Book Thoughts: A Night in the Lonesome October
While I was not a fan of Roger Zelazny's Amber series, my distant memories of "Lord of Light" have kept me nudging me to explore his other works.
Of all the praise that's heaped on his various writings, A Night in the Lonesome October caught my eye the most -- I was particularly drawn to the book's design which is intended to be read one chapter per day in the month of October. Having recently purchased a small bed-side desk to pick up bed-time reading, this seemed the perfect way to ease myself back into the habit.
I very much enjoyed the book! It's a bit campy and silly, but a lot of good fun. It follows Snuff (a dog) and several other animal familiars preparing for a mystical "game" of sorts that their masters will undertake over the course of October. These masters take the forms of many classic Halloween characters ranging from Dracula to Frankenstein to Jack the Ripper -- but it's done in such a way that I didn't even realize this until several chapters in (though admittedly this may have been my own dense-ness rather than intentional cleverness on the writer's part).
While there wasn't much to the story that was particularly novel besides the one-chapter-per-night structure, it was well-written enough to keep me excited for my nightly chapter, and I was very attached to the main cast by the end.
I'm not sure if it was good enough to make it worth a yearly reading like many comments about the book suggest, but it was good fun and most definitely kept me in the October spirit throughout the month.