Nine Princes in Amber and the rest

[Robert Bannister]

I said I had to finish rereading "Amber" before embarking on "Riddle
Master", so for those of you who don't read Goodreads, I'll inflict my
review on you and I'll be interested in your comments:

An omnibus edition of 1258 pages - a bit daunting, but that represents
10 books. I had forgotten how short they were. This is my first re-read
for nearly forty years, and the first time I read it was from library
books, so I didn’t manage to read most of them in order. Some books in
the first, the section about the war on Amber, I had read twice, and I’m
pretty sure I had read that first volume three times. Despite that, as
soon as I started on “Nine Princes in Amber”, the old magic grabbed me
and I read it through completely spellbound.

To my surprise, I found the second part involving Chaos a lot more
interesting than I had the first time through. One book, “Knight of
Shadows” was a bit repetitious, but apart from that, I got absorbed in
Merlin’s story, to the extent that I couldn’t remember why I hadn’t
liked it before. The Amber saga comprises “Nine Princes in Amber”, “The
Guns of Avalon”, “Sign of the Unicorn”, “The Hand of Oberon” and “The
Courts of Chaos” (I found and still find “Guns of Avalon” reminiscent of
Alistair MacLean’s 1957 best-seller “The Guns of Navarone”, but no
matter). It has a well-developed and wide-reaching magic system, and I
think I reacted against the massive extension of magic in the second
half. I accept that Chaos is going to be different from Amber, but all
these sorcerers from Shadow, plus the Ghostwheel and the spikards seemed
a bit over the top to me.

The language puzzled me to start with: there is some old-fashioned
English juxtaposed with 1970s slang, but I think the “thees” are
confined to the older characters like Dworkin and Oberon. The are a lot
of literary references, most of which I recognised, but most of the
musicians and other personalities I didn’t know back then and with some
of them (David Steiner) even Google can’t really explain why he was
mentioned. Zelazny also does a lot of back-referencing - back to event
that happened a volume or two earlier and which I had forgotten. Perhaps
it’s as well I’ve bought the book this time, because I have a feeling
I’m going to have to re-read it again.
--
Robert B. born England a long time ago;
Western Australia since 1972

[hamis...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, June 25, 2016 at 3:38:35 PM UTC+10, Robert Bannister wrote:
> I said I had to finish rereading "Amber" before embarking on "Riddle
> Master", so for those of you who don't read Goodreads, I'll inflict my
> review on you and I'll be interested in your comments:
>

> To my surprise, I found the second part involving Chaos a lot more
> interesting than I had the first time through. One book, “Knight of
> Shadows” was a bit repetitious, but apart from that, I got absorbed in
> Merlin’s story, to the extent that I couldn’t remember why I hadn’t
> liked it before.

I prefer Corwin's series but the Merlin series is still damned good.

> The Amber saga comprises “Nine Princes in Amber”, “The
> Guns of Avalon”, “Sign of the Unicorn”, “The Hand of Oberon” and “The
> Courts of Chaos” (I found and still find “Guns of Avalon” reminiscent of
> Alistair MacLean’s 1957 best-seller “The Guns of Navarone”, but no
> matter). It has a well-developed and wide-reaching magic system, and I
> think I reacted against the massive extension of magic in the second
> half.

> I accept that Chaos is going to be different from Amber, but all
> these sorcerers from Shadow, plus the Ghostwheel and the spikards seemed
> a bit over the top to me.

I think it's fair to say that Corwin wasn't that interested in magic but there's a fair amount suggesting that Bleys, Bland and Fiona have gone a lot further into magic than he has.
Although I have a vague recollection that Corwin uses magic to give somebody a hotfoot at some stage.

There's a lot of additional stuff added in the 2nd series which expands on the multiverse universe a lot.
I've never felt that the second series had a real ending, the author of the Amber roleplaying game suggested that there could have been more books added to the series.

[Robert Bannister]

Yes. I had the same feeling.
What was odd reading it again this time, was all the smoking, and I
couldn't help feeling occasionally from some of the imagery, that Roger
might have been sampling acid or something at times. I do remember the 70s.

[Robert Carnegie]

On Saturday, 25 June 2016 06:38:35 UTC+1, Robert Bannister wrote:
> I found and still find “Guns of Avalon” reminiscent of
> Alistair MacLean’s 1957 best-seller “The Guns of Navarone”, but no

> matter.

_The Guns of Navarone_ is also... the name of a 1961
film, whose plot is similar to that of the book of
the same name - both of which I've just conned from
Wikipedia. It doesn't resemble _The Guns of Avalon_
(for instance, Corwin does not intend to lead a force
into Amber to blow it up, inconveniencing Hitler)
but perhaps Roger Zelazny thought that rhyming with
the film title would be a draw.

Outside these books, "amber" is fossilised tree resin,
usually transparent, which sometimes contains other
things fossilised inside it, such as insects. Princes
are more unusual and this may be nothing to do with
the story. And it's worn as jewellery, but not by them.

[Robert Bannister]

On 27/06/2016 3:09 PM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> On Saturday, 25 June 2016 06:38:35 UTC+1, Robert Bannister wrote:
>> I found and still find “Guns of Avalon” reminiscent of
>> Alistair MacLean’s 1957 best-seller “The Guns of Navarone”, but no
>> matter.
>
> _The Guns of Navarone_ is also... the name of a 1961
> film, whose plot is similar to that of the book of
> the same name - both of which I've just conned from
> Wikipedia. It doesn't resemble _The Guns of Avalon_
> (for instance, Corwin does not intend to lead a force
> into Amber to blow it up, inconveniencing Hitler)
> but perhaps Roger Zelazny thought that rhyming with
> the film title would be a draw.

That last point is closer to what I imagined.

>
> Outside these books, "amber" is fossilised tree resin,
> usually transparent, which sometimes contains other
> things fossilised inside it, such as insects. Princes
> are more unusual and this may be nothing to do with
> the story. And it's worn as jewellery, but not by them.
>

I'm sure the idea of things being preserved unchanged in amber/Amber was
intentional. In my opinion, it is supposed to contrast with
ever-changing Chaos. Unfortunately, the Amber we are presented with
seems to be changing most of the time too.

[Anthony Nance]

Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
> I said I had to finish rereading "Amber" before embarking on "Riddle
> Master", so for those of you who don't read Goodreads, I'll inflict my
> review on you and I'll be interested in your comments:

Equally inspired by this very post and a friend of mine starting
his first read of Nine Princes in Amber, I decided to reread the
whole Amber series, including the six short stories in Zelazny's
"Manna From Heaven" collection.

More comments below, but in summation, I was very pleased with
how they held up, and that I had forgotten enough that the re-read
went well. (I don't re-read very often because I tend to remember
way too much. In this case, it had been roughly 30 years and I did
not have that problem at all.)

> An omnibus edition of 1258 pages - a bit daunting, but that represents
> 10 books. I had forgotten how short they were. This is my first re-read
> for nearly forty years, and the first time I read it was from library
> books, so I didn't manage to read most of them in order. Some books in
> the first, the section about the war on Amber, I had read twice, and I'm
> pretty sure I had read that first volume three times. Despite that, as
> soon as I started on "Nine Princes in Amber", the old magic grabbed me
> and I read it through completely spellbound.

Agreed - the first five books held up really well for me, and
especially the evolution in Corwin's attitudes about his siblings
and his wanting the kingship.

> To my surprise, I found the second part involving Chaos a lot more
> interesting than I had the first time through.

Agreed - this is one place where being a re-read helped me.
Since I knew books 6-10 had almost no Corwin in them, I could
read them better for what they were instead of what they weren't.

> One book, "Knight of Shadows" was a bit repetitious,

Oh my yes yes yes

> but apart from that, I got absorbed in Merlin's story, to the
> extent that I couldn't remember why I hadn't liked it before.

Here I disagree - while I did enjoy the Merlin books more than
the first time, I was too often frustrated by two things to
actually engage and enjoy them:
1) Merlin's repeated acknowledgment that he should be informing/talking
to others (esp Random) and yet never doing so;
2) His repeated interactions with Luke/Rinaldo where he always
ended up re-trusting L/R at the drop of a hat, while giving
L/R eight trillion pieces of info in return for a few scraps,
thinking somehow it was a fair exchange, and never learning
from it.


> <mild snip of novel names>

> It has a well-developed and wide-reaching magic system, and I
> think I reacted against the massive extension of magic in the second
> half. I accept that Chaos is going to be different from Amber, but all
> these sorcerers from Shadow, plus the Ghostwheel and the spikards seemed
> a bit over the top to me.

Agreed again - too much magic from too many sources.

> The language puzzled me to start with: there is some old-fashioned
> English juxtaposed with 1970s slang, but I think the "thees" are
> confined to the older characters like Dworkin and Oberon.

Yes, I believe that's correct.

> The are a lot of literary references, most of which I recognised,
> but most of the musicians and other personalities I didn't know
> back then and with some of them (David Steiner) even Google can't
> really explain why he was mentioned.

Did you catch that Roger inserted himself briefly at one point?

> Zelazny also does a lot of back-referencing - back to event
> that happened a volume or two earlier and which I had forgotten. Perhaps
> it's as well I've bought the book this time, because I have a feeling
> I'm going to have to re-read it again.

As to the six short stories, one was a very short prologue to
Merlin's books (describing Merlin traversing the Logrus), and
the other five were linked together in the immediate aftermath
of book 10. The five stories basically focus on Corwin, Merlin,
and Luke/Rinaldo on three separate parts of a..."mission" I guess,
with one story showing what happened to Frakir. It's pretty clear
that Roger could have (and somewhere I read that he indeed intended
to) gone much farther into telling tales from the Amber universe.

Thanks for your inspiration to re-read - I'm really glad I did.
- Tony

[Robert Bannister]

On 13/07/2016 11:43 PM, Anthony Nance wrote:
> Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>> I said I had to finish rereading "Amber" before embarking on "Riddle
>> Master", so for those of you who don't read Goodreads, I'll inflict my
>> review on you and I'll be interested in your comments:
>
> Equally inspired by this very post and a friend of mine starting
> his first read of Nine Princes in Amber, I decided to reread the
> whole Amber series, including the six short stories in Zelazny's
> "Manna From Heaven" collection.
>
> More comments below, but in summation, I was very pleased with
> how they held up, and that I had forgotten enough that the re-read
> went well. (I don't re-read very often because I tend to remember
> way too much. In this case, it had been roughly 30 years and I did
> not have that problem at all.)

I'm glad it worked for you too.
[big snip]

>> but apart from that, I got absorbed in Merlin's story, to the
>> extent that I couldn't remember why I hadn't liked it before.
>
> Here I disagree - while I did enjoy the Merlin books more than
> the first time, I was too often frustrated by two things to
> actually engage and enjoy them:
> 1) Merlin's repeated acknowledgment that he should be informing/talking
> to others (esp Random) and yet never doing so;
> 2) His repeated interactions with Luke/Rinaldo where he always
> ended up re-trusting L/R at the drop of a hat, while giving
> L/R eight trillion pieces of info in return for a few scraps,
> thinking somehow it was a fair exchange, and never learning
> from it.

Agreed.
[more snipping]

>> The are a lot of literary references, most of which I recognised,
>> but most of the musicians and other personalities I didn't know
>> back then and with some of them (David Steiner) even Google can't
>> really explain why he was mentioned.
>
> Did you catch that Roger inserted himself briefly at one point?

No, I missed that.

> As to the six short stories, one was a very short prologue to
> Merlin's books (describing Merlin traversing the Logrus), and
> the other five were linked together in the immediate aftermath
> of book 10. The five stories basically focus on Corwin, Merlin,
> and Luke/Rinaldo on three separate parts of a..."mission" I guess,
> with one story showing what happened to Frakir. It's pretty clear
> that Roger could have (and somewhere I read that he indeed intended
> to) gone much farther into telling tales from the Amber universe.

I'll have to check out the short stories. It is a pity he didn't do it.

>
> Thanks for your inspiration to re-read - I'm really glad I did.
> - Tony
>

[Robert Carnegie]

On Wednesday, 13 July 2016 16:43:50 UTC+1, Anthony Nance wrote:
> While I did enjoy the Merlin books more than

> the first time, I was too often frustrated by two things to
> actually engage and enjoy them:
> 1) Merlin's repeated acknowledgment that he should be informing/talking
> to others (esp Random) and yet never doing so;
> 2) His repeated interactions with Luke/Rinaldo where he always
> ended up re-trusting L/R at the drop of a hat, while giving
> L/R eight trillion pieces of info in return for a few scraps,
> thinking somehow it was a fair exchange, and never learning
> from it.

Well... Merlin (not "the" Merlin) mostly doesn't
really want to talk to Random. There are things that
Merlin doesn't want to tell to Random, and there are
things that Merlin doesn't want Random to tell him
to do.

As for Luke... Luke is good at this.

[Anthony Nance]

It was in...<darn memory; have to use the internet>...The Hand of Oberon.
Corwin is going down to/through the depths of the castle, I think on his
way to the Pattern, and he encounters a guard that is probably Zelazny
himself. Here's the description from TvTropes:

"Roger, a guard in Castle Amber, and amateur author is likely to be
Roger Zelazny writing himself into his novel. Corwin describes Roger
as lean, cadaverous, pipe-smoking, and grinning, a description that
would fit the author. Roger says that he is writing a "philosophical
romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity," and that
he composes the "horror" portions while on duty in the dungeon."

Tony

[Anthony Nance]

All true, but I felt Merlin was no dope, and he should have known
better after the umpteenth time.

Tony

[Robert Bannister]

Well remembered. Well, found, anyway.