A Night in the Lonesome October

Hilarious and utterly original, A Night in Lonesome October reminds readers of Zelazny's unique genius. Told from the perspective of Snuff - a guard dog of unusual perception and intellect, it describes a game of magic where competitors of vastly different natures prepare to do battle on one fateful night. No one knows who is on which side or what will be brought forth. Each player has an animal companion assisting. One of the things I enjoyed is that humans play second fiddle to the animals who plan, negotiate, and undertake tasks - all while behaving true to form rather than acting "human". Snuff and his friend Greymalkin, the witch's cat, are particularly charming.

One aspect of A Night in Lonesome October that is certain to bring smiles is Zelazny's skillful inclusion of classic characters. Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Great Detective and his assistant play major roles, as does the Wolfman and Lovecraft's elder gods. Few authors other than Zelazny could take all of these elements and make a plot that is both humorous and believable (within its context). Much of it has a frantic air, like a mad scavenger hunt made all the funnier by Snuff's calm, stoic attitude. The grave robbing scene is particularly funny as the players swap body parts and the old dog guarding the cemetery complains.

Whether you pick up A Night in Lonesome October, or another of Zelazny's novels, you are in for a thrilling ride. A Night in Lonesome October is particularly appealing because it is vastly different from the standard Halloween offerings - cleverly composed and outrageously funny. It is a pleasure to see it back in print.

5/5

I received a copy of A Night in Lonesome October from the publisher and netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

--Crittermom
(10/31/16)

This is pure brilliance. Zelazny's last book, here re-published, deals with events leading up to a mythic Hallowe'en battle of forces: none group trying to open a portal for the Elder Gods, the other trying to keep it closed. Practically every fantasy trope of the 20th century is featured, from Frankenstein to Sherlock Holmes, and the narrator is a talking dog, Snuff, familiar and friend of one Jack. Giantkiller or Ripper? He certainly is an expert with a knife, but seems to be on the side of the angels here.
Each chapter represents a day of October, moving towards Hallowe'en, and the pattern of characters and their alliances is slowly revealed through Snuff's engaging with the other protagonists' familiars. Humour is present in the dog's dealings with his master's "Things" - imprisoned in mirrors, wardrobes, and trunks awaiting deployment in the battle, the satirical treatment of the Great Detective's disguises (he makes a fetching woman!), and the struggle between the familars' animal natures and their reasoning capabilities (Snuff ends up very chummy with Graymalkin, the cat)..
It has been many a long year since I read Zelazny, and it was only with this novel that I realised how much Neil Gaiman is walking down the same sort of narrative roads. If you had told me this was a Gaiman novel, it would never have occurred to me to question that assertion. The whole feel of the book is very modern and cutting-edge; it's full of warmth and humanity (of a doggy sort!), and, despite the fact that it's a very easy read, it has narrative depth sufficient to gratify the literary pleasure nodes of the pickiest reader. Highly recommended.(particularly to Gaiman fans!).

A friend recommended this to me a couple of years ago and I kept forgetting about it – which is a pity because it’s great. Set in a Victorianesque England and told from the point of view of Snuff, the dog, who belongs to Jack, it’s horrific, quirky and funny (those aren’t mutually exclusive). We’re left to figure out what’s happening as a bunch of characters from (his)story and fiction (Jack the Ripper, Dracula, Rasputin, Dr Frankenstein, Larry Talbot and The Great Detective amongst others) prepare for some kind of game or contest which involves a fair amount of grave robbing and—it seems—a little murder and mayhem. There are factions—openers and closers—and we must fathom who is aligned with whom. Snuff does occasionally get to discuss things with Jack, but mostly his circle of friends-who-might-be-enemies includes the familiars of the other magical types: cat, rat, snake, bat and owl. We follow the crew through the days of October, day by day, as the game builds to Halloween. Light in tone, but grim in subject I have to admire Zelazny’s imagination and brilliance.

This review is specifically of the ebook edition published by Farrago in 2016. I'd read this book before, in paperback, I think from the library (since it isn't in my large and battered collection of Zelazny; I'm a considerable fan); but took the opportunity of the ebook being on offer from Netgalley for review to read it again. It had been many years, and I didn't remember much about it, so it was effectively a first-time read.

One of the things I wanted to see was how good a job they'd done on the ebook conversion, and I'm happy to report that it was an excellent one. Often, ebook editions of pre-ebook-era paperbacks suffer from a great many errors in optical character recognition, and publishing houses don't always put in the considerable work necessary to correct them (looking at you, Open Road, and your pathetic job with Andre Norton's <i>Sargasso of Space</i>). This edition is very clean indeed. I spotted one missing quotation mark, and three occasions when the capital "I" in the exclamation "Ia!" had been misrendered as a lower-case "l" at the start of a sentence. That was it; apart from that, no typos that I noticed (and I usually notice them).

Before I discuss the book itself, one more thing about this edition. It's illustrated. I personally found the illustrations cartoony, and at odds with the tone of the text. Its humour and absurdity are understated, whereas the cartoonish distortions of the illustrations were much more extreme.

A couple of things caught my attention about the writing of the book itself. It contains the characteristic Zelaznian word "occurred," which, while it isn't in all of his books, is in many of them, used in a particular way (something strange manifesting itself with no obvious agency). I always look for it in a Zelazny, and am oddly pleased when I find it. It also contains a few Americanisms, despite its British setting, such as "siding" for the outside of a house, and "off of," but since the nationality of the narrator is not established, this wasn't much of a problem.

There were a few passages of alternating dialog, mostly between the dog and the cat, which I found hard to follow because they lacked enough dialog tags to identify who was speaking. I had to go back and count, and that's always disruptive to my immersion in the story.

The story, told in a kind of diary (though it's never explained how the narrator, a dog, keeps a diary), chronicles the 31 days of October, building up to a ritual at the full moon, which will either cause the Lovecraftian Elder Gods to manifest on Earth or prevent them from doing so. Which one it is depends on the manoeuvrings of the "players," who form two factions, the Openers and the Closers. It's initially not clear who belongs to which faction; the dog, Snuff, and his master Jack (by implication, Jack the Ripper), are Closers, trying to prevent the manifestation of the gods. There's a druid; the Count (Dracula, though the name is never used); Larry Talbot, the American werewolf in London; Crazy Jill the witch; a mad Eastern European monk; the vicar; the Great Detective (Sherlock Holmes, again never named but clear enough); the Good Doctor (also not named, but obviously Frankenstein); a pair named Morris and MacCab, who I couldn't place as a reference, but who seem to be graverobbers similar to Burke and Hare; and a number of animals, who can talk to one another, but can only talk to the humans at certain times. Snuff builds alliances and shares information, and even though there are ultimately two factions, there's a division that cuts across and beyond the factions, between what I might call sympathetic and unsympathetic characters. Because my sympathies were engaged both for and against people (and animals) on both sides, the narrative exerted a firm grasp and made sure I wanted to know how it all worked out. While Zelazny's characters are seldom deeply complex, they're always distinctive, and despite the large cast it was easy to remember who was who and what their previous moves had been.

This is a skilfully written work, produced late in Zelazny's too-short life, which uses allusion to commonly understood horror tropes and characters to create a rich situation without spelling everything out. That's a tactic that can easily backfire, if the author just introduces the trope and moves on without doing anything with it, but Zelazny builds on his tropes and gives them new twists that make them more interesting. He maintains a constant tension between a matter-of-fact tone with a note of irony; usually indirect or allusive reference to horror; and sympathetic characters doing their best in a bizarre situation, and balances the three with great ability. He then brings it to an unexpected, clever, and satisfying conclusion.

When I came to write this review, I found that I'd marked the book as read, with a three-star rating. No doubt that was my memory of reading it some years before, and a reflection of my general dislike for the horror genre. Re-reading it gave me a greater appreciation for what Zelazny has managed to pull off here, and I enjoyed it considerably.

Book – A Night in the Lonesome October
Author – Roger Zelazny
Star rating - ★★★★★
No. of Pages – 280

Cover – Genius!
POV – 1st person, 1 character (Dog!)
Would I read it again – Yes.

Genre – Crime, Mystery, Comedy, Fan-Fiction, Spoof


** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **


A Night in the Lonesome October is a piece of literary genius. With hints of all the great heavyweights of Literature, it not only includes the characters we've loved for generations, but it offers a new twist on their tales and recreates some of the most inspiring of characters.

The mystery of who-, how- and why-dun-it was reminiscent of the great Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. With humour, skill and visually stunning illustrations, the story is a collection of evil genius and plot twisting special effects. There is always a moment of second-guessing, where I was never quite sure if I knew what I knew or if I would be right.

For the cover, I just want to say how clever it was. At first glance, I thought I knew what I was looking at – the collection of some of literature's biggest criminals, geniuses and sleuths. Then I got further into the story and had to go back to check if the other characters were there – Snuff, Rubo, Nightwind, Quicklime, Graymalk, Cheeter and Tekela.

The attention to detail was also very clear within the story itself. Hidden secrets, like the cover, were littered throughout. But the simplicitiy of a dog's mind as the main character, and the elegant old-world style of the presentation, allowed this to be one of those unwittingly brilliant masterpieces that looked unassuming from afar, but proved more than it's weight in skill up close.