Customer Reviews

Chronicles of Amber

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have read this series about 3 times (about once every 10 years.) Which mean that aside from that fact that I am 30 years older since I first read it, It still captivates me. I am so sorry Zelazny is gone. I really love his work! I remember when I first read this series, I would walk to work after school, and arrive 45 minutes before my shift began. I did not mind at all..I was in Amber for 45 minutes...and it was soooo cool!

My original copy was the double volume SciFi Bookclub edition, but they wore out through the years...so I purchase it again from Amazon -used.

A wonderful story that should not be missed! I wish just once that I could walk the pattern!( I would not mind being as long lived as Corwin either....)

This is the first of a two volume set containing that part of Zelazny's Amber series which deals with Corwin, one of the princes of Amber. This volume contains the first two of the series, "Nine Princes in Amber" and "Guns of Avalon". It's nice to have both in hardback, but there is a new edition which has all 10 of the Amber novels written by Zelazny, so I would recommend that instead.

I know people who say they like to read books because it takes them places. When you think of, say, Lord of the Rings, there's many awesome battles, but people also remember the sights themselves, from the quaint peaceful realms of Hobbiton, to the great city of Minas Tirith, to Sauron's tower rising out from a blackened land. Of course, it takes a lot of time to travel between them (and plenty of people are fond of complaining about it, too).

In Amber, characters travel between these majestic locations like you and I might walk from one street block to the next. Zelazny is willing to show you -anything- he can dream up, and his imagination alone is worthy of deeming this collection a classic.

Almost as important is his reach. He's not telling a story of a kingdom surviving the attack of an enemy. Oh no. That isn't big enough. Imagine a million alternate worlds, and then run a black road through them all, spreading destruction as it grows to encompass every world, every city, every creature imaginable. In the center of all these alternate worlds is Amber, sort of like the pillar holding everything together. Should it fall, so does all else. Tolkien wanted to show the battle for one single Middle Earth. Zelazny wants to show a war to save billions.

The main narrator is Corwin (yes, it is first person, but don't worry, the writing is a masterful combination of beauty and down-to-earth jokes and grumblings). He wakes up in a hospital, with no memory of who he is, what happened, but my isn't it peculiar how his broken legs are healed so quickly? From there he encounters his family person by person. They backstab, deal, threaten, switch sides a hundred times, and all can walk through shadows to whatever realm they wish. I loved every second of it.

The series starts to bog down around the third book. The climactic fights, which sometimes feel like a boy grabbed various action figures and started slamming them together (go, go, wolfman army, shoot down those pterodactyls! Oh no, knights in armor, fire fire fire!), grow less frequent. There is a LOT of talking, and while it is usually spaced out well, near the middle there is so much, trying to establish who is friends with who, what happened to what, etc.

By the end of the series, I loved the narrator, adored the city of Amber, felt like I personally knew the various princes and princesses of the city, and sorely wished I had more. I checked the next five books, and was sad to see the narrator was not the same. Oh well. Farewell, Corwin. You gave me one heck of a ride.

The Amber Series was, I think, the first fantasy I ever got into, and it is still one of my favorites. Corwin awakens in a hospital with amnesia but the leg in a cast seems unbroken (though the doctor insists this is impossible). He makes short work of an attendant with a hypodermic, and follows a string of clues to find a series of family members, some seeking alliances, some seeking to kill him on sight, each who gives him a different story of what is going on. And all have the power to walk between parallel universes. But Amber is the one true world, and all others are only shadows of it.

The overall concept is brilliant. The characters are rounded and layered. Each plot twist reveals that the truth has yet another dimension you didn't expect. All seamlessly woven. Not everything Zelazny wrote is this good, but this is a master at his prime. It makes the majority of fantasy out there today look pretty lame. A must-read for any fan of fantasy.

Unfortunately his story "Damnation Alley" was made into a really awful movie, and Zelazny swore he wouldn't let anything else of his be made into a movie, because this would have made a great movie series.