Isle of the Dead (Roger Zelazny, 1969)

Francis Sandow is the last surviving human born in the 20th century. An early space colonist, he spent long centuries of space travel in suspended animation, and then suddenly woke in a far future world where everything had changed. Desperate for something to hold to, he sought out a mentor, who happened to be a member of a slowly dying alien race, the Pei'ans. Under this tutelage, Sandow eventually became a telepath and "worldscaper". Worldscapers terraform planets. The process of becoming a worldscaper culminates in a mystic rite called Naming that binds the mortal to one of the gods in the Pei'an pantheon, and it is believed that the worldscaper is actually acting as an avatar for the god. There are only thirty worldscapers in existence; Sandow is the only non-Pei'an among them. While the rite of Naming was once reserved for the high priests of the Pei'an religion, modern Pei'an worldscapers tend to think of their relationships with the gods much more in terms of mental constructs, and Sandow is a confirmed agnostic as far as the objective existence of the gods is concerned.
At the beginning of the novel, Sandow is one of the most famous men in the Galaxy, wealthy beyond imagination, living a life of seclusion and luxury in worlds he fashions according to his taste. But he is lured into action by a series of photographs sent to him anonymously, showing him old enemies, old friends, and old lovers, most of whom should be dead, but appearing in the photographs to be alive.

Eventually Sandow makes his way to Illyria, a world he created as an idealistic paradise, but finds it has been severely damaged. The enemy is a Pei'an rival who as an orthodox member of the faith feels that Sandow's Naming was sacrilege. The ultimate conflict takes place on the Isle of the Dead, at the center of a great lake. It is a replica of Arnold Böcklin's famous Isle of the Dead painting.

Sandow also appears as a character in To Die in Italbar (1973), however that book is not a sequel.

Rating: 9/10