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primeidealOne of the things I didn't plan on doing, but have wound up doing, as part of this bingo project is to draw parallels between the books I'm reviewing and other books. To some extent, I think this comes from a reticence to give criticism or an appraisal overall--I know I'm a prolific reader and a verbose commentator so no false modesty there, but I can get insecure about "what if I just am not deep enough to appreciate this book like Real Adults." In contrast, saying "it reminded me of X meets Y with some Z" may or may not be a value judgment--for some people, parallels to X are a positive, for others, a negative.
"Nine Princes in Amber" starts with a first-person narrator waking up in a hospital bed with no memory of who he is or why he is there, much like Project Hail Mary. Once he manages to escape and find his alleged sister, he talks to her while trying to hide the fact that he has no idea what's going on and is just bluffing his way through everything, a little like Jessica faking her way through the conversation with Shadout Mapes in Dune. As part of this act, he winds up agreeing that he'll "try for it," without really knowing what "it" is but "somehow" realizing it's his goal. He has a lot of "somehow" moments.
The magic of the Amber setting is neat, and better-described than Malazan. Amber is the true world of which all other worlds, including Earth, are "Shadows," or imitations. The fourth quote above describes how one of the narrator's brothers "walks" through Shadows by slowly using his mind to move through/create weird intermediate worlds that slowly morph from Earth into Amber. There are also decks of cards with copies of each member of the royal family that the siblings can use to talk/teleport to each other. (A friend on another site has run some RPG-type games in this setting so I was familiar with this aspect, which is why Malazan's magic tarot reminded me of it.) And there's a weird labyrinth thing called the Pattern in Amber (as well as its mirror world in the undersea realm of Rebma--get it??); "walking the Pattern" restores the narrator's memories and ability to move between worlds.
Eventually, he (his name is Corwin) realizes that he's committed to challenging his nemesis brother, Eric, for kingship of Amber. (Any or all of the brothers could create their own utopias with the shadow-walking, but none of them will be as the real Amber.) Corwin teams up with another brother, Bleys, who is also ambitious but willing to temporarily make a truce with him to take out Eric, and they look for cannon fodder who are susceptible to believing that the brothers' internal power struggles are some kind of holy war. (Again, shades of Dune.) Corwin has some lampshaded moments about "we're just treating these guys like undifferentiated mooks and asking them to die for us, seems a little messed up...oh well, I'll immortalize them in a ballad or something." He also mentions that he's lived for centuries on Earth and witnessed all kind of RL history atrocities. At the risk of being too culture-warry, this also felt cheap, using RL tragedy just to show how Corwin is different from his brothers. He has empathy and stuff! He even checks in with their dad to see if he approves of this whole defeating-my-brothers-to-win-the-throne thing, which I actually did appreciate as a plot point. But like...eh.
This book was published in 1970, and one thing I thought was funny is how pervasive cigarettes are. Even in Amber, which seems kind of faux-medieval with dungeons and duels and sailing fleets, Corwin needs a carton of Salems!
Notes on potential squicks: in the beginning, Corwin is being kept in the hospital/forcibly medicated against his will. He's able to break out and threaten the doctors almost immediately, which might be a power fantasy for some and/or squicky for others. Later on, he is severely wounded and (temporarily) disabled in a squicky fashion (it's not dwelled on very long on-screen), and then there's a throwaway line about "ah, of course, because of this disability I could not move through the Shadows normally," and like...really? How was that ever foreshadowed or justified.
Anyway, this is just volume one (of a five-part series, and then there's another five books with a different POV character), and it didn't wrap up as neatly as I'd expected for a while. Between the relatively short length and intriguing magic, I'd be more willing to return to this than Malazan, but that's still not super likely--there was just too much carried by the "ah, somehow!" effect for me to enjoy.
Bingo: it's a gimme for Family Matters, also looks like "award finalist but non-winner."
"Nine Princes in Amber" starts with a first-person narrator waking up in a hospital bed with no memory of who he is or why he is there, much like Project Hail Mary. Once he manages to escape and find his alleged sister, he talks to her while trying to hide the fact that he has no idea what's going on and is just bluffing his way through everything, a little like Jessica faking her way through the conversation with Shadout Mapes in Dune. As part of this act, he winds up agreeing that he'll "try for it," without really knowing what "it" is but "somehow" realizing it's his goal. He has a lot of "somehow" moments.
I felt a strong desire to kill, to destroy whoever had been responsible, and I knew that it was not the first time in my life that I had felt this thing, and I knew, too, that I had followed through on it in the past. More than once...
And I knew, somehow, that somehow, again--ah, somehow!--that several were missing.
I felt comfortably strong. I knew I'd be willing to take on any one man in a fair fight without any special fears. How strong was I?
Suddenly, I knew I would have a chance to find out.
I decided—with a sudden certainty—that he was somehow adding and subtracting items to and from the world that was visible about us to bring us into closer and closer alignment with that strange place, Amber, for which he was solving.
(These are all in the first fifty pages.)And I knew, somehow, that somehow, again--ah, somehow!--that several were missing.
I felt comfortably strong. I knew I'd be willing to take on any one man in a fair fight without any special fears. How strong was I?
Suddenly, I knew I would have a chance to find out.
I decided—with a sudden certainty—that he was somehow adding and subtracting items to and from the world that was visible about us to bring us into closer and closer alignment with that strange place, Amber, for which he was solving.
The magic of the Amber setting is neat, and better-described than Malazan. Amber is the true world of which all other worlds, including Earth, are "Shadows," or imitations. The fourth quote above describes how one of the narrator's brothers "walks" through Shadows by slowly using his mind to move through/create weird intermediate worlds that slowly morph from Earth into Amber. There are also decks of cards with copies of each member of the royal family that the siblings can use to talk/teleport to each other. (A friend on another site has run some RPG-type games in this setting so I was familiar with this aspect, which is why Malazan's magic tarot reminded me of it.) And there's a weird labyrinth thing called the Pattern in Amber (as well as its mirror world in the undersea realm of Rebma--get it??); "walking the Pattern" restores the narrator's memories and ability to move between worlds.
Eventually, he (his name is Corwin) realizes that he's committed to challenging his nemesis brother, Eric, for kingship of Amber. (Any or all of the brothers could create their own utopias with the shadow-walking, but none of them will be as the real Amber.) Corwin teams up with another brother, Bleys, who is also ambitious but willing to temporarily make a truce with him to take out Eric, and they look for cannon fodder who are susceptible to believing that the brothers' internal power struggles are some kind of holy war. (Again, shades of Dune.) Corwin has some lampshaded moments about "we're just treating these guys like undifferentiated mooks and asking them to die for us, seems a little messed up...oh well, I'll immortalize them in a ballad or something." He also mentions that he's lived for centuries on Earth and witnessed all kind of RL history atrocities. At the risk of being too culture-warry, this also felt cheap, using RL tragedy just to show how Corwin is different from his brothers. He has empathy and stuff! He even checks in with their dad to see if he approves of this whole defeating-my-brothers-to-win-the-throne thing, which I actually did appreciate as a plot point. But like...eh.
This book was published in 1970, and one thing I thought was funny is how pervasive cigarettes are. Even in Amber, which seems kind of faux-medieval with dungeons and duels and sailing fleets, Corwin needs a carton of Salems!
Notes on potential squicks: in the beginning, Corwin is being kept in the hospital/forcibly medicated against his will. He's able to break out and threaten the doctors almost immediately, which might be a power fantasy for some and/or squicky for others. Later on, he is severely wounded and (temporarily) disabled in a squicky fashion (it's not dwelled on very long on-screen), and then there's a throwaway line about "ah, of course, because of this disability I could not move through the Shadows normally," and like...really? How was that ever foreshadowed or justified.
Anyway, this is just volume one (of a five-part series, and then there's another five books with a different POV character), and it didn't wrap up as neatly as I'd expected for a while. Between the relatively short length and intriguing magic, I'd be more willing to return to this than Malazan, but that's still not super likely--there was just too much carried by the "ah, somehow!" effect for me to enjoy.
Bingo: it's a gimme for Family Matters, also looks like "award finalist but non-winner."
no subject
Date: 9/18/22 12:11 pm (UTC)Corwin is strangely modern in this weird USA 1970s sort of way -- you would think he would not be so obviously that as he has lived for a long time. But the amnesia trope was a fav of mine back then (and kind of still is if it's done well) and in this case it was an interesting way to get the info to the reader about the worldbuilding -- the reader and Corwin could discover it all together.
Zelazny was a very interesting New Wave SFF writer, despite the blind spots with sexism and things like smoking.
no subject
Date: 9/18/22 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9/18/22 11:23 pm (UTC)For example: I reread Gateway by Pohl, which I remembered so fondly, and it really didn't work at all for me years later.
Even The Dispossed, which has incredibly worldbuilding and is a much-praised LeGuin work, has some really icky male/female sexual stuff in it that makes no sense at all on reread and kind of made me hate the protagonist!
When I read it as a teenager I glossed over that part and only remembered the part about the children and the long haul trucker and the guy who was a hoarder.
It's very strange to reread the SFF classics.