but Zelazny does a perfect job here. But it is also a great read with some really funny bits, from the constant taunting of the horrible monsters Jack keeps bound in mirrors and attics, to the Great Detective's attempts to win Snuff over as he tries to figure out what is going on with all these supernatural shenanigans, to the interactions between the familiers themselves. This is what keeps me coming back to it.
It also shaped how I characterize some of these classic characters now. My own mental version of Larry Talbot is pretty much a combination of these version and Neil Gaiman's. Anyone who has read the Monster Smackdown sourcebook I wrote for the Buffy RPG and wonders why Dracula has a strong opinion about opening the Hellmouth, well, that opinion came from the Dracula in this book.
Like I said, it is one of my all time favorites and from on e of my favorite classic science fiction writers. Apparently, when asked which one of his books were among his favorites, this one always made his list as well.