Between 1970 and 1991, Roger Zelazny wrote a series of ten novels based upon a mythical fantasy world. At first, it was a series of five books, the first being called Nine Princes in Amber, following the adventures of Prince Corwin, who has lost his memory and must struggle to regain his past as well as his position. Corwin and the other princes have special powers, including the ability to move between an infinite number of universes, called “shadows.” The second set of five books, begun in 1985 after Zelazny took a seven-year break, followed the adventures of Merlin, the son of Corwin. This collection, The Complete Amber Chronicles, puts all ten short novels into one, long 1258-page volume.

I am not usually a fan of fantasy; I have read a little of it outside of the Amber series, and found it not to my liking. The Amber series, however, is very well written for the non-fantasy reader, in the same way the Harry Potter books are; that is, they take the story more seriously than the fantasy element, and there are rules and rationales which keep the fantasy from become too surreal and unbelievable. The characters, though cardboard at times, are engaging, and the possibilities suggested by the universe Zelazny has constructed are intriguing to the imagination.

SPOILER ALERT:

Do not read the following paragraph if you wish to remain completely in the dark about the backstory. The following does not take away from the story in my opinion, but if you’re finicky about it, pick up reading in the paragraph after. To read the spoilers, simply select the text of the invisible paragraph (magic!), and it will invert colors and show the text.

SPOILERS:

The basic idea is this: in the beginning, there was only Chaos, where practically anything could happen, and the world had little order or recognizability. This world was lead by a royal family, who were able to harness energies existing in their world to construct spells and devices which would perform tasks they desired. At one point, a man named Dworkin left the realm, found a creature of order outside the realm of Chaos, mated with it, and created the Pattern of Amber. Once created, the Pattern became an opposite pole to Chaos, and between them ranged all the possible universes that could exist, populated by infinite varieties of beings. Dworkin had a son, Oberon, who later took the throne; Oberon, in turn, had many sons, numbering nine by the time Zelazny’s first story begins. By that time, Dworkin had vanished, Oberon had disappeared, and one son, named Eric, claimed the throne. This is where the first book picks up.

OK, START READING AGAIN HERE.

Our main character, not knowing his name or anything else about himself, wakes up in a hospital. Slowly, he discovers more and more about himself, including the fact that he is stronger than most people, heals faster, and is in some sort of undefined trouble. The people at the hospital have been instructed to keep him there under sedation, but somehow he has returned to consciousness and therefore is able to escape.

The opening technique Zelazny uses here–amnesia–works very well for this story. In addition to the standard purpose of allowing the author to fill in the exposition needed in any story (introducing characters, situations and story parameters) while at the same time keeping readers in suspense, the amnesia angle has an added bonus: it allows us, as readers, to slip into the role of this fantasy character before we find out about his powers that would normally place him distant from ourselves. Waking up in the hospital, he thinks of himself as a normal person, and only slowly, bit by bit, finds his special nature, giving us time to grow comfortable with his character before we see him as a mythical member of royalty.

The story quickly turns to intrigue, with family members plotting against family members, with the magic and mystery of the world thrown in for spice. There are secrets everywhere, unanswered mysteries galore, and strange new worlds filled with various people and creatures at every turn. Zelazny takes some basic myths and legends, such as King Arthur’s court, and runs off in a direction of his own. Underscoring it all is (according to many writers) the foundation of fiction: conflict. Even the most trustworthy of siblings seems suspect at some time; as Corwin says at one point, “I trusted him as I would a brother, which is to say, not at all.”

The first five books are quite good, right up to the ending. Zelazny was obviously talked into writing more books due to the success of the first series, and at first, the second series of five novels stands up well. That series follows the adventures of Merlin, Corwin’s own son, torn between the two main cultures of the story, belonging to both, giving his full allegiance to neither. Possessed of greater magical skills and training than his father, he takes us deeper into the method and ways of the powers Zelazny mostly just hints at in the first five books. Merlin’s story begins on the shadow Earth (the place where you and I live, and also where his father started out), where he is trying to figure out who is trying to assassinate him every April 30th.

Like the first set of books, this series quickly gets entangled in character mysteries, plot twists, and of course, intrigue, this time by two sets of relatives rather than just one. And for the first few books, it does an OK job of keeping the quality close to the first series. However, as the story goes on, it gradually deteriorates, and in the last two books, things get harder and harder to accept. Merlin enters worlds too confusing to comprehend, characters completely change course without much reason, and the story jumps around without much cohesion. It is as if Zelazny either lost his skills or his interest in those last few years of writing.

Nevertheless, the story is interesting enough and bears through to the end, and the first seven or eight novels more than make up for the weaker ending of the second half of the ten-book saga. Enough for me to buy this larger volume and read it again, after having gone through my brother-in-laws set of separate books many years before.

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Note: I am backdating these reviews so that they do not appear in the main blog, otherwise cluttering up the end of August too much. This review was written on August 28th, 2003.