Search - Nine Princes In Amber (Chronicles of Amber, Bk 1)

This was a mistake, I guess. The audience for this one is apparently adolescents who are not easily put off by chivalric cliches strung together with vacuous dialogue. I probably would have enjoyed this at age thirteen, so it's a pity I didn't read it then.

Too goofy for me. Starts out trying to be a hard-boiled detective novel. I thought it was fantasy and never got to the fantasy part. Read like the author didn't know what he was writing and used a ploy like amnesia to figure it out as he went along. Unfortunately, that meant a lot of stilted dialog that made no sense. Couldn't get past page 24.

This classic shows why Zelazny's the master. Innovative and fresh, even almost 40 years after its initial publication.

This is a rather interesting beginning. The vocabulary is a bit dated, since the book was first published in 1972. I can see why this series was published in an omnibus - this first book, though exciting as it went on, was hardly concluded by its finish. The narrator is sympathetic and interesting - and the royal family of Amber is even more fascinating as a whole. The magic involved is quite unique. In conjunction with the vivid writing I am very interested to see where Corwin goes next - and I hope to hear more about his past!

This book contains two things I usually dislike in a novel; it is written in the first person AND it has a cliffhanger ending. Zelazny made me love it anyway. I originally read them as they were published and had to wait FOREVER for the multiple story lines to work themselves out...

A wonderful stroll down memory lane; and one that has withstood the tests of time.