Lord of Light

I've read this book from time to time over the decades, but my memory of it was growing dim, when eventually I bought the Kindle version and read it again. I was quite impressed and entertained: it's more artfully written than I remembered. This is a vision of another world crafted with plenty of nice details, and it comes alive in front of you. I'm not surprised that it won a Hugo.

However, I feel that the underlying story is less impressive than the entertaining way in which it's told. What we have is a power struggle among heroes with special powers, who sometimes fight battles among themselves, assisted by hordes of mere mortals who die in droves and never seem to matter. Although such battles are only a small part of the story, speaking as a mere mortal I find them deplorable—as I do when similar battles break out in Zelazny's Amber series. Tolkien wrote of heroes fighting battles alongside ordinary folk, but he managed to do it without making his heroes seem callous and uncaring.

Fortunately, most of the story consists of small-group interactions among the heroes, which I like better.

I've read that Zelazny intentionally wrote the story in such a way that it could be interpreted as fantasy or sf. On the whole I think it's sf, but strictly speaking it's sf only if you can think of ways to achieve all the effects described with technology, rather than magic. Throughout the story there are clear indications that at least most things are done with technology.