Jack of Shadows - Reviewing Appendix N
We return for another book, and author, that inspired Dungeons & Dragons with Roger Zelazny’s Jack of Shadows. Appendix N also listed Roger’s The Chronicles of Amber series, but I barely have enough time to read a single book a month let alone 10 books. Though after reading Jack of Shadows… maybe I should make a bit of time and space on my bookshelf.
The book itself isn’t very long, which is actually a con for me in this regard. I wanted it to be longer, I wanted more to be expanded on, and I wanted the author to take a bit more time with things (which I’ll talk about in more depth later). It’s also a fantastic book for ideas, the same way that The Dying Earth was filled with ideas that are ripe for plundering.
But I’m not yet ready to get into my review. Instead, let’s discuss what our next book will be for October. Last time I rolled a d20 to determine which author to read, and completely ignored the results (as is my right as Game Master). This time, I decided I should stay on ‘theme’ for the month of October with the other articles that I have planned out. That’s right, its October and it’s time to get spooky. Looking through the list of authors and books, I silently cursed myself for already reading through the works of H. P. Lovecraft, but it’s OK. I can just pick H. P. Lovecraft again and read more short stories! Wait - no, I can’t do that. It’s against my rules.
Well, fine. I’ll just pick something I’m hoping is scary and we are going with The Shadow People by Margaret St. Claire. I’ve no idea what the book is about beyond it was listed in the horror genre and I’ve not heard of the author outside of Appendix N. So I’m excited but also terrified, and not just because there are strange hallucinogenic people from Underearth who crave my flesh but also the reviews for it seem pretty mixed.
Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny
I hadn’t heard of this book or the author before. I’m sure if I shared my partner’s interest in Neil Gaiman more, I might have stumbled across Roger before - but I haven’t really gotten into Gaiman. I say that only because Neil Gaiman said that Zelazny was a major inspiration for him.
So with such a reputation, I was putting a lot of expectations on Zelazny’s shoulders. Maybe some undeserved apprehension too. With that said, I ended up enjoying the book a lot more than I thought I would, but also… I wanted to enjoy it more than I did. I really love the concept of the book, of the setting (I’m a huge sucker for a cool setting and great worldbuilding), and the powers and magic of the world - but I left a bit disappointed with how rushed it all felt at the end. I definitely recommend reading this book if you haven’t, just be prepared to have the book finish before you are ready for it to end.
Review
As usual, my score of .1 to 5.0—on a weird tangent, I really feel like I need to change my rating for The Dying Earth. It’s one of those books I’ve thought about the most since I’ve read it. On the flip side of that, I also feel like I need to change my rating for the Conan series and make it lower. Of all the books I’ve read, that one has had the least influence on me and I find myself only thinking back and groaning when remembering the short stories. All the other ratings, I’m pretty happy with.
4/5
It’s a good book. I’ve already said that, but I think it was a great use of my time to read the book. In a few years, I imagine I’ll want to re-read it. It has a lot of cool ideas to steal (especially if you are running games in the Plane of Shadow) and I enjoyed the action within it, the tense interactions between powerful characters, and the realization at the end of the book of what will happen to the world. It is a book written by an author not scared about destroying a world that they imagined, something many authors can be scared to do (as well as some Game Masters, oh look - I’m talking about myself!).
The problem I have with the book is that the beginning of the book is pretty well detailed in its pacing, describing each and every day, while the last half of the book might be decades or centuries of time in the span of a few short paragraphs with no indication of how much time is passing. While this might be suitable for creatures of the dark side (Darksiders), it makes it hard to give the appropriate weight to their actions.
Jack of Shadows
This story starts off with Jack of Shadows captured by some goons while he was trying to steal an important artifact. He is brought before the artifact’s owner who decides the best thing to do is to kill Jack because, as he is a darksider, he doesn’t have a soul and he’ll just come back to life in a few years or centuries, so it’s not really killing someone is it? Jack doesn’t like that idea, largely because it still hurts, it causes trauma, and he wakes up in a horrific location that he’ll have to escape. He promises revenge to the artifact’s owner and, not granted mercy, is killed.
Jack wakes up some undetermined years later in the refuse pit of the Darkside, the place that all Darksiders are ‘reborn’ in after dying. Jack’s main drive is to get revenge for an unjust death, especially since he hadn’t even done anything yet to steal the artifact - he was just looking at it. To this point, we follow as Jack begins making his way out of the realm and through many dangerous territories controlled by powerful Darksiders.
While Jack himself is a Darksider, and a powerful one at that, he is limited in his power. He needs shadow, and apparently pure darkness (you know, they are on the dark side of the planet) isn’t shadow-y enough for him. He needs light to create shadows in order for him to draw on the power of shadow and strengthen himself - this inevitably means that Jack is his strongest when he is in between the two halves of the world where there is enough light to create shadows. I’d point out that literally all of Darkside is in the shadow of the Earth but I guess darkness and shadow are different things, that wasn’t really clarified. Regardless, Jack needs light to create shadows.
During this escape, he deals with many trials, drinks a vampire dry, eats a rock, and fights his way to freedom, vowing to bring swift vengeance on any who stop him, like the Baron who is attempting to kidnap him. During his flight, he meets an old woman who it turns out is someone he knew, Rosalia, he had met in the Brightside. She thought Jack had abandoned her, but he reveals he had meant to return but had been dead, which makes it hard to keep your promises. She then promises to help Jack escape and gives him advice and prophecy that tells him he needs to go to Brightside to use a computer to help him get his revenge. By using this computer, he can figure out how to unlock one of the keys of power, Kolwynia, that will help him gain immense power.
Just as Jack was escaping the domain of the Baron, the Baron finds him and attempts to apprehend him. Jack is then ‘saved’ by The Lord of Bats who actually wants to imprison Jack because Jack once stole some manuscripts from the Lord. Lord of Bats places Jack inside of a large crystal that is pure light, so that Jack is unable to utilize shadow and escape, and attempts to break Jack’s mind through isolation, randomly being attacked by the Lord of Bats’ homunculus, and reveals that the Lord of Bats married the woman that Jack loved, Evene. Evene was originally promised to Jack, so long as he stole the artifact, but because he died, he couldn’t do that and the Lord of Bats instead gained the artifact and won the betrothal to Evene. At this point, Jack realizes he has more people he needs to get revenge against, Lord of Bats and Evene’s father who had promised him Evene’s hand in marriage (I guess Evene doesn’t get a say in this).
Jack eventually escapes through trickery and he finishes traveling to the Brightside. On the way there, he stops to see his only friend, Morningstar, who is imprisoned on the Darkside and can only be freed by the light of dawn striking him. Since the planet is locked in place, that’s not going to happen. We then fast forward five years with Jack in the Brightside where he is a professor at a university and is using the computer to figure out where Kolwynia is. Eventually Jack is found out, he escapes with the last documents spat out by the computer, the Lord of Bats’ homunculus kills the person who was trying to apprehend Jack for being a Darksider, and he makes it safely back to the Darkside where he uses those last documents to find Kolwynia and, presumably, gain its power.
We then watch as Jack gains his unstoppable power, takes over almost all of the Darkside, gets his revenge on everyone, places Evene under a spell that makes her fall in love with him (and forget about how he is an awful person), and learns that he does have a soul after all. Darksiders are thought to not have a soul because they don’t stay dead when you kill them until after a ‘number of lives’ has been churned through. In fact, when they die and are reborn in the garbage pits in the Darkside, they wake up with a small stone that contains their soul but they instinctually toss the stone away for some reason. This small stone contains their soul, and if broken, releases the soul. Jack refuses to allow the soul in him, claiming it’ll only make him weak, while the soul says it’ll give Jack humanity and empathy.
Eventually, Jack realizes he is in trouble as magical wards that protect the Darkside from the freezing cold of darkness are beginning to fail and specific Darksiders are required to cast spells and rejuvenate the wards. Unfortunately, he killed the Darksiders who were responsible to rejuvenating the wards this time and he has no idea when they will be reborn and when the wards will collapse. To this end, Jack gets advice from Morningstar to head to the center of the world and destroy the machine inside as it is the only way to save the Darkside, no one else is powerful enough to do it.
Jack makes his way there, finding a massive machine of churning gears, spinning cogs, and delicate instruments. He begins wrecking and destroying the machine, killing a mechanic who was tending the machine, and avoiding the giants who built and maintain the massive construction. This causes the world to begin convulsing and crashing in around him and he escapes to the surface. There, the world is starting to buckle and tremble and it is revealed that the planet is now beginning to rotate, which is causing great devastation as it begins to start moving (very slowly).
The story finally ends at Jack’s place of power, Jack accepts his soul, the magic of the Darkside is destroyed by the light (magic exists only on the Darkside, science exists only on the Brightside, so if the planet is spinning… magic and science get hard to properly use), Evene’s charm spell fails, and the world is going through a cataclysmic event. Evene dies trying to kill Jack, Jack finally kills the homunculus that has been tracking him down all these years, and his castle is destroyed by the planet beginning to shift. Jack’s final moments in the book is him plummeting to his death just as the first rays of dawn hit Morningstar’s prison and he sees Morningstar break out, his wings propelling him towards Jack’s fall. We don’t know if Jack lives or dies, perhaps Morningstar makes it or Morningstar is too late to save Jack.
The Good
The setting is fantastic. I love the idea of a planet with two sides, Darkside and Brightside, each operating with their own form of ‘magic’ or ‘science’ (depending on which side you ask). This dichotomy then comes to a crashing end with a cataclysmic event that shatters borders and causes the world to begin to spin. In effect, this means that Science has its hold only during the day, while the night is reserved for the Magic of the Darksiders.
As an origin story for a fantasy setting, its pretty awesome. As a source of inspiration for using the Plane of Shadow and your Material Plane, its still pretty awesome. My only wish is that the author spent more time with the setting, spent more time diving into the different aspects of each society, since we only get a cursory explanation of both of them, and gave us more from the Darkside and Brightside.
In addition, Jack is an interesting character. I’m not saying he is a good character, as he is a massive asshole the entire book. He is only driven by his need for revenge (and I get it, his death was unjustifiable), and he makes his choices based purely on whether or not it gets him closer to revenge. It is a lot like the Count of Monte Cristo in that regard. He does get a character arc, though the arc feels like he goes from Chaotic Neutral, to Chaotic Evil, and then kind-of goes to Chaotic Good (but still mostly Chaotic Neutral). I see that there are prequels to Jack of Shadows so I may have to pick those up as well to see if Zelezny dives deeper into his worldbuilding.
The Bad
The pacing of the book could use some work. At the beginning, we get quite a bit of detail for the first third of the book. In fact, I was looking at my ‘percentage read’ and was really confused how Jack was going to accomplish all of his many feats he needed to do, and if we’d only accomplish part of it because there are other books in the series. Turns out, those other books are all prequels (because Jack may or may not die at the end of this book, just like the world may or may not be destroyed at the end of the book) - and that the last half of the book is pretty rushed through.
We get paragraphs describing how Jack conquered kingdoms and got his revenge, but it doesn’t feel personal. It doesn’t feel ‘earned’ for the reader. It just happens and we get very few details. Part of this transformation in the book is that Jack has gotten the key he was searching for, so he becomes different and more alien, but also part of this is just the writing style. We begin this book being detailed, and then end the book with sweeping generalizations of what happened and it’s a bit of a letdown. I wanted more information on the world, I wanted more interactions, I wanted more detail.
Takeaways
Where do I begin? How about the strange caste/feudal system that the Darksiders live under? There are powerful Darksiders who large territories on the Darkside, and the territory they control is based off of how much power they can bear in that section of the Darkside. Each Darksider (except Jack) has a physical source of power that, the further they travel from, the weaker they are. This determines their borders, as the powerful Darksiders are always fighting for more territory, more resources, and more people. I don’t know how many powerful Darksiders there are, and if the people who live under their rule are soul-less Darksiders too, or if they are just regular humans with no special power and a useless soul that doesn’t do anything helpful.
I can completely imagine the Darksiders existing in the Plane of Shadow, controlling their fiefdoms, their petty wars over adventurers they wish to enslave, and their borders constantly ebbing and flowing as their power grows stronger and weaker based on how the tides of the Shadows shrink and enlarge their lands.
After that, let’s talk about the idea of magic and technology. I know a lot of people don’t like their technology to mix with magic, but I like the book’s take that technology is just one form of magic. Science has all the same magical proponents that magic does, we just give it a different name. And I have to agree, I’ve no idea how lightning is cycled through metal wires is supposed to make my screen play a bunch of cat gifs, but thankfully it does. To me, that is magic even though there are a bunch of people can describe the ‘science’ behind it all. Guess what? So can a mage explain ‘magic’ and the intricacies of casting a fireball spell. Both are magic to me, and both can be considered science in your world.
There are a ton of other details to steal, like the heart of the world is a giant machine run by giants, but I think you get the idea. I think anyone who is about to run a campaign or a series of sessions in the Plane of Shadow should give this book a read just for a chance to see what ideas can help inspire their stories.
Other Media
If you liked this book, here are a few books I think you’ll like as well.
The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks
The Dying Earth (1998) by Jack Vance
The Broken Empire Trilogy by Mark Lawrence
Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson
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