What is chronicles of amber about (from your get to know me)?
Chronicles of Amber is a 10 book long series by Roger Zelazny from 1970 to 1991. I am on the third book. Wikipedia and Goodreads say it's a fantasy series but to me it reads first as science fiction then fantasy. It has a very fantasy forward plot and character structure. So i can see why it may be categorized as fantasy first. There is the land of Amber which has castles, some semblance of magic (which if we look closely enough could be science), a royal family, and a throne to fight over. The very basis of the plot at all times is gaining or maintaining the throne of Amber through mad political and militaristic schemes.
HOWEVER, Amber is the primary world in which all worlds are based. In a multi-verse/parallel worlds mechanic, every other world is a derivation somehow of Amber including our own Earth. This means there are guns, cars, aliens, weird physics, etc. as characters derivate away from Amber by traversing the Shadow. Only the Nine Princes of Amber, their father, and the mad mage who basically invented magic can traverse Shadow. OR SO THEY THOUGHT!
Also, there are trump cards (playing cards not the cheeto) which can be used to contact any member of the family and can be used to teleport if the other is willing to bring them through. Again political intrigue and scheming are key.
So we start our story with Corwin who wakes up in a hospital on Earth from a coma. He is an ordinary man.....with no memories. OF ANYTHING. But he must escape. I don't know why (and i don't think it's accurate) but throughout the first few chapters I decided Corwin looks and sounds like mid-90's Christian Slater. I don't know why.
So Corwin escapes figures out how to find who is paying for his hospital stay and meets his sister, Flora, who has been keeping an eye on him while he's on Earth. So far this reads as an action novel. It is once at Flora's that things start to shift with him discovering the trump cards, pulling his brother, Random, from the other side of the continent, and them battling a bunch of scary aliens to then escape to Amber through Shadow to Rebma - essentially the Atlantis of Amber - to help Corwin recover his memories.
That is probably the first third of the first book. I'll stop there even though you said spoilers were okay and it's an ancient series so whatever but still. I think one of the truly great things about this book series is that I legit never know what's going to happen next. Honestly even spoiling that bit feels wrong because it was so fascinating to learn with Corwin about Amber through the first book.
How they traverse Shadow, how that changes battling and strategy is so fascinating. The shifting of the landscape and the thought process to move through parallel universes is really cool. And how he describes the walking of the Pattern, a sort of right of passage for the Princes of Amber is always breathtaking to read. There is a level of poetic flow and ambiguity to Zelazny's writing that is 1) really beautiful and 2) hard to contextualize. I think taking your time with the series is imperative.
The series follows Corwin and while there is all these other players vying for the throne, we really only see the story through Corwin's eyes (for the most part, there is a whole chapter from Random's perspective in Book 3 but it's going back to re-contextualize the events from Book 1 "as told" by Random so it makes sense how it's written). And a lot of times Corwin is alone or with one or two other people so while there is scale and battles and politics, that doesn't necessarily carry into the feel of the narrative. We're just watching some little guy struggle with the consequences of his or other peoples actions...and there be so many consequences.
I'm not sure how else to describe it but it really does feel unique and I find the series so fascinating (you would think this would mean i had finished it in a matter of weeks but sitting down to read is tough for me these days). I cannot recommend this series enough. It really is a great read.
