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A passing thought about the Amber books

In addition to reading ALL THE CHERRYH, I've been rereading bits and pieces of the Amber books lately, mostly to help with my first-person writing voice (it's not the only thing I'm rereading for that purpose, but I really like Zelazny's style and would much rather pick up elements of that than some recent first-person urban fantasy novel). Amber's one of those things I'll probably always reread now and again; I still really love it, even if certain flaws are more apparent to me now.

I'm aware, for example, of the parochialism of pastoral, England-derived Amber being the template world for the rest of the multiverse. But one of the things I was thinking about today is that, for Amber supposedly being the archetype of a city, on which all other cities are based, we sure don't see much of it, do we? And it's not like Zelazny is bad at sense of place. The books are full of vivid, interesting places; it's one of the things I like about them. It's just that Amber never really reads to me as "city." All the qualities I would associate with a city, especially a city that provided the template for the whole concept of "city" -- busy, crowded, bustling, metropolitan, full of commerce and different accents and ideas -- is just ... not even remotely what Amber is; it seems to mainly consist of a palace with a vaguely hinted-at town surrounding it. What Amber should be is a trading nexus for nearby Shadows, with people constantly coming and going. What it actually seems to be is a small, insular city-state whose urban elements are mostly just as a support structure for the ruling family.

Which isn't something that would have occurred to me to wonder about, except that Amber is specifically mentioned as the template of city, the ur-city, and it's not only incredibly non-city-like in nature, but it's also very vaguely described. Unlike, say, the forest of Arden, which is very solidly realized as a place and, even if Zelazny's idea of a primordial ur-forest isn't quite mine, it still gets the concept of ur-forest across. Amber as an ur-city is a lot less convincing.

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I never got anywhere with Amber more or less for that reason, except for me it was prevalent throughout: it kept trying to tell me that Amber was real and everywhere else was shadow but everything was thin and oddly absent. Including any reason to be particularly interested in the protagonist.

Haha, yeah; I loved Amber and still love it for the wild inventiveness of everything except Amber, but everything I'm interested in is happening around Amber and the protagonist. (I did like the narrator of the second set of Amber books a lot better than Corwin; he's not only more approachable, but he grew up in a completely chaotic part of the multiverse, and his complete nonchalance about his homeland's level of total "physics don't work here" wackiness or his own ability to, say, shift into a gargoyle just for the hell of it is a lot of fun.) I should note this is not an attempt to talk you into reading them, just that I agree with you, Corwin and Amber are probably the aspects of the books I'm least interested in. Everything cool is happening elsewhere.

It is odd. The Shadows are so cool, but they're more real-feeling than the original when it should be the opposite. I can't think of any Amber locations other than the palace itself.

The first third or so of the first book, before Corwin gets his memories back, is such a fantastic piece of writing.

I know!! The entire rest of the multiverse is so cool! I love how absolutely nutzoid everything gets once Merlin comes into the picture and we start to see a lot of Chaos-adjacent Shadows. The first book in the series I ever read was the one that opens up with Merlin and Luke trying to shadow-walk while drugged and tripping, with the Alice in Wonderland scene. You can imagine how utterly lost I was. But it's just so wonderfully, wildly inventive.

And then, with all that creativity going on elsewhere, Amber itself is so thin and flat! It's really just a bog-standard fantasy-England knockoff.

And yeah, the big thing I'm trying to figure out right now is how to open a book in a 1st-person voice, so I started rereading Amber because I remembered what a strong opening it had, and was six chapters deep before I knew what had hit me. It's just so well-done.

My god, what an intro. It's like me starting the Vorkosigan series with Mirror Dance.

The other thing that's really technically well-done is introducing the freaking huge cast of characters via the amnesiac Corwin looking at the Cards, describing them, and having emotional reactions to them without knowing why. It makes them much easier to remember as the descriptions are very different, have emotion attached, and also have mysteries attached: why does Deirdre make him sad? Why does he hate Eric? And then you get introduced to them one at a time later. I often have immense difficulty tracking large casts, but I never got the Amberites mixed up.

It's like me starting the Vorkosigan series with Mirror Dance.

... guess what I also did ...

My introduction to the series was reading pieces of that book in the campus bookstore, which was a thing I'd do occasionally between classes as a broke freshman (just wander around in the fiction section of the campus bookstore, treating it like a library and reading random parts of books). I was so intrigued with that one that I kept coming back to read more and more chapters until I finally decided to buy the book. It's been so long now that I can't remember for sure if I went to the library and read some of the other books before I read all of Mirror Dance (I do remember that Brothers in Arms was the next one I read, because I wanted background on Mark) or if I read all of Mirror Dance and then went to the library, but ... yeah. I think that's probably why Mark is still my favorite, and Mirror Dance my favorite book in the series, because I met him as the protagonist!

The other thing that's really technically well-done is introducing the freaking huge cast of characters via the amnesiac Corwin looking at the Cards, describing them, and having emotional reactions to them without knowing why.

YES. It's brilliantly done, and in fact it was the direct inspiration for the scene in Metal Wolf with Rei telling Sarah about his siblings.

Metal Wolf: Oh, yes, of course!

It's so droll. And also owes a lot to the noir detective first-person tough guy style. It is not a good thing when an amnesiac character is a lot less likeable when he remembers who he is. (cf Felix in the Melusine books)

Yeah, Amber itself was so unconvincing, which made Corwin singing its praises seem weirdly unjustified. Unlike you, I loved Corwin (after eventually conceding that my sister was right and Benedict sucked) and was not into Merlin, so I'm more about the first five books; but man, that imagery. I reread Nine Princes in Amber once a year or so.

I found the Amber RPG books really nice, though, and the Tarot Ambre, which I own, (Amber Tarot, French) is gorgeous although wastes part of the potential of the whole Trump card thing by some weird Major Arcana character choices and having the Minor Arcana all be really generic pips.

In spite of preferring Merlin as a narrator, I like the first cycle better; it's much better put together, and the series doesn't so much end as it just peters out in a hot mess. (I remember thinking when I was younger that the problem was reading the books out of order and never being quite sure I'd read all of them; I thought there must be a final book I'd missed. Turns out, no, it really doesn't end so much as it just ... stops. Whereas the first five books are a solidly plotted and well-constructed whole.)

But yeah, the imagery is gorgeous, and I love the wild inventiveness and the things he does with character and plot as well - especially Random's arc, and how the battle over the throne, and the eventual fate of most of the Amber siblings, doesn't turn out at all as you might expect from the first book. I'll probably always keep coming back to it from time to time. I used to wish someone would turn it into an anime; I now think a Netflix series would be really a lot of fun.

Edited 2018-05-26 23:38 (UTC)

I'd legit watch Amber for TV as anime or live-action. Speaking of which, have you seen this "fantasy" fan trailer for Chronicles of Amber [Youtube]? It's Russian so who the heck knows what the actors are saying, although someone kindly went through and subtitled the characters (okay, I could have figured out Corwin and Fiona and Eric and Dworkin, but everyone else...) for us English-speakers. It's surprisingly compelling. ^_^ But isn't there some kind of rights holdup for his estate? Or had I misapprehended that?

That’s a great trailer!

I know, right? =D I think it was my sister who passed it on to me. She's not just a Zelazny fan--I think Nine Princes in Amber is one of her favorite books in the entire universe. She keeps a copy in her car in case she's ever stranded and needs something to read while waiting for AAA.

Also, there exists an audiobook edition of Nine Princes in Amber that was read by Roger Zelazny himself. It's on cassette, out of print, and abridged, but still, read by Zelazny! That was how my sister and I learned that he pronounced Fiona "fye" (rhymes with "rye") "oh nah"...

Wow, a classic audiobook - that’d be amazing! They were such favourite books for me as a teen, with the great worldbuilding.

I see one on eBay for like $13 buy it now. I'd be tempted, except I don't have a cassette player and I can always have a listen when I visit my sister.

Here's the whole thing

http://speakingvolumes.mybigcommerce.com/nine-princes-in-amber-by-roger-zelazny-mp3-audiobook-download/

THANK YOU SO MUCH, I had just emailed my sister asking her if she had some way to convert her cassette to mp3 but instead I can buy my own!

I KNOW RIGHT

Okay sometimes living in the future is fucking awesome, I now have mp3 versions of what I last heard in like 1995 on a really battered cassettte tape. And IIRC they said these are the masters, too, altho twenty bucks per book is WAY too much. But I'll do it for Nine Princes.

Looks like B&N has the first on tape, but I don't have a tape player or record player for that matter anymore either https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nine-princes-in-amber-roger-zelazny/1016159094?type=Audiobook

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck me it's like twenty bucks for the first volume but it's Zelazny so I'm gonna buy it. Sample here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP5i3U86aP0&feature=player_embedded#!

Eeeee! I just snapped it up, as I do still have a casette player, unused for several years, but it should still work! Yay!

Yay!

OMG, THAT'S THE ONE T AND I LISTENED TO DRIVING FROM SANTA FE TO ALBUQUERQUE, ON THE DINKY CASSETTE PLAYER IN OUR ANCIENT CAR

Thanks for the link - that was fun. There's a translation of the dialogue in the youtuber's notes.

No problem! I had forgotten to check the notes--I'm so used to never paging down on Youtube because comments sections in particular tend to be a cess pit. XD

I have the script that turns UTU comments off, LOL, because every time I even just caught a glimpse of one it felt like days off my life.

Oh Jesus it'd be absolutely perfect for Netflix. //yearns

I think one thing that still makes it stand out is something Le Guin criticized at the time, the way Corwin drops into (very funny) anachronisms -- I still remember how he tells Julian (I think it's Julian) "Does Macy's tell Gimbel's?" and Julian is like "Beg pardon?" and nobody had really done that in high fantasy before, except maybe Peter S. Beagle with Last Unicorn. (Hmm they were closer than I thought -- Amber started in 1970, TLU was 1968.) Zelazny is so good at first-person colloquial voices that draw you in, like with Doors of His Face and Rose for Ecc. (both of which FAIL hard now, sadly).

I really love that about Corwin's voice, the way he'll be talking "high fantasy" one minute and then he'll be like "Yeah, I don't dig it" the next. I can see how readers who were used to a particular high-fantasy voice might be jarred by it, but it makes so much sense for Corwin as a character; I mean, it's so obviously not accidental, because the only characters who do that (besides Corwin, you occasionally get it with Random in the first series, and obviously Merlin and Luke in the second) are the ones who've spent a lot of time in high-tech, Earth or Earth-adjacent shadows.

In general, I think one of the reasons why these books have held up so well is because the voice is so contemporary. They're basically - I was going to say fantasy written like science fiction, but it's actually not even that, it's fantasy written like mainstream fiction, which is something you get a lot now, but didn't really ever get in the older stuff.

(after eventually conceding that my sister was right and Benedict sucked)

....HEY

-- ooh someone did make a Tarot deck?

Yes. It's out of print, French, rare as f***. ($400 for one in good condition when it shows up on eBay at all.) It has a booklet with an Amberverse story by F. Nedelec, which I started fan-translating and never finished--apparently in French the words for "hopscotch" and "pattern" are very similar, so there's this like New Agey crackalicious conspiracy theory in the story about how the Pattern of Amber has influenced games on Earth or something? Hilarious but very trippy.

Anyway, I wish someone would make a new one that more people could afford!

Oh man, I loved the Amber boks when I first read them as a teen. For all the flaws I saw on a re-read, Zelazny’s writing was fresher and it drew me in more than anyone else at the time.

I loved Chronicles of Amber in high school - it's what got me into genre fiction lol. Yeah we see different flaws now - I always find that so funny that we view books so differently when we come back to them.

That's a great point about Amber - like you said, Zelazny was really good at sense of place. So what was up with Amber having no sense of city-ness? Do you think there was some kind of intent there- like some hint that the ur-place was a shell compared to shadow in some ways? Or that all cities are basically just there as power centers?

I loved Amber so much when I was young (got that big set of 2 vol that was 'complete' at the time, with the man-tiger wrestling on one violent green cover and one sickly yellow cover) I'm scared to reread the books now. I do remember listening to an abridged Book on Tape //creak cough tap cane// version on a commute with T back in the nineties, and both of us cracking up at Corwin's dryness. But Corwin really is a jackass.

I think Amber isn't convincing as a city because Zelazny doesn't care about the city or the government a whole lot. He cares about the Pattern -- he described it, and the pattern-walkings, so vividly. The Trumps and the Pattern are what I really remember from the series.

Corwin is totally a jackass.

Have you ever read John Wick's Play Dirty? Maybe not, it's really special-interest--a collection of GMing advice essays for gamers. But a lot of the essays have total cracky-yet-logical premises that you can drop into a setting (or generalize). One of them is that in Amber there are TWO Corwins, the nicer reformed Corwin we see toward the end of the first five books who is actually a Shadow Corwin, and the real, asshole, manipulative Corwin is actually still out there doing who knows what. It was hilarious and would probably completely have thrown me if I'd run into it in an Amber Diceless RPG campaign.

I wish desperately that someone would take the damn Trumps and make them into another, more accessible, actually in print deck that really engages with their significance in the story. Tarot Ambre is beautiful but out of print and rare as f***. I'm not seeing one on eBay at present but the last time I spotted one in good condition it was going for $400. I only have one because I bought a copy with a severely damaged case. (The cards and story booklet are fine, though. I should probably finish fan-translating the story, which is also in French...)

Well, I’m sorely tempted, as designing and making fan-Tarot decks is my jam and I have a site that produces very nice hard copy decks pretty cheaply. But, agh, 78 cards, and a full re-read and obsessing over the series, and probably so few people who’d give a damn. Although this post has rousted a lot of old Amber fans out of the woodwork, gotta say.
Here’s the Losers deck I made (https://archiveofourown.org/works/1671986) although Amber’d need a fantasy style, and I work in watercolours, ink and gouache these days. Hmmm.

Searching "Amber Trumps" on deviantart turns up some nice examples--I liked this partial set by coupleofkooks (more photorealistic) and this set by pulpaction_gal (a more cartoon approach).

Yes, and these are great as well https://pti-spb.deviantart.com/gallery/43326648/Amber One’s pretty nsfw though!

Oooh, those are really nice.

The NSFW one is also pretty great although I'm having trouble identifying the characters. It's been a while!

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A passing thought about the Amber books

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Benedict from Tarot Ambre in icon

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