I first read this book back in the late 60s, when it was brand new and nothing like it had appeared in SF before. I found it brilliant and mysterious, the latter in part because back in my teens I knew so little about the Hindu and Buddhist religions and myths Zelazny was spinning off. I am at ...
[Originally read September 20-21, 2010]I should start by noting that I didn't read the full version of this novel -- instead, I read the abridged one that first appeared in two parts in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. This is the actual version which won the Hugo Award, and as much a...
Es por esto que amo la ciencia ficción. La necesad de Zelazny de meter mitología para todo a veces resulta muy molesta, pero logré que no me molestara mucho asumiendo que era parte del ejercicio de Render. Quizás los diálogos eran algo forzados (leí una traducción bastante mal editada, quizás eso...
Gloss on Milton demonstrates that Hell, contra Sartre, is a self-inflicted wound.Setting is the formless chaos of Genesis 1, wherein cacoastrum, the toxic stuff of formless chaos is transformed into illiaster. Unchaotic, however, our ability to trace this name through its etymology, which might w...
I due più grandi misteri dell'Universo sono il Big Bang, al quale, per quanto gli scienziati possano sbatterci la testa, è impossibile dare una risposta esaustiva ed un altro ben più misterioso e inestricabile. Ovvero: cosa vi era nella scatola cranica di Dick? Questa volta gli scienziati della p...
It took me awhile to finish this book because of the nature of the book. I didn't get drawn into the entire book. Instead, I got drawn into individual stories, but then easily put the book down when the story was over. Overall I liked the stories. They feel like I'm reading episodes of The Twilig...
Book Review: 3 Treasure BoxesThe First Chronicles of Amber, includes books 1 - 5An interesting and compelling concept for a fantasy book and a very different kind of fantasy. Some elements of the story take place in modern times and some elements take place in medieval times. I found the writing...
What’s most striking to me about The Guns of Avalon is just how different it is from Nine Princes in Amber, which is such as headlong plunge into action and adventure, an endless chain of surprises that grabs the reader by the neck and won’t relinquish the grip until the last page. The Guns of Av...
Zelazny’s stories often leave me scratching my MENTAL JUNK searching for a new means to describe his impressive creative chops. Well, after several brain limbering exercises, I came up with COSMICaweTASTIC SUPERBitude to describe this lesser known but amazing piece. I'm not sure exactly what it m...
The first time I read this, I remember being so disappointed that this second series set in the Amber universe featured a different protagonist from the first series. I also remember being told that the second series didn't really hold up compared to the first and that the critics viewed it far ...
We are on the Road. It traverses time - Time past. Time to come, Time that could have been and Time that might yet be. It goes on forever, so far as I know, and no one knows all of its turnings. If the man you seek is the death driven man I once accompanied, we may find him somewhere along it, fo...
The world as we know it is a mere shadow of the true kingdom of Amber, a land bereft of shadow, and home to several princes and princesses vying for the empty throne that rules over all. A metaphysical fantasy with complex magical systems, an intriguing back story, and a clever mix of a multitude...
To say that this book--which prefigured both of these comparisons by a goodly distance--is a more Mad Maxy version of "The Road" is no Rolling Stone-esque hogwash, or blind youthful insistence that the contemporary is the all; it is merely and delightfully accurate. Zelazny was a brilliant writer...
Prince of Chaos is the tenth and final book in The Great Book of Amber, and man, what a closer.I’ve had a lot of gripes with this series, ranging from stunted character growth to mediocre motivations and waffling plots, but I knew by Chapter Two of this book that they would all be forgiven. In fa...
It is the second book in the Cycle of Merlin, and in typical Amber fashion, the intrigue is stacking up. Merle begins the story trapped in a crystal cave by his friend Luke (relationships being complicated in Amber, and who is one day your friend may the next have a vendetta against you). Through...
You know, a part of me really wishes I could have pulled off the same trick the book's protagonist did for 13 years - remain a perpetual student supported by a cryogenically frozen uncle, free to expand my horizons, create Lobachevsky-worthy mathematical odes to beauty, and not ever having to gra...
Nutshell: top-hatted twerp settles vendettas on planet molded after Symbolist painting. Pretty sure that I'm not getting this one. Highlights:Tokyo Bay is full of used condoms, "limp, almost transparent testimonies to the instinct to continue the species, but not tonight" (6).A "triple-asteris...
Zelazny’s fantasy books almost always offer something to separate them from pure fantasy: Jack of Shadows gave us a sword-and-sorcery thief living on a non-rotating planet whose dark side bred magic and light side fostered technology; The Amber Series introduced us to a scheming family with ...
Roger Zelazny…One of the Grandest Masters of Science Fantasy has yet to disappoint me and Jack of Shadows is no exception. Along with Jack Vance (to whom this book was an homage), there is no author better at stuffing story into less than 200 pages. This GEMtastic example weighs in a svelte 142 p...
The Sign of Chaos, the third book in the Cycle of Merlin, and the eighth of ten on the Book of Amber, begins with Merle trapped in a Wonderland Bar with Luke (Rinaldo), the Cheshire Cat, Humpty Dumpty, and a very pissed off Fire Angel from Chaos. Discovering his predicament to be the result of a ...
This was my second attempt at reading Zelazny, and although I enjoyed this one more than the last one, I am beginning to think that Zelazny's style just doesn't agree with me. The best way that I can think to describe it is that I feel like I'm seeing the events of the story out of the corner of ...
Continuing my late night reads of Roger Zelazny with a fussy baby in my lap, I picked up "Today We Choose Faces." Zelazny's tale of identity and the destiny of the human race contains all of his hallmarks--a complex, highly-competent protagonist, a setting that accretes in glimpses, action inter...
TL;DR ReviewFine, whatever. 3 stars because it wasn't a total disappointment as I predicted when I first started.More reviews @ The BibliosanctumLonger ReviewNarrator: Alessandro Juliani | Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins | Audiobook Publisher: Audible Studios (July 31, 2013) | Whispersync Ready: No\The...
While I'll always admire Zelazny's ability to throw together such well-thought-out, creative plots as this one, I do have to say that the characters here were a little lacking. Not that they were bad, necessarily, but I'm sure I'll probably forget about them in a month or two; Dennis Guise is no...