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I rescued this monster some few years ago, probably from the local transfer station and have been eyeballing it ever since. My latest sci-fi read was less than 200 pages so I feel justified in re-visiting that part of my book shelves. I read "Damnation Alley' a while back and liked it a lot and have likely read at least some short stories by RZ as well. So here we go off to a good start as RZ gets the action started right away. He's a pretty straight-forward writer. Blunt even. The prose isn't what you'd call inspiring, but in this genre the tale's the thing. Connections to/suggestions of other sci-fi/fantasy = "The World of Tiers" for starters. The cover reminds of "Lord Valentine's Castle." I assume more will pop up. The hero(I assume) closely resembles Hell Tanner from "D. Alley" too. The trip from NYC to Amber(I'm still in the middle of it) is pretty crazy/imaginative and suggestive of Catherynne M. Valente's "The Girl/Boy Who ... Fairyland" series. I wonder if she read this stuff.

- All the smoking is distracting. We also get a bit of the old women's body parts focus and some casual sex among the Amber gods.

So this stuff was written during the 70's and shows it. RZ has decided to have a lot of the dialogue be in the mode of hard-bitten 50's-60's or laid-back 60's-70's adventures. You dig? This aligns with the style of "Damnation Alley" but it definitely is a far piece from the high-falutin' "Lord of the Rings" saga. Also deliberate I'm sure. The tobacco burning and inhaling continues relentlessly. Seems like every few pages Corwin has to do the "I lit a cigarette." thing. Maybe it helps him think. I ASSUME that Zelazny was a smoker and that this is perhaps a raised middle finger to the anti-smoking movement of the seventies. Things are different now for sure. It does bother me a little, along with the women's body parts attention. This reminds me of Dan Simmons. To me it indicates a writer without enough sense to realize that smoking would probably seem out of place in fantasy settings. Then again, Shadow-Earth had plenty of smoking, so I suppose that maybe it does make sense after all. Whatever ...

- I thought that "I had escaped." might be the last sentence of story #1, but I was wrong. That sentence(verbatim) WAS close to the end, however. Me so smart!

- About that finger-and-toenail growing thing while you're in a dungeon. You can keep them down simply by rubbing them against the stone walls of the cell. Dogs that are outside and active a lot of the time don't need to have their claws trimmed. Nature does it for them.

- plenty of misprints so far

Now in the middle of part two ("The Guns of Avalon") after last night's reading. My forward progress was aided by a gap of 33 missing pages. There was no actual physical gap in the book, the pages seem to have been omitted by the printer. Weird ... One of RZ's great assets is his assertive prose. He doesn't waste words and keeps the old plot ball rolling along nicely. This makes up for the general lack of literature cred. I imagine that didn't bother him much, as it might've Tolkien, for instance. Last night included a bit of the poetic-delirium stuff that was in "Damnation Alley." He does that well enough and doesn't ramble on too much with it.

- BTW, this is not the COMPLETE be-all-and-end-all "Amber" book as a reader might assume. RZ wrote other related bits and pieces(short stories, etc.) that are not included here.

#3(Sign of the Unicorn) is in the books - as it were - and all I can say is a bucket of yellow golf balls to anyone who can explain WHAT it was all about. After a ton of action in the first two stories, we get a bit of action and: A)a whole lot of twisty and impenetrable Agatha Christie kind of mystery stuff as various political intrigue/conspiracy speculations are presented to Corwin for his consideration, and B) a lot of delirious prose near the end of the story as Roger Zelazny unleashes his inner William Burroughs. There was some of this - just enough in fact - in "Damnation Alley," but perhaps too much in this story. I have NO IDEA what it was all about. Pretty spacey. Drug-induced perhaps? Did Zelazny himself even know what the meaning was of he was writing? ONWARD! ...

#4(The Hand of Oberon) ... the action continues to be toned down so far in this one relative to the beginning two tales as more of the "Big Picture" gets filled in for the benefit of Corwin as well as the reader. Still, there are enough fights, flights and battles to keep one's blood up. Definitely a page-turner for the most part.

Finished with #4 last night as the action and plot twists keep coming. Last night's conclusion came with a neat plot twist, one that had been hinted at a bit by the author. There's still a lot explanation going on as Corwin has to sift through the stories of his many conniving siblings. Who and what to believe and trust are a challenge for him.

- as seems to be the case with almost every book I read these days, old or new, there are lots of misprints and other text errors.

Finished with the first half a couple of nights ago by finishing "The Courts of Chaos." Swear to God there was a scene straight out of "Darby O'Gill and the Little People"! I'll take a break now, as Zelazny did(8 years) and read some other stuff before continuing. My overall opinion so far? A bit dated I guess but still entertaining. That Corwin can take a licking and keep on ticking - big time!

- RZ throws in a little of the Nordic mythology stuff to go along with all the rest. He borrows from many different mythic stories.

After a little break I'm back at it with the second half of the saga. The first installment is "The Trumps of Doom" and Corwin is not mentioned so far. Instead, we get his son Merlin as narrator, and just when things seem to be a bit draggy, BOOM! ... it's clobberin' time, it's fantasy time, and it's movin' time. As with the first five tales, a fair amount of time is spent with Merlin moving in and out of fast-changing fantasy landscapes. For some readers there's probably too much of that stuff, but it gives RZ a chance to break out his descriptive chops. I'm OK with it.

- cigarette smoking seems to have bee replaced by pipe smoking somewhere along the way

- Merle? I'd prefer "Lin" for a name for our hero but ...

Finished up with #6 last night with our narrator/hero locked up, much as his old man was at the almost end of Part 1. Meanwhile, that same old man(Corwin) is out there somewhere - maybe - running around doing ??? - much the same as in the first five parts when it was Corwin's daddy(Oberon) hanging out there in mystery-land. Things seem a bit repetitive after a while.

- The road from Santa Fe up to the ski area(Ski Santa Fe) - been there, done that, also not in winter.

- Merle's Ghostwheel takes on a prickly and dangerous selfhood, a la HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Elefsis in "Silently and Very Fast."

Now into story #7 - "Blood of Amber" - still entertaining.

Finished #7 last night and on to "Sign of Chaos." While there is a certain sameness to all the crazy comings and goings and monsters and magic and fighting and stuff, the author keeps up a decent level of interest due to his imaginative chops. One minor complaint for me is that the plot is VERY intricate and complicated. I sort of gave up trying to keep track of it all. Even Merlin is struggling trying to figure it all out!

RZ rolls out his imagination and descriptive chops in a passage where Merlin gets drawn into an LSD trip that Luke is experiencing(involuntarily) - crazy stuff.

Slowly getting towards the end as the characters and complications are piling up and wearing me down bit. Still, "only" about 300 pages to go ...

Finished with #8 and now on to "Knight of Shadows." ...

And then there was one ... #10 = "Prince of Chaos" ... In general I think I can say that the first half is better than the second half. I suppose it might be asking too much to expect Zelazny to keep coming up with interesting stuff given the limits of the world(s) within which he set these stories. Might have been more fun if the second half had more to do with Earth-Shadow. Instead we get a seemingly endless tangle of plot twists, new characters, more battling with wizards and monsters and a minimum of originality/humanity. It does go on ...

Into the final chapter as the sort-of obvious endgame presents itself. Still reasonably well-written, if a bit repetitive at this point.

HOOOOOOOO-Rah! Finally finished with this beast last night. The highlight of the endgame was a well-described sorcery duel in which Merlin outdoes both his formidable mother and his devious brother(he has more than one, of course). All in all I'd say it was a fun ride, if not exactly transcendent. Both Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings were better. I have to hand it to the late Mr. Zelazny, however. His descriptive pen never wavered.