The Complete Amber Chronicles, Part I by Roger Zelazny

Second reading; first read in the '70s.

I read and liked the first five books of this fantasy series when they were published in the 1970s and recently decided to read them again, only to discover I no longer had the books. On looking to Amazon to see if they were still in print, I was delighted to discover that a Great Book of Amber has recently been published, containing all ten of the Amber novels. I have not read the last five, which feature a different character and were written in the 1980s, so I have those to look forward to. This is a review of the first five in series.

The Amber Chronicles follows in the grand fantasy tradition of Tolkien and Frank Herbert in creating an alternate world. Although Zelazny does not even approach the previously mentioned authors in the complexity and believability of his creation, he does come up with some interesting ideas. For example, Amber is the only true place and the myriad of alternate worlds are merely Shadows (including the earth we readers live in, of course). The narrator of these first five books, Prince Corwin, says, "Of Substance, there is only Amber, the real city, upon the real Earth, which contains everything. Of Shadow, there is an infinitude of things. Every possibility exists somewhere as a Shadow of the real Amber." Only the royal family of Amber has the ability to travel from one shadow world to another, although they do have the ability to take others with them. They can also contact each other and travel through the use of a pack of tarot-type cards.

Nine Princes in Amber, Book 1, gives the reader the background information about Amber and its royal family through Zelazny's clever device of having the narrator, Prince Corwin, awake from a coma with amnesia on our world. As he learns about his home through regained memories, with the help of some of his relatives, we learn along with him. The main action of the book is the attempt by Corwin and his brother Bleys to defeat their brother Eric, to keep him from taking the throne. It seems the king, Oberon, has been whereabouts unknown for some time, although we have hints that he may not be dead.

The Guns of Avalon, Book 2, finds Corwin with a new plan to defeat Eric, which includes a trip to Avalon (a Shadow with the King Arthur characters) to secure ammunition for a weapon previously unknown in Amber. A new danger also appears: a black area with a black road, which seems to be present not only in Amber but also in all the Shadow earths. Out of this darkness come all kinds of strange creatures and demon-like humans, threatening all peoples in Amber and in its Shadow earths. If this concept sounds familiar, you may be thinking of Stephen King, who used it in several of his novels. And Zelazny came first. Coincidence?

Sign of the Unicorn, Book 3, concerns itself mainly with plots and counter-plots among the brothers and sisters of Amber. Some are killed, and nobody completely trusts anybody else. This family makes the Game of Thrones people look like amateurs at the art of intrigue. Some metaphysical elements begin to enter the story, culminating in a dramatic concluding scene.

The Hand of Oberon, Book 4, follows Corwin as he continues trying to unravel the tangled schemes of his siblings. One brother is murdered, another is rescued from a tower prison only to disappear again, and a long-lost son is found. The origins of Amber are disclosed and the cause and destination of the black road is discovered.

In The Courts of Chaos, Book 5, the Amber royals (with the exception of one) unite to fight the army of The Courts of Chaos, where the black road originates. At the same time, the one renegade Amberite has gone mad and is attempting to destroy the primal Pattern which allows Amber and its Shadows to exist. The action includes a l-o-n-g trip through surreal Shadows by Prince Corwin which sounds like an acid trip gone bad.

The individual books are all short (novellas, really) and easy to read, so that reading all five is no chore. If any are read, all should be read, in order to get the full story. After the first two, however, the plots and schemes of the characters become a bit tedious and contrived. This is somewhat enjoyable as escapist reading, but not nearly as well done as many others of the genre.