I’ve enjoyed reading Zelazny’s works after borrowing Nine Princes in Amber from my local library some forty years ago. Some of the novellas in this collection of ten were old friends, and I enjoyed revisiting them while discovering new-to-me works as well.

Setting each work in perspective, the novellas are interspersed with brief commentaries, author’s notes and explanatory notes. (I didn’t pay much attention to the last. On the one hand, they might be handy, but on the other they felt rather condescending.) I liked learning more about the context (eg what else was being published at the time, and by whom).

Zelazny’s protagonists are unapologetically exceptional. We don’t (generally) follow them through a story that challenges their abilities. The opposition they face is not usually from equally competent people. Instead, they may strive against forces of nature (as in “This Moment of the Storm” or “This Mortal Mountain”). Their challenges—or maybe, the challenges the reader perceives—are moral or philosophical problems, such as the dying population in “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”. Perhaps because I binge-read the collection, I found myself hankering for a touch more human fallibility, but I guess then the stories would lose their mythic tone. It would also have been nice if the women had more than walk-on roles.

Overall, a handy collection for completionists, but new readers might want to start elsewhere.