Lord of Light

I think I'm destined to unfairly compare Zelazny's other work to my personal favourite (Doorways in the Sand) and come out less in favour of these myth/religion based experiments. It's an intriguing exercise to take on a certain writing style that echoes bits of scripture, far away (historically or geographically) or fantastical periods and places but it created a bit of distance from the characters for me. Similar  to my high fantasy issue. Long chapters seem more like short stories in a book-ended chronology. The bummer is that I would have liked a bit more in the timeline of the first and last chapters, instead of detailed retrospective of ‘how they got here'. 
I can appreciate a Promethean figure, someone more than human working on behalf of humans to improve civilization/human progress, but I feel like we only got snippets of that Sam, and him being  relatable in his words and actions - the rest of the cast was particularly esoteric from a western perspective - I'll admit my schooling/pop culture references steep me in Greek/Roman/European myths and religions rather than Eastern ones - and following an ancient pantheon known to be selfish and violent is always pretty alienating (the Olympians are at least as bad, I recognize this). 

I think if certain Buddhist concepts were new to me upon reading this it might have made for more interesting musings, but I had a period where I went hard on non-fiction on the topic and as a result this felt pretty surface level.
I don't know whether Buddhists or Hindus would consider this a work of creative fiction with a decent heart/message or actually offensive?
Less ambiguous downside involves messy gender stuff - gods taking new bodies to match certain roles, might be dated/offensive slang about lesbians in there, insinuation they'd prefer to be men. 
Heteronormative BS that they couldn't stay committed, that Yama couldn't stay with Kali when she changed to male form/new position. And then there's the ‘tragedy' of Kali's transfer issue, mega ableist.
And yet, definitely better than Creatures of Light and Darkness. 

⚠️ableism, fatphobia, non-consensual demon possession, mention of SA, outdated/offensive term for cognitive disability