Amber Revisited: Zelazny's Classic Series

[Antimanners]

I love the series, reread the books many times. Corwin's story is better-ish but the second series modernized things and at the time it was fascinating to dive deeper into the Courts of Chaos and the true nature of the Pattern. Merlin's tale was a weaker one but those first two books were incredibly exciting to me when they were brand new. I just couldn't wait for the next book to find out what was going on! As much as I think of myself as a fan of fantasy fiction, I've read precious little. Amber was one of the few series that I stuck with to the end.

 

[Thomas Shey]

He’s pretty firmly In enduring status. A surprising number of his books remain in print, so they most sell in numbers acceptable to publishers. And he’s a name you’ll hear about the moment you get interested in sf of the 1970s-90s. Books like Lord of Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness and stories like “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” and “The Doors of His Face, the Lamp of His Mouth” are still regarded as classic, liable to be assigned reading.

I know people who consider Lord of Light the greatest piece of science-fantasy ever written.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My own feeling is that the Corwin cycle can read better than the Merlin cycle because its simultaneously a little simpler (in having less moving parts) and you're dropped into it blind.

On the other hand, the Merlin cycle very much does burrow into some things that Corwin never gets to look at, and I honestly think it does follow through the implications of the setting more fully than the Corwin books do.

I think both series are classics of fantasy; if the Merlin cycle is weaker, its not by much.

But...

I think Zelazny failed to stick the landing in both cases. I think both left the plot hanging in some ways for the reader to fill in, and if there was ever a set of books that didn't need that, it was these books.

 

[GuardianLurker]

I love the Chronicles of Amber - both series are on my multiple rereads list. And I just finished another reread. Like all of Zelazny's work, both are very, very, solid pieces of fiction. (Though I agree the end of the Merlin cycle is weak.)

And Lord of Light is another very good one. Also Dilvish the Damned, Changeling,.... (you get the point).

I will caution you though. John Betancourt's attempts at continuing the Amber-verse do not even come close to rising to Zelazny's level. If that tempts you, because you didn't know such a thing existed, stop. Return to your very blessed ignorance. You WILL be happier. To use your bardic scale - untrained children with kazoos, out-of-tune recorders, and cymbals trying to play the Hallelujah Chorus using the "think method".

 

[TheHand]

I love the Corwin series, I’ve reread them many times. I enjoy the Merlin series for expanding the universe, but getting to the end feels like a TV show that was suddenly canceled without much in the way of resolution.

Speaking of shows, I feel like the Corwin series is ripe for a miniseries adaptation, particularly in this age of great sci-fi shows. Wasn’t one in development?

Now the Diceless rpg was another thing altogether. We tried to play it back in the day and it was almost a friendship destroying affair. I get what the author was going for, but bidding against your fellow players for perks made things hostile out the gate and I’m not a fan of that style of gaming, at least not with my RPGs. That and the GM showed a lot of favoritism when arbitrating those diceless moves. YMMV!

 

[MGibster]

Honest answers: who read every word of the Hell Drive?

And if you did read every word, how stoned were you?

I read every word and I was in the 8th grade. Not stoned at all.

 

[Autumnal]

Lords of Gossamer and Shadow uses the Amber system but frames it with advice from all the lessons the creators learned from their years of play. It doesn’t default to the auction, but doesn’t encourage adversarial play, it has a whole section on ways the attributes can be used in play against obstacles and each other, and so on. I love it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Speaking of shows, I feel like the Corwin series is ripe for a miniseries adaptation, particularly in this age of great sci-fi shows. Wasn’t one in development?

Yes. Stephen Colbert was involved, but as far as I know it fell into development hell.

Now the Diceless rpg was another thing altogether. We tried to play it back in the day and it was almost a friendship destroying affair. I get what the author was going for, but bidding against your fellow players for perks made things hostile out the gate and I’m not a fan of that style of gaming, at least not with my RPGs. That and the GM showed a lot of favoritism when arbitrating those diceless moves. YMMV!

Broad-strokes diceless RPG approach, where everything has to be adjucated by the GM with the very rough guideline of the four attributes is my GMing definition of hell. I think I'd rather just go back to the vague but at least narrower definitions we used on the MUX I was on years ago than that.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I read every word and I was in the 8th grade. Not stoned at all.

I salute you, then.

 

[jolt]

Broad-strokes diceless RPG approach, where everything has to be adjucated by the GM with the very rough guideline of the four attributes is my GMing definition of hell. I think I'd rather just go back to the vague but at least narrower definitions we used on the MUX I was on years ago than that.

I agree. I tried to ruin the game in college back in the early 90's, but it was a nightmare. The entire attribute system is purely self referential. My strength score of 3rd (27) does nothing to tell me what I can and can't do. The problem is that 3rd (27) doesn't tell me how strong I am - it just tells me that I'm stronger than everyone in my group except Bob and Leslie (and they don't know how strong they are either). I know that baseline Amber strength is greater than normal human and that 3rd (27) is better than that, but is it good enough to pick up a couch and use it as a weapon (like Corwin does very early in the first story)? Well, who knows? What about if your strength is 1st (123)? Well, who knows? Every contest in this game is an arm wrestling contest between you and another party member; and that's when the "system" works best. Once a contest involves something not in your party, the whole thing breaks down. The "system" wants you to narrate your rank/number, but without providing any context for what that number means.