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The later 1970s were a productive and fertile time for Zelazny's imagination; the one problem with this volume, the fourth of six collecting his short fiction, is that I have read it all before - My Name is Legion, Dilvish, the Damned, Unicorn Variations - I even have a copy of The Illustrated Roger Zelazny with the Jack of Shadows prequel "Shadowjack". Still, there is plenty of explanatory material outlining how each story came to be written, and a useful afterword linking the short fiction and poetry to Zelazny's novels and other life events (notably the births of his children). For a Zelazny completist like me, it's indispensable; but it adds less than previous volumes did. ( )

An excellent read. If you love Zelazny's writing, this is a must-have. While much of the book is stuff I've read before, the explanations of how the stories came to be written, what Zelazny was thinking & all were just fantastic. At the end, there is a section that gave me surprise as it went through book after book with a lot of background I'd never read anywhere before about some favorite books like "Jack of Shadows" & "Changeling".

The two introductory pieces, one by Brust & the other by Joe Haldeman, were fantastic. Short, to the point & gave even more depth to Zelazny, the man.

You can certainly read this or any of the books out of order, unless you're a serious scholar of his work. I'm not, but have read them in order since that's the way I got them. ( )