The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny

So the Chronicles of Amber are over for me, at least for the time being. I realise there’s a later sequence of novels, but now I’ve started to blog novels I really ought to do some other authors.

This was, in some ways, more of the same, with the familiar prose style and the familiar extraordinarily detailed world and cosmology. Yet the narrative was different, far more of a quest, and the focus was less on the narrative itself but on metaphor and the philosophical musings of Corbin which, I highly suspect, mirror those of the author, who is clearly no solipsist and unlikely to be a practising Buddhist.

These kinds of surreal and thoughtful passages, of which there are many, manage to succeed by dint of a strong prose style and some philosophical substance, but there’s a sense that the author is doing this to break out of the genre ghetto into the foothills of literary fiction in a rather self-conscious manner.

It’s not all philosophy, though: big things happen, and a satisfying ending is ultimately reached with, incredibly, no dangling plot threads. This is, perhaps, the weakest instalment, but that’s a relative statement. The Amber Chronicles are superb.

The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny

 

I can certainly confirm that this series of novel is a Class A drug. It’s frighteningly addictive.

The series turns a corner here as the dazzlingly complex plot and series of revelations unfolds, compellingly. The ending is a genuine shock. Yet at no point do the constant stream of shocking revelations render the plot in any way difficult to follow, and they all arise out of increasingly well-sketched and constantly deepening character traits.

All this leads one to do er just how much of this Zelazny had in mind at the very beginning.I suspect a great deal, although there were changes here and there. This saga is, by this point, a colossal achievement of character, prose, world building and sheer craft.

And there is still one to go.

Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny

I seem to be getting through this series rather quickly, and I’ll admit that it’s all somewhat addictive. This third book is the most unputdownable yet, making good use of all the patient world building and character development of the first two instalments to spin us a tale of political skulduggery and, well, games of thrones between the royals of Amber. It’s a cracking read.

And yet, at the same time, it’s more substantial than that. Zelazny’s prose is still reminiscent of Raymond Chandler for the most part, hard-boiled and lightly cynical. There’s even a nicely metatextual bit near the end as Corwin’s friend Bill from the “shadow” Earth says he feels somewhat like a minor character in a novel who never gets to know what’s really going on. Yet the prose is capable of leaping into more than that when needed, and Zelazny is quite trippily poetic when describing those moments where the doors of perception get weird.

Even more excitingly, the whodunit side is now explained. But what of Dworkin, the nature of the trap for Oberon, the hinted-at origins of the black road? Much still lies to be explained, and then the novel ends with the big revelation that there is another, “real” Amber.

This both is and is not unlike anything I’ve read before. I’m enjoying it immensely.

The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny

 I found this novel, the second instalment of the Amber Chronicles, as I believe they are called, quite as enjoyable as its predecessor. By now I’m used to Roger Zelazny’s deceptively Chandleresque prose, which is more poetic than it seems on first glance, and the fruitful admixture of fascinatingly imaginative fantasy worlds with hard-boiled reality. Here we have magical beasts, superbly sketched impossible worlds, and a sequence about gun smuggling in Brussels and end user certificates that could almost have come from a Frederick Forsyth novel if the prose were not far too good for that.

Just as good is the world itself, with the world building allowed to emerge naturally and organically from the skilfully constructed narrative. Various of the nine Amber brothers- especially Benedict- are sketched out some more, and I’m left eager to read the next novel.

I did have a criticism, that the ageless Corwin seemed to shag his seventeen year old great-niece, which is icky now to say the least and must have been so in 1972. But I’m relieved to see that all is hopefully not what it seems and that Corwin, and Amber, have a new and fascinating nemesis.

This is a superbly told and constructed tale, and I want to jump deeper into this universe. I’m hooked.

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…