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How many miles to Avalon? None, I say, and all. The silver towers are fallen.
When I was 13 or 14, I picked up the Chronicles of Amber by Zelazny. It was recommendation from my dad. At that time I did not know much of fantasy. I had read LotR, of course, and stuff like Bradley's Avalon cycle, and several good SF classics out of father's library - Van Vogt, Asimov, Vance, Sturgeon.... - and quite a few Stephen Kings. But not a whole lot of fantasy, and Amber was to me a very big shock.
I fell in love.
Of course, Corwin was my first literary crush. He had panache, wit, irony, classe and was somewhat antiheroic without being too anti-classic. (Looking back, he is much more classic than I felt at the time ^_^) And the dark hair + green eyes combo that set itself in my mind as the ideal male features ;)
But more than that, I fell in love with the universe. Amber's story starts in our world and quickly slips into a world of sword fights, magic and intrigue. It is a world vast enough to contain any world anyone may imagine - which seduced my imagination instantly - and whose characters are incredibly powerful without given any kind of blatant superpowers of spells. It was original and powerful, had elements of both poetic legend and sarcastic post-modernism. It's built very successfully upon the antics of a large, charismatic, proud, cynical, Machiavellian family.
When I created my first (and only) Mary Sue, it was for Amber's universe. When I started to want to make the universe my own and start writing, it was still with the same character and the universe bore an undeniable influence from Amber. When I first got in the internet, one of the first thing I looked for was Amber and I found out about the roleplaying game and then sought to start playing RPGs. This is truly the series of book that has the most marked my imagination and inner world the most.
I've read it more times than I can remember (though I think the Bujold's Vorkosigan comes close in number of times read), but only in French before (with the gorgeous covers Florence Magnin did for it).
Last week I bought the first five volumes in English, and I've read them over the week end (instead of doing other, important things I should have been doing, needless to say). I was a bit afraid of seeing this monument of my teenage hood crumble down upon a more mature re-read and was relieved to see it was not so.
The book is edited by fantasy masterworks, who's currently doing a good job of reediting fantasy classics. It's got a decent cover picture unlike the bigger Great Book of Amber, though it's hardly directly relevant to the story and I doubt it was drawn for it. It also has only the first five volumes of Corwin's arc, and I have no idea if they also plan to re-edit the five following novels about Merlin, nor the short stories (I certainly hope they will, because I'm among the rare people who love them).
I'm mentioning this because it had at least several typing mistakes I could notice while reading, and I don't notice typos easily.
On the bad side, the chronicles of Amber is not, nor has it ever been, an extremely deep story. It's mostly adventure, extremely fun and well written as such, but with little shattering insight about human nature. Nor is it Zelazny's best book (I warmly recommend Lord of Light as such). The story does lack somewhat - compared to my memory - in darkness and intricacies of plotting. Corwin spends quite a bit of time saying us how nasty and ruthless himself and his family are, but I was not totally convinced of it by their own actions. At least not to the point I'm willing to believe in, say, the Lannisters' nastiness and ruthlessness. Some things in the plot seemed too obvious to me, in the 'wanting to whack the main protagonist for not seeing them' way, however, it is a plot I know mostly by heart so who knows how I'd feel if I'd read it for the first time now. And there's a certain old fashioned sexism to it, which, to be fair is probably mostly due to Corwin's narrative and which tends to bite him in the ass.
On the plus side, boy can Zelazny write. The style is absolutely gorgeous, which was obviously one of the things I'd miss reading in French all these years. The characters have lost none of their charisma and appeal, especially not Corwin. The world is still one of the most original stuff out there. Zelazny may have drawn a lot after Farmer's Maker of Universes series, but he did manage to spin it in a very novel and very appalling way (and better IMO). The storytelling is still very awesome and as difficult to let down as ever (as witness the fact I read it over these two days instead of doing the aforementioned more important things), the fighting scenes still described with as much gustos and cleverness (Zelazny is one of the rare fantasy writer who knows what he's talking of when he writes fencing and it shows).
Oddly enough, it reminded me (especially the last volume) strongly of Gaiman's style. Some scene seemed to be illustrated perfectly by World's End and the Wake, and found their echoes in American Gods (which might be intentional). I had never noticed the similarity before but they're both very good storytellers, with a great handling of style with both humorous and grave theme, and an awesome handling of mythological themes (I had a friend who called Zelazny's unique genre of writing "Alternative Mythology", here's to you Tatiana, Mad Doctoress ♥).
Overall I was very happy to read this again. It's still a benchmark of my mindscape
Thus finishes the trip to Nostalgia's Lane. Good-bye and helllo, as always.
I fell in love.
Of course, Corwin was my first literary crush. He had panache, wit, irony, classe and was somewhat antiheroic without being too anti-classic. (Looking back, he is much more classic than I felt at the time ^_^) And the dark hair + green eyes combo that set itself in my mind as the ideal male features ;)
But more than that, I fell in love with the universe. Amber's story starts in our world and quickly slips into a world of sword fights, magic and intrigue. It is a world vast enough to contain any world anyone may imagine - which seduced my imagination instantly - and whose characters are incredibly powerful without given any kind of blatant superpowers of spells. It was original and powerful, had elements of both poetic legend and sarcastic post-modernism. It's built very successfully upon the antics of a large, charismatic, proud, cynical, Machiavellian family.
When I created my first (and only) Mary Sue, it was for Amber's universe. When I started to want to make the universe my own and start writing, it was still with the same character and the universe bore an undeniable influence from Amber. When I first got in the internet, one of the first thing I looked for was Amber and I found out about the roleplaying game and then sought to start playing RPGs. This is truly the series of book that has the most marked my imagination and inner world the most.
I've read it more times than I can remember (though I think the Bujold's Vorkosigan comes close in number of times read), but only in French before (with the gorgeous covers Florence Magnin did for it).
Last week I bought the first five volumes in English, and I've read them over the week end (instead of doing other, important things I should have been doing, needless to say). I was a bit afraid of seeing this monument of my teenage hood crumble down upon a more mature re-read and was relieved to see it was not so.
The book is edited by fantasy masterworks, who's currently doing a good job of reediting fantasy classics. It's got a decent cover picture unlike the bigger Great Book of Amber, though it's hardly directly relevant to the story and I doubt it was drawn for it. It also has only the first five volumes of Corwin's arc, and I have no idea if they also plan to re-edit the five following novels about Merlin, nor the short stories (I certainly hope they will, because I'm among the rare people who love them).
I'm mentioning this because it had at least several typing mistakes I could notice while reading, and I don't notice typos easily.
On the bad side, the chronicles of Amber is not, nor has it ever been, an extremely deep story. It's mostly adventure, extremely fun and well written as such, but with little shattering insight about human nature. Nor is it Zelazny's best book (I warmly recommend Lord of Light as such). The story does lack somewhat - compared to my memory - in darkness and intricacies of plotting. Corwin spends quite a bit of time saying us how nasty and ruthless himself and his family are, but I was not totally convinced of it by their own actions. At least not to the point I'm willing to believe in, say, the Lannisters' nastiness and ruthlessness. Some things in the plot seemed too obvious to me, in the 'wanting to whack the main protagonist for not seeing them' way, however, it is a plot I know mostly by heart so who knows how I'd feel if I'd read it for the first time now. And there's a certain old fashioned sexism to it, which, to be fair is probably mostly due to Corwin's narrative and which tends to bite him in the ass.
On the plus side, boy can Zelazny write. The style is absolutely gorgeous, which was obviously one of the things I'd miss reading in French all these years. The characters have lost none of their charisma and appeal, especially not Corwin. The world is still one of the most original stuff out there. Zelazny may have drawn a lot after Farmer's Maker of Universes series, but he did manage to spin it in a very novel and very appalling way (and better IMO). The storytelling is still very awesome and as difficult to let down as ever (as witness the fact I read it over these two days instead of doing the aforementioned more important things), the fighting scenes still described with as much gustos and cleverness (Zelazny is one of the rare fantasy writer who knows what he's talking of when he writes fencing and it shows).
Oddly enough, it reminded me (especially the last volume) strongly of Gaiman's style. Some scene seemed to be illustrated perfectly by World's End and the Wake, and found their echoes in American Gods (which might be intentional). I had never noticed the similarity before but they're both very good storytellers, with a great handling of style with both humorous and grave theme, and an awesome handling of mythological themes (I had a friend who called Zelazny's unique genre of writing "Alternative Mythology", here's to you Tatiana, Mad Doctoress ♥).
Overall I was very happy to read this again. It's still a benchmark of my mindscape
Thus finishes the trip to Nostalgia's Lane. Good-bye and helllo, as always.
no subject
It's nice to revisit things from years ago and find they still have the same "spark" as you remember. :)
no subject
no subject
Though I agree about the cover. The train of thought probably went "Look, unicorn! And one of the books is called Sign of the Unicorn. That fits." And no-one noticed the random flower fairies etc.
no subject
lol, at least it's not an ugly cover. None could be as pretty as the old French one anyway ^^
no subject
Zelazny is one of the rare fantasy writer who knows what he's talking of when he writes fencing and it shows
This is very interesting to me as well! Do you fence?
no subject
I don't fence, no. But I meant he write his swordfight believably (which very few fantasy writers do) and I'm pretty sure Zelazny himself was a fencer... I have friends who do fence (modern and artistic both) and who worship Zelazny which seems to be a good rec too ^^