dreamsandimagination replied to your post “also saying the word “random“ so often makes me realise that i wish...”
Who are the two mary sues in Amber? Corwin is hardly one!
imo both corwin and merlin are very, very sue-ish. maybe it comes with the territory of being amber royalty basically, because all of them are cool, almost immortal, very good in fights and all that jazz. but i just can’t get over how Cool and Unique they both are. how almost anything they want to do - they can do and they succeed at it almost effortlessly. they fight good, they magic good, they manipulate people good, they are charming and witty and smart and apparently beautiful, every woman wants them etc etc. i don’t know who’s worse. corwin with his “well, i just basically created a god“ or merlin with so many different powers and abilities it’s kind of overwhelming.
i think it may be partially due to the way of how zelazny writes. his writing is very succinct and includes little deliberation or emotion, so it’s basically “i want X“ and immidiately after it “so i did it“. it’s extremely obvious that he just wanted to make his heroes to be very cool. just the coolest thing possible. and i don’t really mind when people do it that way, author appeal is important, but when the writer can’t get over how awesome his heroes are... it grates on me a bit.
it didn’t really get on my nerves that much (there are far worse offenders), but i really prefer much more flawed heroes. much more flawed. that’s why i am attached to random. he’s a fuck-up and is considered a clown by his family, the whole intrigue and struggle for the throne kind of flies over his head. but in the end he gets out of everything on top.
of course, this is just my opinion. i am not much for male leads or high fantasy in general and those books are fairly old, so it figures that they would be full of tropes that seem iffy now.