I’m always looking around for something fresh to read. A book that delights me and yet isn’t cliched. As far as fantasy goes, this can be a pretty tough ideal to achieve. The “boy finds sword in a field” theme is so common. Which is why when I heard that the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny were an unusual piece of writing, my interest was piqued.
In the first place, the entire series of five books – the first Amber pentology – is written in the first person. As I’ve had occasion to mention before, I dislike breaks in the story like those favored by George Martin with his Song of Ice and Fire series. The benefit of writing in the first person is that all of that is avoided. It’s a nice linear progression from start to finish. You’re never left with a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter without the next one immediately following up on what happened. Pure bliss.
There are many ways to look at this series – fantasy and detective fiction immediately come to mind. Unlike most fantasy stories that are set in a medieval environment like The Wheel of Time and Malazan Book of the Fallen, the Chronicles of Amber is set on modern day “Earth”. Well sort of…ah, just read the books:D . Despite that, there’s plenty of “old school” action like swordplay. Mmmmwwah!
The books are mostly perfect. There were a few places where the descriptions of moving from shadow to shadow were overly descriptive and boring. They were easy to gloss over once I recognized them. The language was very different as well. Quite modern with recent slang and 20th century cultural references. Again since most fantasies are set in the dark ages, this was very unusual, but was a nice break.
Plenty of action, suspense and excellent character building. A very enjoyable read. There’s a sequel of another five books – the second Amber pentology which I intend to give a shot before I move on to something else. Bottom line – this was an awesome set of books. Take it from a die hard fantasy fan with a lot of experience with different types of fiction in this genre.