Roger Zelazny ranked To Die in Italbar as his worst novel, but I strongly disagree; I would give that title to the uninteresting Damnation Alley, which features little of what characterizes his better work -- that is, snappy dialog, an interesting protagonist, exotic locales, and fleshing out of setting and motive. All of that is present here, although this isn't nearly Lord of Light.Zelazny begins the novel by dropping several different characters in unrelated settings on us, before finally tying them all together. It's a bit of an information dump (and several of the characters, notably our female protagonist) aren't very well fleshed out. Still, he shoves the story along quickly enough that it's hard to get too bogged down in that.
Probably the weakest area of the story is the motivation of the man who's the objective of the main characters; his reasoning is a little too capricious. Of course, it's demanded by the plot, and can be handwaved away with a little deus ex machina, so maybe not. (I do like Zelazny's concept there, although it's hurried, as he notes, and weakly fleshed out). The final conflict occurs offscreen, observed secondhand by the reader, which can work well as a device, and works tolerably here.
A fun, easy read, but not one of Zelazny's better works.
