It’s interesting that this is one of the Amber books that’s stayed in my mind the most, but that I don’t actually remember very well. I’m mostly confident of this because I remember… none of it. In my recollection of reading these stories as a teenager, I can at least remember that there’s a final battle between the Amberites and the forces of Chaos, but the specifics of that are so different. They’re also not very impressive, though this may be unfair because the Ice […]

My decision to reread these novels as an adult continues to pay dividends. The Hand of Oberon covers a large amount of the origin of the Pattern, the levels of shadow and of Amber’s history that we have not yet seen from the view of our protagonists, and also some clarity on the imprisonment of Dworkin. If none of this makes sense, you haven’t been reading the books and that’s a shame. I’m phoning this review in to the nth degree because it’s Sunday and I’m […]

My original copies of The Chronicles of Amber were in two volumes, 2 and then 3 books each. I read the first volume multiple times, in part because I like that early amnesia story, Corwin coming into his own, and then especially the heroism in Shadow Avalon across The Guns of Avalon. I read and enjoyed the second volume, but it was a lot thicker, harder to follow, and more political (keep in mind Zelazny’s dirty court politics directly influenced George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice […]

The Guns of Avalon picks up directly after the first Amber story. Our hero, Corwin, walks through shadow yet again, gathering an army so that he may mount a second assault on Amber in service of defeated Eric and taking the throne for himself. But all is not well in Amber, and by extension, in shadow. Amberites are able to utter a curse with their dying breath, or with an equivalently dire moment. When he was punished and imprisoned for his failed coup in Nine Princes […]

Nine Princes in Amber is a fairly emotional and nostalgic book for me. I read it when I was I think 11 or 12 years old, and it played a role in convincing me that I wanted to write. Additionally, as the youngest in my family, this was an early piece of fiction that I didn’t receive as a “hand me down,” if that makes sense. I mean that I found it, I chose it, I read it, and for a very long time, it […]