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Eye of Cat
A retired hunter of alien zoo specimens, William Blackhorse Singer, the last Navajo on a future Earth, has come to what he sees as the end of his life. The World Government calls upon him for aid in protecting an alien diplomat from a powerful and hostile member of his own species. Knowing both the importance of the task and his inability to handle it on his own, Singer goes to confront his greatest conquest with a strange bargain. A shape-shifting alien, the last of his species, sits in a special cage at an institute dedicated to the study of extraterrestrial beings. Most frequently he projects the aspect of a one-eyed catlike creature, but he can appear as almost anything.
One of Singer’s secrets, and his greatest guilt, is his suspicion that the creature is intelligent. He confronts him and offers his own life for Cat’s cooperation in saving the alien. Cat accepts, and later, their mission fulfilled, demands a refinement on the original bargain. Rather than a simple death he wants a return bout—a chase with Singer as the hunted rather than the hunter.
The gods, powers and monsters of Navajo legend provide the backdrop for the working out of Singer’s fate—for the chase is as much for his soul as for his body. As he uses matter transmitters to flit from Paris to London to the Middle East to the American Southwest, he must search back into his own early life as well as the root beliefs of his vanished people and come to terms with a world that has adopted him, made use of his skills, and left him feeling that he has no place to call his own.
One of Singer’s secrets, and his greatest guilt, is his suspicion that the creature is intelligent. He confronts him and offers his own life for Cat’s cooperation in saving the alien. Cat accepts, and later, their mission fulfilled, demands a refinement on the original bargain. Rather than a simple death he wants a return bout—a chase with Singer as the hunted rather than the hunter.
The gods, powers and monsters of Navajo legend provide the backdrop for the working out of Singer’s fate—for the chase is as much for his soul as for his body. As he uses matter transmitters to flit from Paris to London to the Middle East to the American Southwest, he must search back into his own early life as well as the root beliefs of his vanished people and come to terms with a world that has adopted him, made use of his skills, and left him feeling that he has no place to call his own.
181 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
19 people are currently reading
804 people want to read
About the author
Roger Zelazny
746 books3,887 followersRoger Joseph Zelazny was an American fantasy and science fiction writer known for his short stories and novels, best known for The Chronicles of Amber. He won the Nebula Award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo Award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965), subsequently published under the title This Immortal (1966), and the novel Lord of Light (1967).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
March 24, 2024
I believe that Eye of Cat was the last of Zelazny's successful meldings of magic and mythology with future-set science fiction adventure. The mythology he explores in this one is Navajo, and he portrays the culture of his chosen-home area quite poignantly. It's not a long novel, and the beginning did seem to me to drag a bit, but it sweeps into a compelling and thought-provoking read. I had to read it slowly to appreciate what he was doing.
June 13, 2015
I don't normally care for stories with pure Native American Indians in the space age of the future who use their in-born skills to track aliens & such. Kind of hoakey & goes against my philosophy that we'll merge into one race (the sooner, the better), but that's the plot here & it's done as well as any I've ever read. Zelazny put his unique touch on it, which is all that saves it from 2 stars.
Chris Kovacs, one of the editors of the "Collected Works of Roger Zelazny" reread this book after spending years researching Zelazny. That gave him a better insight into the book & he wrote about it here.
http://www.nyrsf.com/2015/06/christop...
Chris Kovacs, one of the editors of the "Collected Works of Roger Zelazny" reread this book after spending years researching Zelazny. That gave him a better insight into the book & he wrote about it here.
http://www.nyrsf.com/2015/06/christop...
January 6, 2020
Zelazny, odlican kao i uvijek. Njegovi poetski opisi su nesto gdje se lako izgubis. Borbe kroz Sjene su me podsjetile dosta na Corwinov serijal o Amberu i bas mi se svidjelo. Uvijek sam htio procitati o nekom Indijancu neku kvalitetnu knjigu, eto jos je i sf i to od Zelaznya.
Svaka cast na prijevodu 8-))
Svaka cast na prijevodu 8-))
July 8, 2021
Two impressions I repeatedly had throughout Eye of Cat: first, that it reminded me of John Dos Passos’ The Big Money. And the more I think about it, the more I think this was deliberate. OK, I just looked up the U.S.A Trilogy in the Wikipedia and conclude that Zelazny must be deliberately mimicking it — there are four prose styles Dos Passos uses: narrative chapters that progress the story, “camera eye” interludes that are stream-of-conscious, newsreels that give clips of headlines or radio snippets, and biographies of famous people. Zelazny has all four of those in this book, though the biographies are of the book’s own characters.
Second — and this leads from that — Roger Zelazny is the most versatile writer I’ve ever read. This may be because I don’t necessarily read lots of books by one author, or because he is actually surprisingly versatile. He is the only author I know of who set out so deliberately to develop variety throughout his career. He began writing short stories and set out to lengthen his prose as he grew more skilled, and wrote on a variety of themes and in a wide range of styles just to see if he could.
Honestly, I love Roger Zelazny so much because this is the author I would’ve been if I’d ever become one. I can see where we think in the same lines, in the same patterns. He plots the way I would plot, and I love him for writing in an era where attention-deficit masses would not condemn, judge, and pass him by for spending huge swaths of time on intricate descriptions.
Okay, enough about Roge. On to the book. All of that being said, I didn’t particularly like this book. Eye of Cat is written in a style that defies fast reading, and I just get distracted while reading slow, so I was bored for a lot of it. It is set in an indeterminate but certainly distant-ish future, taking for granted that the reader has familiarity with the decade and technology of whenever and wherever it is. And it is about a hunt.
It is about William Blackhorse Singer, the last real Navajo, the last Indian connected with the past and the old ways, and Cat, a highly intelligent predatory and telepathic metamorph who is also the last of his kind. Billy Singer made a name for himself once hunting and catching exotic and dangerous creatures from all over the galaxy, and Cat — not known to be intelligent at the time — was one of his acquisitions for the exomorph zoo in San Diego. Over the course of 50 years, Cat has done nothing but plan how he will destroy the man who caught him. And then Billy comes to him for help.
An assassination plot is no more than the mere mechanism to get to the focus of the book, where Singer frees Cat for his help and agrees in exchange to be killed by him. The story blends Navajo myth and cosmology with mystical realism and fantasy, the past with the present, Cat with coyote. As Singer tries to lose the predator on his trail — a predator who insists Singer actually wishes to be caught — he also tries to find himself and face his past and his demons. There, in the shadows and treachery of Canyon de Chelly, Singer faces off with Cat and against his chindi (his deathwish) in a lyrical hunt that evokes much ancient American imagery and folklore.
As far as craft is concerned, it is an excellent book. And I did come up with a new rule that whenever I read Zelazny, when I finish the last page, I have to go back and re-read the first chapter because he is so cyclical. I did it with this one half by accident because I didn’t really think I’d caught enough, and the references that suddenly made sense with the rest of the book just made it dazzling.
Second — and this leads from that — Roger Zelazny is the most versatile writer I’ve ever read. This may be because I don’t necessarily read lots of books by one author, or because he is actually surprisingly versatile. He is the only author I know of who set out so deliberately to develop variety throughout his career. He began writing short stories and set out to lengthen his prose as he grew more skilled, and wrote on a variety of themes and in a wide range of styles just to see if he could.
Honestly, I love Roger Zelazny so much because this is the author I would’ve been if I’d ever become one. I can see where we think in the same lines, in the same patterns. He plots the way I would plot, and I love him for writing in an era where attention-deficit masses would not condemn, judge, and pass him by for spending huge swaths of time on intricate descriptions.
Okay, enough about Roge. On to the book. All of that being said, I didn’t particularly like this book. Eye of Cat is written in a style that defies fast reading, and I just get distracted while reading slow, so I was bored for a lot of it. It is set in an indeterminate but certainly distant-ish future, taking for granted that the reader has familiarity with the decade and technology of whenever and wherever it is. And it is about a hunt.
It is about William Blackhorse Singer, the last real Navajo, the last Indian connected with the past and the old ways, and Cat, a highly intelligent predatory and telepathic metamorph who is also the last of his kind. Billy Singer made a name for himself once hunting and catching exotic and dangerous creatures from all over the galaxy, and Cat — not known to be intelligent at the time — was one of his acquisitions for the exomorph zoo in San Diego. Over the course of 50 years, Cat has done nothing but plan how he will destroy the man who caught him. And then Billy comes to him for help.
An assassination plot is no more than the mere mechanism to get to the focus of the book, where Singer frees Cat for his help and agrees in exchange to be killed by him. The story blends Navajo myth and cosmology with mystical realism and fantasy, the past with the present, Cat with coyote. As Singer tries to lose the predator on his trail — a predator who insists Singer actually wishes to be caught — he also tries to find himself and face his past and his demons. There, in the shadows and treachery of Canyon de Chelly, Singer faces off with Cat and against his chindi (his deathwish) in a lyrical hunt that evokes much ancient American imagery and folklore.
As far as craft is concerned, it is an excellent book. And I did come up with a new rule that whenever I read Zelazny, when I finish the last page, I have to go back and re-read the first chapter because he is so cyclical. I did it with this one half by accident because I didn’t really think I’d caught enough, and the references that suddenly made sense with the rest of the book just made it dazzling.
August 7, 2013
Roger Zelazny began the 1980s inauspiciously. He had completed the first ‘Amber’ sequence in the late 1970s, and its success seemed to have convinced him that there was an easier path for a professional writer than the fine writing and extravagant conceits of his best early work. He threw out a couple of hastily written fantasies whose awful paperback covers quite adequately described their contents. And then, out of nowhere, came ‘Eye of Cat’.
I find it hard to believe that the same man who had just put his name to the dreary clichéd prose of ‘The Changing Land’ should, within a year, put the same name to this remarkable prose-poem. ‘Eye of Cat’ is Zelazny at his most interesting: a poetic, mythic, stream-of-consciousness inner journey on Navajo themes. One remembers it not so much for the story as for the ‘trip’. The style is perhaps a bit show-offish at times, as if he is trying to demonstrate that he’s still ‘got’ it, but that is a small price to pay for having Zelazny back. The book is compelling, strange and utterly original.
‘Eye of Cat’ was Zelazny’s last work of substance. Prose-poems do not pay the rent. He saw out the 1980s by returning to Amber with a new sequence, even less interesting than the first, and his final decade was filled with collaborations, fix-ups and humorous novels. But he had at least shown that he still ‘had’ it...
I find it hard to believe that the same man who had just put his name to the dreary clichéd prose of ‘The Changing Land’ should, within a year, put the same name to this remarkable prose-poem. ‘Eye of Cat’ is Zelazny at his most interesting: a poetic, mythic, stream-of-consciousness inner journey on Navajo themes. One remembers it not so much for the story as for the ‘trip’. The style is perhaps a bit show-offish at times, as if he is trying to demonstrate that he’s still ‘got’ it, but that is a small price to pay for having Zelazny back. The book is compelling, strange and utterly original.
‘Eye of Cat’ was Zelazny’s last work of substance. Prose-poems do not pay the rent. He saw out the 1980s by returning to Amber with a new sequence, even less interesting than the first, and his final decade was filled with collaborations, fix-ups and humorous novels. But he had at least shown that he still ‘had’ it...
May 7, 2015
“Eye” before “E,” except after “Cat.”
(That sounded a lot wittier before I typed it out. And even then, it was still pretty bad.)
Roger Zelazny is my favorite author, and I’m pretty sure he listed Eye of Cat as one of his five favorite books he wrote. Thus, you’d think I’d really like it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t share Roger’s enthusiasm on the subject.
The book was . . . okay. I had pretty high expectations going in, especially since it’d been over a month since I’d read anything by Zelazny (blasphemy!) and was really excited to return to the words of my hero.
The premise of the book is interesting enough, and is as awesomely unique as you’d expect from a Zelazny story: Billy Blackhorse Singer, the last Navajo left on Earth in the 22nd century, is an expert animal tracker who pretty much single-handedly populated Earth’s galactic zoo by chasing down strange creatures on alien worlds. He gets hired to help deal with a potentially disastrous interplanetary political problem that he’s uniquely suited to handle, and the next thing you know he’s running from a terrifying beast on some crazy spiritual journey.
Emphasis on “crazy.”
Eye of Cat is just weird, as far as form goes. Every now and then we get random poems, sentence fragments, and garbled paragraphs with no punctuation or capitalization that would make a modern-day word processor combust from spell-check overload. And yet, it sorta works. In a way, the unusual form makes it like Creatures of Light and Darkness; in fact, I seem to recall reading that Zelazny said he couldn’t have written Cat without having done Creatures first.
That being said, the book is a little slow to start and can kind of drag in parts, but overall, it was pretty good. I’d say 3.5 stars, and I’ll decide by the time I’m done writing this whether that means it should be rounded up or down (although I have a feeling that the Z-factor alone will bump it up to 4).
There’s a lot of good Navajo mythology and cultural stuff in here, which is pretty interesting if you’re into that sort of thing. Perhaps my favorite part of the book, however, was the visuals—I really felt like I could see the lightning split the sky, feel the snowflakes falling into the canyon. There were a few stretches where it felt like not a lot happened, but they were saved by great imagery that really dropped me into the middle of every scene.
Of course, part of this could be that the climate seemed generally stormy (be it rain, snow or lightning), and that’s pretty much my favorite type of weather. So I definitely felt like I was in a little piece of paradise made just for me, a lot of the time.
All in all, I think this is a book that will be even better the second time I read it (whenever that may be). The weird format will flow better now that I’ve been through the story once.
Not my favorite by Zelazny, but still great.
(That sounded a lot wittier before I typed it out. And even then, it was still pretty bad.)
Roger Zelazny is my favorite author, and I’m pretty sure he listed Eye of Cat as one of his five favorite books he wrote. Thus, you’d think I’d really like it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t share Roger’s enthusiasm on the subject.
The book was . . . okay. I had pretty high expectations going in, especially since it’d been over a month since I’d read anything by Zelazny (blasphemy!) and was really excited to return to the words of my hero.
The premise of the book is interesting enough, and is as awesomely unique as you’d expect from a Zelazny story: Billy Blackhorse Singer, the last Navajo left on Earth in the 22nd century, is an expert animal tracker who pretty much single-handedly populated Earth’s galactic zoo by chasing down strange creatures on alien worlds. He gets hired to help deal with a potentially disastrous interplanetary political problem that he’s uniquely suited to handle, and the next thing you know he’s running from a terrifying beast on some crazy spiritual journey.
Emphasis on “crazy.”
Eye of Cat is just weird, as far as form goes. Every now and then we get random poems, sentence fragments, and garbled paragraphs with no punctuation or capitalization that would make a modern-day word processor combust from spell-check overload. And yet, it sorta works. In a way, the unusual form makes it like Creatures of Light and Darkness; in fact, I seem to recall reading that Zelazny said he couldn’t have written Cat without having done Creatures first.
That being said, the book is a little slow to start and can kind of drag in parts, but overall, it was pretty good. I’d say 3.5 stars, and I’ll decide by the time I’m done writing this whether that means it should be rounded up or down (although I have a feeling that the Z-factor alone will bump it up to 4).
There’s a lot of good Navajo mythology and cultural stuff in here, which is pretty interesting if you’re into that sort of thing. Perhaps my favorite part of the book, however, was the visuals—I really felt like I could see the lightning split the sky, feel the snowflakes falling into the canyon. There were a few stretches where it felt like not a lot happened, but they were saved by great imagery that really dropped me into the middle of every scene.
Of course, part of this could be that the climate seemed generally stormy (be it rain, snow or lightning), and that’s pretty much my favorite type of weather. So I definitely felt like I was in a little piece of paradise made just for me, a lot of the time.
All in all, I think this is a book that will be even better the second time I read it (whenever that may be). The weird format will flow better now that I’ve been through the story once.
Not my favorite by Zelazny, but still great.
April 2, 2020
A bounty hunter of Native American descent is hired to hunt and kill a deadly alien which poses a threat to all life on Earth. In order to succeed he needs help, so enlists the support of a previous quarry, the shape-shifting, telepathic "Cat."
Zelazny is a top-notch sci-fi writer who likes to examine various belief systems and their cosmogony in his fiction. Through the hunter, Billy Singer, he turns his attentions upon the rich culture and traditions of the Navajo Indians.
It's a pretty slight story, but there's a satisfying density to the themes and a meditative quality. Singer is a conflicted character and the hunt becomes a journey to the very roots of his ancestry and conscience.
Worth a read.
Zelazny is a top-notch sci-fi writer who likes to examine various belief systems and their cosmogony in his fiction. Through the hunter, Billy Singer, he turns his attentions upon the rich culture and traditions of the Navajo Indians.
It's a pretty slight story, but there's a satisfying density to the themes and a meditative quality. Singer is a conflicted character and the hunt becomes a journey to the very roots of his ancestry and conscience.
Worth a read.
April 8, 2008
my god this was horrible. i couldn't get into the Native American legends, nor could i really be pulled in by the crisis that Singer was having. i was really interested in the parts with Cat in them (i was more interested in Singer's fears and final realization of Cat as a sentient being) than i was in the rest of the book. unfortunately, the bits with Cat in them are a minority in the book. i liked his motives, but it was lost in bullshit about Singer's dumb spirit journey where he battles himself. the book held nearly no coherency and overall, i'm impressed with myself that i finished it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
xx-dnf-skim-reference
November 28, 2021How did this get on my to-read shelf?
Is Zelazny Navajo?
I tried the first few pages anyway... and... Ugh.
Is Zelazny Navajo?
I tried the first few pages anyway... and... Ugh.
October 20, 2016
Most significant part of this book is Zelazny's style of writing and native american culture mix with scifi.
June 20, 2021
Mi è sempre piaciuto Zelazny come scrittore. In questo romanzo prende diversi elementi della spiritualità Navajo, li miscela ad un futuro tecnologico, ci aggiunge la telepatia e la filologia della caccia e ne trae un romanzo che è forse più fantasy che fantascienza. Non è di facile lettura, e infatti una mia amica che ho scoperto essere una lettrice forte lo ha abbandonato proprio per la difficoltà dello stile che Zelazny ha adottato per questo romanzo.
Però mi è piaciuto, nella sua oniricità alternata alla realtà stretta, mi è piaciuto per come si scivola da un lato all'altro della realtà e per come sia in realtà la storia di un viaggio dell'ultimo Navajo, dove tutto il resto è secondario.
Sarebbero 3 stelle e mezza.
Però mi è piaciuto, nella sua oniricità alternata alla realtà stretta, mi è piaciuto per come si scivola da un lato all'altro della realtà e per come sia in realtà la storia di un viaggio dell'ultimo Navajo, dove tutto il resto è secondario.
Sarebbero 3 stelle e mezza.
January 23, 2022
Honestly? I loved the storytelling. Interspersing Navajo themes and songs and stories and then headlines from the scifi environment, then mixing and matching them throughout the novel was amazing. It both introduced me to the setting and to Navajo culture without laying it out word for word made it much more interesting. Also, love the themes of depression and a general disconnect from society as Billy feels he can no longer adapt to the changing landscape of time, meanwhile his friends are experiencing a similar disconnect all while trying to help him in his predicament. The LAYERS. 🤌💋 Lovely. The Navajo scifi novel I didn't know I needed.
June 28, 2019
I think Zelazny is just a bit too something for me. Interesting, but a slog to finish. Glad I read it, but I’m not rushing back for more!
February 26, 2024
The book equivalent of looking at an abstract painting. It is unique and thought provoking, indirect and nebulous. Premised on a Dine hunter in the future hunting/being hunted by a shape shifting alien called Cat. I enjoyed the read but felt like I was on psychedelics.
May 30, 2022
Pretty good, but a bit confusing in some places.
September 30, 2007
Okay, I will admit that I'm stretching (just a little) in giving this book 4 stars. My honest opinion would be closer to 3.5 stars but we work with what we have, yes?
I haven't read enough of Zelazny's work to be able to compare this to his other books but I found it to be an interesting diversion and an entertaining piece of "brain candy".
SPOILER WARNING Zelazny deals with some interesting and complex issues (death, the meaning of life, purpose in life) but the comic moments keep the book "light" enough so that the heavy topics covered don't become a downer.
The hero is a hunter by trade and the book is set in the not too distant future. He travels the galaxy and uses his innate tracking skills to gather animals for an intergalactic zoo. The main character struggles with his purpose in life and whether or not he has "abandoned" or "betrayed" his Navajo heritage. He experiences a moral delimma when he realizes that an animal he captured many years earlier is, in fact, a sentient being. This (and another conflict) are set up early on and the remainder of the book is the deal the two make and the lengths the hero goes to to repay his end of the bargain (or die trying).
I don't want to completely give the book away because if you like light SF, it's a decent read.
I haven't read enough of Zelazny's work to be able to compare this to his other books but I found it to be an interesting diversion and an entertaining piece of "brain candy".
SPOILER WARNING Zelazny deals with some interesting and complex issues (death, the meaning of life, purpose in life) but the comic moments keep the book "light" enough so that the heavy topics covered don't become a downer.
The hero is a hunter by trade and the book is set in the not too distant future. He travels the galaxy and uses his innate tracking skills to gather animals for an intergalactic zoo. The main character struggles with his purpose in life and whether or not he has "abandoned" or "betrayed" his Navajo heritage. He experiences a moral delimma when he realizes that an animal he captured many years earlier is, in fact, a sentient being. This (and another conflict) are set up early on and the remainder of the book is the deal the two make and the lengths the hero goes to to repay his end of the bargain (or die trying).
I don't want to completely give the book away because if you like light SF, it's a decent read.
September 16, 2017
One of Zelazny's more poetic works, this goes in a very different direction than most of the rest of his corpus. Like Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, and Isle of the Dead, Eye of Cat is concerned with myths (here, Navajo mythology).
In summary form, it sounds like it should be a taut thriller: one of the last Navajo has spent years among the stars capturing alien specimens. Fearing the assassination of world leaders, the world government recruits him for his special skills to help guard against an unstoppable killer. The only way the hunter is able to do this is with the aid of an alien creature he had captured long ago, a creature he has grown to suspect is actually intelligent; but to win this creature's aid, the hunter has to agree to be hunted in turn.
But almost all of the action takes place offscreen; the novel spends its time in the set up and in the ambiguous middle, where events are playing out. Entire chapters are just poetry and prayer. Even the ending ends on a frustratingly vague note. In this thin story, there is a great deal of shadowed depth.
In summary form, it sounds like it should be a taut thriller: one of the last Navajo has spent years among the stars capturing alien specimens. Fearing the assassination of world leaders, the world government recruits him for his special skills to help guard against an unstoppable killer. The only way the hunter is able to do this is with the aid of an alien creature he had captured long ago, a creature he has grown to suspect is actually intelligent; but to win this creature's aid, the hunter has to agree to be hunted in turn.
But almost all of the action takes place offscreen; the novel spends its time in the set up and in the ambiguous middle, where events are playing out. Entire chapters are just poetry and prayer. Even the ending ends on a frustratingly vague note. In this thin story, there is a great deal of shadowed depth.
July 8, 2019
Eye of Cat (1982) by Roger Zelazny could have been a great book if he'd put more work into it. It's still an okay read, so don't shy away from it, but with some extra work, it could have been an excellent one.
I found the early part of the book a bit slow and tedious, not much to my liking, but once I passed the 25% point, the story and the writing began clicking, moving along due to its own merits. From there, most of the book proceeds along fine, but not refined.
What needs improving are this book's themes and general cohesion. The book wanders a bit, here and there, never quite coming into focus. Parts of it builds in an interesting manner, while other parts clunk along, never quite fitting in. It's like an outline of a good book, one that will improve with rewrites, rather than a completed book. Many bits of it felt under-written and under-developed.
I did enjoy the fundamental premise, which is why I think this book is worth your time.
I found the early part of the book a bit slow and tedious, not much to my liking, but once I passed the 25% point, the story and the writing began clicking, moving along due to its own merits. From there, most of the book proceeds along fine, but not refined.
What needs improving are this book's themes and general cohesion. The book wanders a bit, here and there, never quite coming into focus. Parts of it builds in an interesting manner, while other parts clunk along, never quite fitting in. It's like an outline of a good book, one that will improve with rewrites, rather than a completed book. Many bits of it felt under-written and under-developed.
I did enjoy the fundamental premise, which is why I think this book is worth your time.
October 17, 2020
With the library inaccessible, and my shelves over-crowded, I am taking some memntoes of youth off the shelf to re-read and re-assess. This is going on the give-away pile. The idea of the hunter accessing his 'neolithic', 'primitive' Navajo mind to hide his thoughts from a telepathic enemy is stupid and racist. The multi-mind, fugue-state writing is fun, and so are the 'futuristic' headlines, but the mystical ending didn't work, and I wanted the book to finish earlier even though it is novella length. Also, perhaps more about me and the year 2020, but the future is not what it was. Matter transport, free energy, wilderness spaces with deer and coyote, stable weather just a little warmer than "now" but not enough to be a problem for anyone - it's a future that was not possible in 1982 and now is a depressing fantasy
December 14, 2014
In his memorial to Roger Zelazny, George R. R. Martin says: "He was a poet, first, last, always. His words sang." This is especially true of Eye of Cat, which at times read like a novel by e. e. Cummings. This book is about the language and the shamanistic journey; the story itself is simple and straightforward. I might have wished for a longer book with more than sentence-long references to William Blackhorse Singer's career as a hunter of exotic alien species - but that would have been a novelist's approach, not a poet's. But reading Zelazny again has inspired me to purchase a new copy of the Amber series, which I read too many years ago to remember anything but the story premise and the surprising lyricism of the language.
May 31, 2016
I picked up this book used at Zia Records because I have greatly enjoyed Zelazny's work in the past, and because I heard an interesting review of it as an "Appendix N" book (from Gary Gygax's famous list of authors and books that inspired the creation of Dungeons and Dragons) on the "Sanctum Secorum" podcast. I have to say, I really enjoyed the beginning of it - Zelazny captures so much of what the Southwest is like, especially up around canyon country. The concept was very interesting - Navajo tracker in the future in a game of cat-and-mouse with a telepathic alien shapeshifter. But I found the last 25% or so of the book very unsatisfying, mostly because of the odd stream-of-consciousness telepathy. Still a very fun book, though.
August 5, 2014
I loves me some Zelazny, but this one took a lot to get through. I don't know what's different about Eye Of Cat, but it was painful to slog through for me. Completely the opposite of the Amber series. It's the one Zelazny novel I'm least likely to ever read again. If you're a completionist, and just HAVE to read everything else he wrote, then go for it, by all means. If you're new to Zelazny, I'd avoid this one until his books have built up the karmic critical mass required to see you through this one, adoration intact.
March 10, 2025
Zelazny goes all in with this one. A compelling read start to end, playing to the author's strengths of fluidly overlapping folk mythology, magic and science fiction; he belongs in his own genre. Reminiscent of Lord of Light, a novel that pulls a similar stylistic feat of combining mystic anthropology with cosmic intrigue. Unlike that book, which has aged into vinegar, Eye of Cat goes down like ambrosia, a cohesive and propulsive lark into Southwestern native lore set in that chronological contradiction where science fiction thrives, the near distant future.
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August 30, 2016Not a fan of the writing style- where what's going on is deliberately concealed in a shoddy attempt at creating intrigue, but goes on too long; cheesy banter; etc.
I see that the author dedicated the book to both Tony Hillerman and his fictional characters... kind of wonder if Hillerman was like, Uh, thanks but no thanks, brah.
I see that the author dedicated the book to both Tony Hillerman and his fictional characters... kind of wonder if Hillerman was like, Uh, thanks but no thanks, brah.
August 18, 2016
This is fantasy in a science fiction setting. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work that well for me. Individual parts were good, others not so much, and it seems to promise far more than it delivered. Fortunately, it was short.
This makes the second book for me in a half century book that used this spelling for fish: ghoti, using letters from rough, women, motion.
This makes the second book for me in a half century book that used this spelling for fish: ghoti, using letters from rough, women, motion.
October 11, 2020
Started very well and as usual with Zelazny very quickly drawn in to characters and scene. For me it got a bit too mystic at the end.
May 17, 2020
One of the things I've come to realize (perhaps, again) in my reading (and re-reading) of Zelazny's books is that one never really knows what to expect from Zelazny. If you come to one of his books fresh - no preconceived notions, no idea what it's going to be about - you find that it could go just about anywhere. The previous book I read was straight-ahead sci-fi set in the almost-present (as of the time of writing) and the few before that were heroic high fantasy with mythological creatures and magic predominating. Then I came to Eye of Cat, which I'd read in '91 but didn't remember a thing about. This book is also sci-fi, though it incorporates Zelazny's often-used love of mythology (in this case, Native American). It's set in the (far) future where space travel is common (though the book takes place solely on earth), aliens are around, as are technological wonders ("trip-boxes," a type of teleportation unit, play a big role in the plot). The book is about Billy Blackhorse Singer, the last Navajo, who has managed to live a really long time. He's collected alien species from many worlds and brought them back to earth to be studied. (It's a bit of a zoo, to be honest.) That's all backstory. The plot, in two parts, tells of an alien who's coming to assassinate someone, and Billy is part of a group (though he works solo) brought in to prevent that from happening. Part of Billy's plan is to use a shape-shifting alien (dubbed "Cat") that he's brought back from another planet long ago, and who he has come to suspect has sentience and isn't "just an animal." The second part of the book involves Billy being hunted by Cat. A fairly standard plot in anyone else's hands, but Zelazny really excels at telling these stories in a unique fashion. Like many of Zelazny's books, this one is short (180 pages), but so, so densely packed. Zelazny's prose style has often been described as poetic, and that's very evident here. The descriptions are haunting, the musings on life and religion thought-provoking. And the writing is gorgeous; many actual poems are embedded within the structure of the novel. At times slipping into an almost-stream of consciousness narrative, and occasionally switching viewpoints, it's wonderfully told. And yet, there's something undefinable that prevents me from giving this one five stars. At times, I felt the language, beautiful as it was, overwhelmed the story being told. Still, this is a superb novel and one I'd definitely recommend. An oddity about my copy, which is a SF Book Club version: the text is not right-margin justified, which makes it look odd and somewhat unprofessional. No idea what the reason behind that might be, but it was jarring enough that noticing it brought me out of the story at times.
December 1, 2025
This is one of my longtime favorite Roger Zelazny novels where he takes his love of the Navajo culture and uses it to create a powerful tale set in the far future. Billy Singer is the last of his clan—a man out of time. He has spent most of his life hunting exotic alien lifeforms to bring back to a zoo on earth. All of that space travel has caused him to outlive everyone he knows. And so, the man that the reader meets in the opening chapters is depressed without knowing that he suffers this affliction, and he is seeking both meaning in his life and a place in it.
The opportunity to discover both is presented to him when the government asks him to stop a shape-changing alien assassin with telepathic powers. He clearly doesn’t think he has a chance of doing so, but in the back of his mind he comes up with an idea that might do the job. One of the creatures he put in the zoo was an alien shape-changer which he thinks of as "Cat." Singer has always suspected that Cat was actually sentient and he decides that this request by the government offers him a chance to find out. So, he breaks into the zoo, convinces Cat to talk to him, and then makes a deal to save the leader of earth. Cat (whose world has since been destroyed) wants to kill Singer. And Singer offers him his life in exchange for tracking and killing the alien assassin.
As if this wasn’t a great enough beginning, there are a whole bunch of human telepaths who have been recruited to try and identify and stop the assassin. I’m not going to write much about them, but they are great characters and I love how Zelazny uses their telepathy.
The first major crisis of the story comes about midway through the book when Cat claims his prize from Singer only to be disappointed. He doesn’t want to just kill Singer, he wants to beat him. He wants to hunt him and win the rematch between the two. And Singer discovers that he is not suicidal. He does want to live. And that hunt, and what Singer does to himself to survive, is what makes this such a memorable story.
If you like Roger Zelazny work, you’re going to love this novel.
The opportunity to discover both is presented to him when the government asks him to stop a shape-changing alien assassin with telepathic powers. He clearly doesn’t think he has a chance of doing so, but in the back of his mind he comes up with an idea that might do the job. One of the creatures he put in the zoo was an alien shape-changer which he thinks of as "Cat." Singer has always suspected that Cat was actually sentient and he decides that this request by the government offers him a chance to find out. So, he breaks into the zoo, convinces Cat to talk to him, and then makes a deal to save the leader of earth. Cat (whose world has since been destroyed) wants to kill Singer. And Singer offers him his life in exchange for tracking and killing the alien assassin.
As if this wasn’t a great enough beginning, there are a whole bunch of human telepaths who have been recruited to try and identify and stop the assassin. I’m not going to write much about them, but they are great characters and I love how Zelazny uses their telepathy.
The first major crisis of the story comes about midway through the book when Cat claims his prize from Singer only to be disappointed. He doesn’t want to just kill Singer, he wants to beat him. He wants to hunt him and win the rematch between the two. And Singer discovers that he is not suicidal. He does want to live. And that hunt, and what Singer does to himself to survive, is what makes this such a memorable story.
If you like Roger Zelazny work, you’re going to love this novel.
October 9, 2025
3,5 sterren
Dit is het 3de verhaal dat ik las van Roger Zelazny. Zelazny doet het weer een origineel en interessant boek met een mix van fantasie, magie, mythologie, science fiction, spiritueel en het paranormale.
Men duikt in de mythologie/cultuur van de inheemse stammen in Amerika.
Zwart is de kleur van het Noorden, waar de geesten van de doden heengaan.
Zanger Billy een Navajo en 6 andere personen helpen met de opdracht in het vinden van een sluipmoordenares (een Stragraanse) Billy roept in de hulp van vormveranderaar Kat, die Billy heeft gevangen genomen voor Interstellaire levensvormen instituut. Kat slaagt erin om de sluipmoordenares te doden. En nu jaagt Kat op Zanger Billy. De spelregels zijn simpel als Billy erin slaagt om 7 dagen te vluchten (wel in leven te blijven) van Kat zoja dan heeft Billy zijn leven terug.
In het verhaal stelt men de 6 personen voor Zelazny geeft ons een samenvatting van iedere persoon ivm hun leven. Het laat ons realiseren dat iedereen trauma, bagage met zich meedraagt.
"Wat is vrij? Zei de ander, en om zijn hoofd begon geleidelijk een groen schijnsel te spelen. 'Om alle goede wegen te kunnen bewandelen, veronderstel ik. En jij hebt jezelf daarin beperkt. Ik vertegenwoordig een weg die jij niet bent gegaan, een belangrijke weg. Ik had een deel van jou kunnen zijn, een reddend deel. Maar in je trots heb je mij verslaafd, omdat jij beter wist."
"De wind laat het gras wuiven.
De sneeuw glijdt langs de bodem.
De wervelwind waait langs de bergen,
werpt stop op.
De rotsen galmen hoog in de bergen achter de nevels.
Het zonnelicht vloeit weg als water uit een gebarsten kruik.
We zullen weer tot leven komen.
De besneeuwde aarde glijdt onder de wervelende wind door.
We zullen weer tot leven komen."
Dit is het 3de verhaal dat ik las van Roger Zelazny. Zelazny doet het weer een origineel en interessant boek met een mix van fantasie, magie, mythologie, science fiction, spiritueel en het paranormale.
Men duikt in de mythologie/cultuur van de inheemse stammen in Amerika.
Zwart is de kleur van het Noorden, waar de geesten van de doden heengaan.
Zanger Billy een Navajo en 6 andere personen helpen met de opdracht in het vinden van een sluipmoordenares (een Stragraanse) Billy roept in de hulp van vormveranderaar Kat, die Billy heeft gevangen genomen voor Interstellaire levensvormen instituut. Kat slaagt erin om de sluipmoordenares te doden. En nu jaagt Kat op Zanger Billy. De spelregels zijn simpel als Billy erin slaagt om 7 dagen te vluchten (wel in leven te blijven) van Kat zoja dan heeft Billy zijn leven terug.
In het verhaal stelt men de 6 personen voor Zelazny geeft ons een samenvatting van iedere persoon ivm hun leven. Het laat ons realiseren dat iedereen trauma, bagage met zich meedraagt.
"Wat is vrij? Zei de ander, en om zijn hoofd begon geleidelijk een groen schijnsel te spelen. 'Om alle goede wegen te kunnen bewandelen, veronderstel ik. En jij hebt jezelf daarin beperkt. Ik vertegenwoordig een weg die jij niet bent gegaan, een belangrijke weg. Ik had een deel van jou kunnen zijn, een reddend deel. Maar in je trots heb je mij verslaafd, omdat jij beter wist."
"De wind laat het gras wuiven.
De sneeuw glijdt langs de bodem.
De wervelwind waait langs de bergen,
werpt stop op.
De rotsen galmen hoog in de bergen achter de nevels.
Het zonnelicht vloeit weg als water uit een gebarsten kruik.
We zullen weer tot leven komen.
De besneeuwde aarde glijdt onder de wervelende wind door.
We zullen weer tot leven komen."
March 14, 2025
Billy Cavallo Nero Cantante è l'ultimo navajo, uomo di due mondi passato "da una società quasi neolitica a una ad alta tecnologia". Cacciatore esperto, ha catturato diversi esemplari di specie aliene, ma uno di questi, Gatto, è un essere senziente che è rimasto imprigionato per cinquant'anni a covare odio. Quando Billy lo libera, allo scopo di ottenere il suo aiuto per fermare un'assassina aliena, gli promette che poi gli avrebbe concesso la possibilità di cacciarlo, invertendo le parti cacciatore/preda.
Roger Zelazny è uno degli scrittori più autorevoli, originali e premiati della new wave fantascientifica e "Occhio di gatto" ("Eye of Cat", 1982; Urania Mondadori, 2020; trad. di Enzo Verrengia) è un romanzo davvero potente e rappresentativo del sottogenere: un'avventura serrata per ridefinire la propria identità, quasi onirica, tra visioni sciamaniche e mitologie native, in un mondo di ecologie selvagge, a volte ibridate dalla tecnologia, terminali di teletrasporto, esseri umani e non con poteri esp. È difficile, oggi, trovare modi simili, in struttura e linguaggio, per intrecciare visioni di mondi diversi (che non siano ormai realtà digitali o parallele/divergenti) e fa piacere, ogni tanto, tornare a meravigliarsi grazie agli autori classici.
Roger Zelazny è uno degli scrittori più autorevoli, originali e premiati della new wave fantascientifica e "Occhio di gatto" ("Eye of Cat", 1982; Urania Mondadori, 2020; trad. di Enzo Verrengia) è un romanzo davvero potente e rappresentativo del sottogenere: un'avventura serrata per ridefinire la propria identità, quasi onirica, tra visioni sciamaniche e mitologie native, in un mondo di ecologie selvagge, a volte ibridate dalla tecnologia, terminali di teletrasporto, esseri umani e non con poteri esp. È difficile, oggi, trovare modi simili, in struttura e linguaggio, per intrecciare visioni di mondi diversi (che non siano ormai realtà digitali o parallele/divergenti) e fa piacere, ogni tanto, tornare a meravigliarsi grazie agli autori classici.
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