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Zelazny, Roger

Roger Zelazny

The Great Book of Amber


The Great Book of Amber : The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10
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Amber, with its mighty feudal castle and its forests and fields, is the true 
world, balanced by its dark counterpart the Courts of Chaos. All other worlds, 
including our own Earth, are but Shadows, creations of King Oberon and his 
quarrelsome children. Amberites are able to travel through the Shadows, using 
their minds directly to create paths; they are also able to travel and 
communicate instantly by means of the Trumps, magical cards created by Oberon's 
mysterious father Dworkin. At the heart of Amber is the Pattern, a potent (and 
dangerous) energy formation which is the source of their power.

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Starting in the late 1980s I read all of Zelazny's Amber novels, one by 
one, in their original form, and now all ten of them are published together in 
The Great Book of Amber. The first five follow the swashbuckling 
adventures of Corwin, son of the absent Oberon, and the hero of the next five is 
the gentler and more urbane Merlin, Lord of Chaos.

The quality of the writing does vary from novel to novel; having said that, the 
series as a whole is terrific and I'm emphatically a fan. The earlier ones tend 
to be fresher and better in my opinion - Nine Princes in Amber is a great opener, 
and The Guns of Avalon with its chaotic and epic battle sequences is a 
marvellous sequel. 

I loved the Amberites, the feuding brothers and sisters with their complicated 
rivalries and alliances, as twisted and colourful a bunch as any soap-opera clan. 
Much of the plot in each novel is driven by Corwin (or Merlin in the later 
stories) trying to find out which of them is his friend or his foe, which of 
them he can trust and which one is trying to kill him. It's an ever-changing 
tapestry of intrigue and danger; life in Oberon's court would certainly be 
fraught with constant peril, but it would never ever be dull.

I loved the Trumps, the glossy playing cards (always slightly cool to the touch) 
with their detailed pictures of family members. Both communication devices and 
gateways, these were a brilliant idea. I really liked the idea of having a pack 
for myself at one point, then realised that it would be the fantasy equivalent 
of having a mobile phone equipped with full video, surely I'd want to get away 
from people sometimes, (and especially if my family were like Corwin's.)  

I also loved the idea of Shadows, these vast tantalising realms that are not 
fully real, yet take on a vibrancy and life of their own. The technique for 
travelling through Shadow I found intriguing - basically, you focus on some 
feature of the landscape around you that has some similarity to your desired 
destination, then the landscape will begin to morph as it shifts towards the 
Shadow you are aiming for (or is it that you move, and sort of slide through 
the different dimensions?) A forest changes to a sunny meadow, which becomes
a baking desert, which changes to a mountain range, then back to a forest... 
Wonderful stuff.

This is my suggestion; get The Great Book of Amber, wait for a lazy 
summer afternoon or long winter evening, curl up with the book somewhere and 
lose all track of time as you explore this fantastic realm.

© Alex Cull, 27th April 2004


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