Review: Changeling by Roger Zelazny

Changeling by Roger Zelazny

Here’s a Zelazny novel where it’s not clear for several chapters which of the main characters is the hero and which the villain. An evil sorcerer is killed at the beginning of the book leaving his infant son alive behind him. The victors are reluctant to kill a baby but also terrified of leaving a child alive knowing he is the heir to great magical power and could reasonably be expected to seek vengeance on those who killed his parents. Their moral conundrum is resolved when the wizard who aided the victors agrees to exchange the child (Pol) with one (Mark) on another world creating not one, but two, changelings.

 

The next several chapters show both children not fitting into their new worlds. Pol is a wizard in a technological world whose untrained powers glitch technology, driving his engineer “father” crazy. Mark is a technological genius on a magical world—a world which thinks that technology is evil. Neither child is happy. Neither fits in. But it’s not until Mark is nearly killed by his neighbors, discovers an ancient teaching machine and still working factories, and vows vengeance on his assailants that the ancient wizard who exchanged the two kids decides it’s time to bring Pol back.

 

This sets up a battle between Pol and Mark, but it’s not a contest that the reader (or Pol for that matter) feels good about. The two should be friends and allies, but Mark is jealous and a bit paranoid and war between them becomes inevitable. This is a fun novel—not one of Zelazny’s greats, but a very enjoyable story just the same.

 

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