Rating: 
Summary: Intoduction to Amber
Review: While I was reading and posting messages in Amazon's old Fantasy & Sci-fi Board, I've crossed several threads discussing The Amber's Saga. With this appetizer I was ready to start catching up with the Saga, but they were ten volumes to pursue. So I postpone the project for future examination. Then I saw The Great Book of Amber containing the whole Saga, and couldn't resist the temptation.
So I proceed to read and enjoy each story. Now I'll review them one by one.
Nine Princes in Amber is a very good introduction to the whole Saga. Corwin awakes with total amnesia. He, and the reader, start a discovery trip from our everyday world to an infinite wide and mysterious Universe. Clues and glimpses are unveiled step by step keeping the reader hooked and wondering what's next.
The bases of the present and future conflicts are shown: the Royal family of Amber, their loves and hatreds, the competition, alliances and treasons among them; Amber is the real world and the rest, including our Earth, are shadow worlds partially reflecting the glory of Amber (a very Platonic construction by the way).
Zelazny writes with unusual wit, following a stile resembling the old Arcturian Chronicles, presenting interlacing stories within the main body of the novel.
Rich, visual, poetic and ... full of action. An enjoyable first step.
Rating:
Summary: A great introduction to a great series
Review: Zelazny's launch of the classic Amber series is a great book. This book is almost as much fun as the introduction to a great fantasy series as it is a period piece--I find the Earthbound and Earthlike scenes strangely compelling as being just outside the realm of modern life from Zelazny's 1970 perspective. Corwin is perhaps the best first-person narrator I've ever read: his view is biased, judgemental, but still believable. You see the world through his eyes and gather up the experiences of this man and his many lives. The book should leave you scrambling to buy the others in the series. A word about the series: The first set (the first 5 books) are vastly superior to the second set of 5, which start strong but begin to run out of steam around Book 8 and lead to an extremely unsatisfying conclusion, when Zelazny has nothing but cliches and fantasy conventions to fall back on. Up until that point, though, the series is original and full of life.
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