Doorways in The Sand - Reception

Reception

Some reviewers expressed disappointment not only in Doorways, but in Zelazny’s previous recent work as well. Praise was unenthusiastic.

Spider Robinson in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine stated that Zelazny's initial works gave the science fiction world hope that he would write “muscular adventure in the language of the poet, uniting drama and beauty,” but he had failed. Nonetheless, he described Doorways as “A cracking good yarn, thin on calories but delicious.”

Richard E. Geis in Science Fiction Review wrote that “at the end I was left vaguely unsatisfied,” but the novel had “Zelazny magic; that indefinable stylistic touch that makes him extremely readable.”

Locus magazine’s Susan Wood wondered if Zelazny’s “promise would ever be fulfilled.” She described Doorways as “a well-written adventure,” and “fast enough, interesting enough, to carry any bedtime reader through arbitrary plotting to midnight and the loose-ends-tied-up conclusion.”

Having read seven of Zelazny’s most recent books in one month, Richard Cowper in Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction lamented the loss of Zelazny as science fiction’s prose-poet:

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. As I progressed from one improbable fantasy to the next, I winced at what I felt to be the squandering of a rare and remarkable talent and felt a growing sense of dismay—in truth as much for Zelazny as for myself. There are felicities of style, of invention, of learning or wit, which stamp it as being his alone. The energy is still there, together with the desire to experiment, but the early promise remains unfulfilled. He has yet to give us that major work.

Nonetheless, he rated Doorways as "definitely superior."

On the other hand, Algis Budrys in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction wrote that Doorways “is one of the first hopeful signs from this author in some time” and “a return toward the power Zelazny once displayed, plus a maturation that runs deeper than witticism.” He called Doorways a “rather good novel.”

Doorways in the Sand has had 11 English editions, the last in 1991, and has been translated into German, Bulgarian, Dutch, Russian, Hebrew, Japanese, French, and Polish.