Nine Princes in Amber

This is the book that launched my Zelazny obsession as a teen. Carl Corey wakes up after a car crash with amnesia (sense a theme here?), which he hides from those close to him, some of whom insist on calling him Corwin. He gradually discovers he’s an immortal with a strong claim to the throne of Amber, the one true world at the center of infinite shadow worlds, including our Earth. As Corwin’s memories return, he realizes he was a cruel and arrogant man, and some of his numerous siblings have good reason to hate him. Here the amnesia trope… show more.

Zelazy was a master writer and nowhere is that more obvious than this fantasy series.

A royal family that can walk between worlds, knowing only Amber and Chaos to be the real worlds, with all the other countless worlds being poor reflections of them.

I found I was unable to put these books down, getting lost in reading and just wanting to learn what happens next.

I was drawn into the idea that reality for those of the royal families was just a change in perspective as you walk. All they needed to do was picture something different as they… show more.

Amber is the first shadow of a pattern drawn in the blood of its creator. A magical place of colourful and princely characters, full of plots, and intrigue. Endless shadow worlds of Amber, ripple out through infinity, stamping the multifaceted order of existence into all-encompassing oblivion. The courts of chaos (primal  embryonic birth-place of the creator) span the void. Unstable, violent, full of chimeric royalty, intent on destroying the pattern, and re-establishing the dominance of existence. Earth shadow culture and technology, are imortant to the princely magician Corwin (pretender to Amber's throne) in his war aginst chaos...

Despite its complexity,… show more.

This is a book about one of the nine princes of Amber. A family of trans-dimensional dynasty of immortal warriors and sorcerers that can walk through the layers of reality as easily as getting a cup of tea. But it starts with a man who lost his memory in a car accident convinced that someone is out to get him. From the first chapter it’s a wild ride through the multiverse they call shadow as the Courts of Chaos and the Lords of Order chase after one man.

This book showed me how great a story could be when an… show more.

My recommendations so far have been tales where people from our real world slip into hidden other worlds. The Chronicles of Amber series turns this on its head. Amber and Chaos are the true worlds, and our own world is one of many shadow worlds. The multiverse hopping in this series feels both modern (like the tales of Dr. Strange in the MCU) and like a trippy, fever-dream product of the 1970s. Zelazny is a writer’s writer. His books are packed with ideas and written with raw prose that dances between the pulpy and the beautiful.

The entire ten-volume Chronicles of Amber is a portal fantasy in which there is no portal. Instead, the ability to journey between realities (known as “Shadows”) is inherent to scions of Amber, the one reality of which all others are shadows. As is the case in many of Zelazny’s works, the main characters are immortals or the closest thing to them, and they have left echoes of themselves in many realities. I loved the richness of the concept, the mythic overtones and undertones, and how the greatest transformation in the course of the story is in how the characters perceive… show more.

I tend to read by authors more than by genre. In the late 70s I picked up a tattered thin paperback with a fantastic cover by Zalazny and decided to give it a try. Little did I know there were several more books in this series written between 1970 and 1991. I couldn’t put it down! Yes, there is Corwin, another tortured hero who often fails, but the worlds he is drawn into are fascinating. This book, and you can get the complete series called the Great Book of Amber, is a combination of sci-fi and fantasy. For me, a… show more.

This is the first of a ten-book series called The Chronicles of Amber (there are two five-book cycles.) I started reading these mind-bending novels when I was a wee lad, in the 1970s, and I didn’t really understand them, but I loved the vivid worldbuilding.

The characters were real, and the plots of these books were a page-turning pleasure. In this series, Amber is the prime world, and all the other versions of reality were shadows of the original. In Plato’s philosophy, he has this theory of forms, and in this world-view, he sees our reality as an imitation of… show more.