Roadmarks

Blurb

Roadmarks is a science fantasy novel written by Roger Zelazny during the late 1970s and published in 1979.
The novel postulates a road that travels through time, with a nexus placed every few years where a handful of specially gifted people are able to get on and off. While there is a plot involving a series of assassination attempts on the protagonist, the novel's main strengths lie in the unique nature of the setting, character development, structure and the short vignettes on each of the would-be assassins.
The book is also notable for having two famous poetry collections as characters. "Les Fleurs du Mal" by Charles Baudelaire and "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman appear as cybernetic extensions of themselves. They are companions of the protagonist and his son Randy, and are referred to as "Flowers" and "Leaves" respectively. Both talk, argue and quote their own content frequently, exhibiting human-like intelligence to such degree that it seems certain they could easily pass the Turing test.
The novel alternates between non-linear "Two" and linear "One" chapters.