Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny

 

I’ve resisted blogging novels for the ten years I’ve had this blog. Why? Partly because I’m in the habit of writing notes as a watch things I intend to blog, and it’s both less instinctive and more intrusive to do that while reading a book. Also, inertia: I was in the habit, for years, of treating this as a film and TV blog. Then it expanded to albums. Now, it seems, the blog title has become even more inaccurate. Also, I’m off work looking after a poorly Little Miss Llamastrangler so why not?

When it comes to fantasy novels, I like quirky and weird over those long, pompous trilogies with dwarves, elves and dragons. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin can pull off that sort of thing, but their many inferior clones, I fear, tend to bore me.

This is the first novel in what is, to paraphrase Douglas Adam’s, an increasingly inaccurately named trilogy. It is, however, pleasingly weird and imaginative, and a splendid introduction to Roger Zelazny, an author new to me. Its slowly unfolding tale of demigod siblings warring through the ages not only looks suspiciously like a major influence on Highlander, but cleverly deals with all the necessary exposition of world building by giving our protagonist, Corwin, amnesia at the start so he learns who he is alongside the reader. The characters may be godlike beings, but they read as three dimensional people with interior lives and real relations.

The prose is impressive too, which helps a lot. I’m no prose snob, and I don’t by any means read only literary fiction despite doing English at uni many years ago. I don’t mind functional prose, but bad prose I cannot tolerate. Bad prose ruins Agatha Christie for me. Her plots may be ingenious, but she’s no Margery Allingham. But the prose here is just the right balance of hard boiled and whimsical, with the light cynicism leavened by some delightful imagery.

The novel is fairly short, but the next one beckons…