Someone recently made a very perceptive comment about Zelazny, which I'll repeat here: of his first two novels, This Immortal proved far more influential on his later work than did The Dream Master, and it might have been better the other way around. Immortal was jazzy, witty, and polished, but without much depth. The Dream Master was an elegant, substantial tragedy. The course he took later caused Judith Merril to ask, "Will Zelazny ever write the insides of his novels? Can he?"

He certainly didn't this time. Changeling is all around more satisfying than his previous one, Roadmarks, but still it has no insides. By way of improvement, it is a fairly complete story, which shows few signs of slapdash until the rather perfunctory end. It is not much ado about nothing, but the characters are sticks of wood.

Zelazny's powers of invention are working full force. The...