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Grex > Scifi > #140: Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny | |
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bcheetah
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Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny
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Nov 17 22:28 UTC 2002 |
Has anybody here read Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny?
No one seemed to have read it.
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| 13 responses total. |
gelinas
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response 1 of 13:
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Nov 18 02:49 UTC 2002 |
I've never finished them; I got through the first three or four, and then had
to wait too long for the next. Has he finished the series?
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jep
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response 2 of 13:
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Nov 18 03:05 UTC 2002 |
Zelazny died a few years ago. He wrote the original 5 novella series
which was published by the Science Fiction Book Club as "The Chronicles
of Amber", then he wrote a 2nd 5 novel series beginning with "The
Trumps of Doom", about Corwin's son Merlin.
Both series include a combination of brilliant writing and some very
original concepts, but also periods where Zelazny was meandering or
just plain filling space. The Chronicles of Amber is fabulous
overall. It's what one would expect from Zelazny, who was a wonderful
writer. The follow-up series is not up to the standards of his best
work. But Zelazny was not a writer with an even career. A lot of his
books are as bad.
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mcnally
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response 3 of 13:
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Nov 18 10:51 UTC 2002 |
I think that's a pretty fair criticism.
One series I wish Zelazny would have gone further with was the world
from the two books "Changeling" and "Madwand". "Changeling" ranks at
about the bottom of the Zelazny writing-quality spectrum, but it's
successor, "Madwand" was so much improved that I'd've liked to have
read more about the characters.
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jep
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response 4 of 13:
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Nov 18 13:34 UTC 2002 |
I have, by the way, read The Chronicles of Amber many times. When I
have a few hours and want something familiar that I know I like,
they're one of my favorite choices. The books stand up to re-reading.
Books like that are a treasure.
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bcheetah
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response 5 of 13:
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Nov 18 15:59 UTC 2002 |
I own The great book of Amber, which has all 10 of tose novels. It is an
excellent story. I hope they make a movie out of it. But you say Roger Zelazny
is no longer. That would put the authors of 3 of my favorite series out of
5 dead. Let me see if I can list them.
The First Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
The Lord of The Rings - JRR Tolkein
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Living
**********
Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman
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robh
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response 6 of 13:
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Nov 19 17:32 UTC 2002 |
Your comment seems surprising to me - when I was in college, it
was hard to find someone in my social circle who *hadn't* read
all five (at the time) Amber books!
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gelinas
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response 7 of 13:
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Nov 20 04:46 UTC 2002 |
Well, _Sign_of_the_Unicorn_ was after I left college (the first time), but
I did see _The_Courts_of_Chaos_ in one of the magazines. I didn't finish it,
so I guess I've read just the first two.
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anderyn
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response 8 of 13:
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Nov 21 03:52 UTC 2002 |
Ah. I was a little girl when the first book came out. Read them all very
quickly as they came out -- while I didn't know a lot of sf fans in
college/after college, all of them I *did* know had read all of the Amber
books. I own the first five, but haven't re-read them in a few years (too many
books, too little time, I guess -- that and the fact that I have to rearrange
all of my books so I can find them!).
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gelinas
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response 9 of 13:
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Nov 21 05:04 UTC 2002 |
Uhm... "Nine Princes in Amber" is from 1970, while "Courts of Chaos" is from
1978. Kinda hard for me to think of that span as 'very quickly'. ;)
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anderyn
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response 10 of 13:
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Nov 21 13:10 UTC 2002 |
Hey, to me, that's reasonably quick. :-) I am following one series where the
writer left me on a cliffhanger for 20 plus years (she quit publishing to
raise a LARGE family) but I was finally rewarded about eight years ago when
she finally published two more in the series (though it's not OVER, at least
the cliffhanger I was stuck on is semi-resolved).
I also recall books as coming out much more quickly than they perhaps have
-- it's a factor of the fact that I've been reading for so long and time
collapses as you wane into crone-hood.
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gelinas
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response 11 of 13:
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Nov 22 04:21 UTC 2002 |
I was thinking you'd picked up paperback reprints, which do come out more
quickly than first editions. ;)
Who left you on the edge of a cliff for twenty years? Maybe it's something
(else) I'd like to read?
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anderyn
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response 12 of 13:
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Nov 22 17:10 UTC 2002 |
Simon Lang is the penname. You can find the books used, I am sure. "The
Elluvon Gift" is the cliffhanger book. I can't (at the moment) recall what
the others are -- but I read and re-read "The Elluvon Gift" every year for
that twenty years, so have the name engraved in my neurons. :-)
No, I picked up paperback first editions of at least a couple of the early
ones (I know that Nine Princes, at least, came out in paperback...)....
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dbratman
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response 13 of 13:
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Nov 29 07:37 UTC 2002 |
I'm very fond of much of Zelazny's work: his novels _Lord of Light_ and
_Doorways in the Sand_ are perennial re-readers for me, and his short
fiction can be superb: "For a Breath I Tarry" is the most heartwarming
story about humanity I have ever read, and "24 Views of Mt Fuji by
Hokusai" is gut-wrenching.
But I never liked the Amber books much. Too much contorted ex-post-
facto explanation. Nor did I like being left up in the air with
incompleted plots. About halfway through the publication of the first
series, by which time I'd read everything else Zelazny had published, I
met him. I told him I would read Amber, but only after he finished
writing it. He said that was fine with him.
When I did read it, it seemed to begin fine - I liked Corwin's clever
attempts to vamp when he didn't know what was going on - but as soon as
he recovers his memory he ceases bothering to explain things to the
reader. The plots get more ornate but less able to carry their burden,
and the last volume was a damp squib. Amber as a place seemed a lot
less real than our supposed shadow-world, and in a fictional "true
reality" that's fatal. I never read the second series at all, but I
kept on reading everything else of Zelazny's.
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