Reviewed by: Kate_Spader. Date of writing: Genre: Fantasy
This immortal Roger Zhelyazny is perhaps the most difficult writer in my life. His books are given to me with great difficulty, but at the same time I can’t stop nibbling this cactus, re-reading them again and again. But it is absolutely inexhaustible – bit by bit, in each of the readings, my weak brain is aware of yet another facet of each of these unrealistically deep works. “This Immortal” is the most “read” and beloved work of Zhelyazny, a wonderful story of a charming personality – and, at the same time, of an endless universe.

Zhelyazny does not give his reader odds; in his texts there are surprisingly few supports and clues. You simply find yourself in a certain world – real and therefore complex, and find yourself in the midst of political intricacies, a web of personal relationships and strange conventions, trying to put at least some kind of connected picture in your head like a serial amnesia patient. And having built a diagram of this world (which will still turn upside down), in hindsight you understand that the beginning of the narrative was completely logical and that everything you need was already told to you.

So, through the dominance of names and images from ancient Greek myths, the fact that this is not a legendary past, despite the ruins around it, gradually emerges. A man named Konstantin, who classifies himself as an unpronounceable genus of Kallikanzarids, lives in the very future. Post-apocalyptic as we love. And his wife, Cassandra (well, who would doubt it), is afraid of some problems that threaten him. And they, of course, will arise. But how could they not form on the path of such an outstanding person, a local official of the symbolic government of a dilapidated Earth, sitting somewhere for many light years. After all, humanity has safely self-destructed, having blown up everything that could, and having polluted the planet with radiation. Oh yes, this same Konstantin Karagiasis, ugly and self-confident – he seems to be immortal … But he does not like to raise this topic.

The variegation and peculiar burlesqueness of the series of characters and places is a bit like Lemovsky’s “Travels of Iion the Pacific”. The remnants of humanity migrated as guest workers to the interstellar federation of wise blue-skinned vegans, and the revolutionary struggle for the return of earthlings and the revival of the planet suffered a shameful fiasco. Conflicts, conflicts … Ideals and xenophobia, the desire for the best, the desire for a new one, the passion to return the lost paradise … Karagasis looks after the Earth that has turned into a museum, and under his leadership the workers dismantle the Cheops pyramid – they say, by scrolling through the film with the filming of the process backwards, it will be possible to observe behind its construction … A variety of mutants and wonderful unearthly creatures live on the ruins of civilization, and here our hero has to conduct an excursion for a bored alien whose thinking is alien and his intentions are not understood us. There will be many colorful fights and cunning intrigues, adventures in a good sense of the word and rethinking the fate of the world, along with the concept of progress, allusions to famous myths and their unexpected readings, love and irritation, grief and rapture in the battle, sudden joys and charming humor of the narrator …

“He began to wag his tail, came up to me and licked his hand.

• Hands, Bortan! Need hands to set me free You have to find them, Bortan, and bring them here.
  He lifted a brush lying on the ground and laid it at my feet. Then he again began to look into my eyes and wave his tail.
• No, Bortan. Living hands. Hands of friends. The hands that will untie me, understand? ”

And Konstantin will be unleashed by a fearful silly satyr – an amazing generation of radiation. Who knows, maybe they will inherit the Earth, which has become unnecessary to the former earthlings?