Zelazny gives every indication of being an omnivorous reader, and Lord of Light is at times a very literary novel.

His style owes much to the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists he studied in graduate school, and to the metaphysical and symbolist poets. In addition Zelazny is well versed in mythologies from around the world — including Hindu writings of course, but also the myths of "the dying god" gathered by Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough (1922) — and in Jungian psychology. A science fiction novel comparable in its imaginative use of myth and in its witty, allusive, poetic style is Samuel R. Delany's The Einstein Intersection (1967). But it is doubtful, given the publication dates, that there is any influence beyond a shared set of literary concerns.