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A review by dantastic
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
5.0
When Carl Corey wakes up in the hospital, recovering from a car accident and suffering from amnesia, he checks himself out and strides off into a centuries old conflict...
This is my third time through Nine Princes in Amber and I still love it quite a bit. Over fifteen years since my second reading when I was a beardless 30 year old boy just beginning to enjoy Goodreads.
The beginning is so good that it was borrowed for Planescape: Torment. An amnesiac wakes up somewhere and has to figure out who he is and who wanted him dead. The fact that he's of a royal family that schemes with one another to control Amber, the city upon which all others are modeled, is the icing on the cake. It's the first book in the Corwin Cycle of five books and the first of the ten Amber books published while Zelazny was alive but it stands pretty well on its own.
I'll breeze over a lot of stuff for the people who haven't read this yet. I love that Corwin, Carl Corey's true name, bluffs his way through over half the book. Since so much time passed since my last reading, I felt like I had amnesia too.
In an age where 'epic' has come to mean 'long', it's unbelievable how much Zelazny packs into this, from the lore of Amber to the multidimensional scope of things, all in less than 200 pages. He also plants seeds for the next four books and beyond. It's evident that Zelazny read more than just science fiction and fantasy. His style reminds me more of Raymond Chandler than anything else, full of colorful similes while blood is being spilled by the gallon.
What else can I say without giving away too much? I know Zelazny and George RR Martin were tight so I have to wonder if the scheming Amber kids had some influence on GRRM's ASoIaF. Zelazny also died before he could wrap everything up so I wonder if GRRM is planning that as well. The climax hits pretty hard and the ending nicely sets up the next four books.
Five out of five stars.
This is my third time through Nine Princes in Amber and I still love it quite a bit. Over fifteen years since my second reading when I was a beardless 30 year old boy just beginning to enjoy Goodreads.
The beginning is so good that it was borrowed for Planescape: Torment. An amnesiac wakes up somewhere and has to figure out who he is and who wanted him dead. The fact that he's of a royal family that schemes with one another to control Amber, the city upon which all others are modeled, is the icing on the cake. It's the first book in the Corwin Cycle of five books and the first of the ten Amber books published while Zelazny was alive but it stands pretty well on its own.
I'll breeze over a lot of stuff for the people who haven't read this yet. I love that Corwin, Carl Corey's true name, bluffs his way through over half the book. Since so much time passed since my last reading, I felt like I had amnesia too.
In an age where 'epic' has come to mean 'long', it's unbelievable how much Zelazny packs into this, from the lore of Amber to the multidimensional scope of things, all in less than 200 pages. He also plants seeds for the next four books and beyond. It's evident that Zelazny read more than just science fiction and fantasy. His style reminds me more of Raymond Chandler than anything else, full of colorful similes while blood is being spilled by the gallon.
What else can I say without giving away too much? I know Zelazny and George RR Martin were tight so I have to wonder if the scheming Amber kids had some influence on GRRM's ASoIaF. Zelazny also died before he could wrap everything up so I wonder if GRRM is planning that as well. The climax hits pretty hard and the ending nicely sets up the next four books.
Five out of five stars.