Fantasy saga about a city called Amber and the fight for the crown.
Ten short novels, because 130 sides per book is short, will introduce us to a complete new world, where our world is just a shadow from the one and only real and powerful city Amber, where the royal family is unbelievably strong and obviously can not die from old age and their fight for the title of the King, which will be later on put in the background, because there is always someone more powerful, who wants to take over your realm.
My version of The Chronicles of Amber contains two books, where the first one contains five novels: Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon and The Courts of Chaos. The remaining novels are in a second book. This review is about the first book, so the mentioned five novels.
Nine Princes in Amber is beginning with a man waking up in a sanatorium with amnesia, but he regains part of his memories quite fast. His name is really good, Corwin. I second that. He is able to receive some information about his sister, who put him into the hospital after a serious car accident, after some threats are presented to the doctor of course. In other case it would be missing the coolness… Thanks to his decission not to talk about his amnesia and playing along in discussions with his sister and brother he regains more and more memories back. Due to the fact that, it is fantasy and the main character lost most of his memories, the story is way to complicated just after the first fifty pages. Sometimes I had the feeling, that the author put everything into this series, or this novel, he could remember. We even had a short part with dinosaurs. The story is rapid evolving, in my opinion, too rapid. For example, we have a negotiation where Corwin wants from his brother something, and his brother says just ok. Do you know what I mean? We lose better description, more drama and tension. The novel could have been twice as long as it is. The story, the world, the idea was good but could take more.
The Guns of Avalon has deeper world and characters descriptions thanks to which I can better all imagine, but still, everything is too fast. We have less events happening, which is good. If we do not consider those five years in prison. Corwin lost his fight for the crown, one of his brothers is probably dead, he is captured, held in prison and blinded. Well, he learned his lesson to better prepare a military coup. The ending of this novel is interesting, I had more questions than answers, which is good considering the remaining number of novels.
Sign of the Unicorn captured the essence of previous two novels, which I appreciated. I got bit lost in the plot, but these few pages long summary helped me to regain the understanding again. This novel was for me something in the middle of a series to make it complete. If this novel would be missing, I would not notice it. What I have to point out, is the fact that the plot and time is slower and slower to develop.
The Hand of Oberon is getting interesting in the beginning, but I got the feeling that when we got explained and understood one problem, two new arose. The revelation of Oberon was bit predictable, since we heard a short discussion between him and Corwin in Nine Princes in Amber. If you are that powerful, and impossible to die because of age, you would not disappear just like that. It was clear something was in the bushes with Oberon. The character of Galeon was too suspicion, he knew too much, and he should have been dead. Another thing I found in this novel weird was the relationship to Freud, I suppose the author appreciates his work way too much. To conclude, this novel did not have the effect of not putting the book down on me, I had to fight to finish it.
The Courts of Oberon is the slowest to develop, we are fighting the war of all time. Two points to the last novel in this book. Are all the characters just eating? Most of the time were they just fighting and eating. I suppose it was because of the excessive use of energy and had to recharge? Probably. Secondly, I would be interested how much time passed in Amber and how old was the wife of Randon when they returned. Maybe she didn´t age as well, I can not remember to read about that.
Overall, I like the idea and world but think it deserved way more pages. The author could triple them, and I would not complain, even that number of pages could be not enough.