So... Roger Zelazny?

[tamtam1991]

Right, so about a month ago I bought The Great Book of Amber, by Roger Zelazny, a chronicle of all 10 books in the Amber series, and I was very impressed. I have only recently finished the first five books, detailing the thrilling adventures of Corwin son of Oberon, and I am very impressed by his unique style of writing as well as his well-developed and thought out plot and world. I started reading the next book and was yet again astonished at his creativity and imagination. I looked over his Wikipedia entry recently (and by recently I mean about 2 minutes ago) and discovered that he has many other fantasy books, many of them well know works. As is such, I intend very much on keeping on going with them after I finish the next 5 books. Please let me know if you recomend any of his works or such.

[The Prince of Cats]

The next five, the Merlin books, are generally considered a little weaker and Merlin can be irritating at times. That said, I still liked them a lot.

I recommend Lord of Light, as long as you keep reading after the first couple of chapters. I think he starts badly, confusing the reader, but it is a good opening from the point of view of someone re-reading the book.

In many ways, his work reminds me of Robert A. Heinlein's for some reason.

[Thes Hunter]

I haven't actually read the series, but I highly recommend checking out the roleplaying game.


It's even diceless. It's sweet. ;D

[MasterofDisaster]

I loved the frist 5 but i didn't like the second 5 because pretty much anything could happen. I didn't feel it had the same ingenuity as the first 5 had.

[Democratus]

Those books form the basis of one of the best RPGs ever made. Nothing like a good family brawl to get a game moving!

[Hungerdog]

I've been reading Zelazny since I was a pup (that's a LONG time).

He's one of my all time favorite writers.

The first 3 books of Amber are definitely the best, but in my opinion, they're all good. So is most of his other fantasy, and almost all of his Sci-Fi. Check out "Madwand".

I recommend virtually anything and everything he's ever written.

[Thray]

The first five are great, the latter, I can't say.

I love how he skips over certain actions.

[Roland St. Jude]

I am a huge Zelazny fan and recommend that you read his entire collected works. Amber is widely regarded as his magnum opus, and I agree with others that the Corwin cycle (Amber books 1-5) are better than the Merlin cycle (Amber books 6-10), mostly because the second five books represent a significant shift of view point and tend to play fast and loose with certain assumptions about the universe that you come to rely upon in the first five. But they're all very good.

The Amber Diceless RPG is excellent. I could go on at length about that (and have been known to do so in the past.)

A Night In The Lonesome October is a very unusual book, but it is clever and interesting, and after Amber is my favorite work of his. It's very humorous.

His other books Lord of Light, The Immortal, and Eye of The Cat are very different. They're big on allusion and mythical references, both obvious and obscure. I thought they were enjoyable, but not great.

And while we're on the topic, Amber fans seem divided on the stuff that's been written in the Amber universe after Zelazny's death. I find it far too different in tone to think of it as Amber. It involves some of the characters from the series, but it just doesn't *feel* right.

[MasterofDisaster]

I have only read Zelazny's Amber series. Whats another book of his thats good? I've always been interested in his other books just never gotten around to reading any of them.

[Roland St. Jude]

My wife and I really like A Night In The Lonesome October. And The Immortal and Lords of Light are both award-winning classics. All these are very different from Amber in point-of-view, voice, etc., although they share certain themes.

[MasterofDisaster]

Thanks for the advice

[storybookknight]

I recommend one of his posthumously published books, Lord Kai. I actually read it, flipped it over, and read it again, cover to cover twice without stopping. It was that interesting to me, very good in a nonserious way.

[Muffin_Mage]

I bought Damnation Alley on a whim from a bookstore in one of those outlet mall places. It's an interesting read. Amber is a must, of course, but I felt like the second half of the series was trying too hard, kinda like the second Pirates movie.

I've actually started noticing Zelazny's influence on Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. The asides from the omniscient narrator particularly caught my attention.

[Korith]

Still working on book 3, but I've been going through this one slowly.

I agree, though. Good stuff.

[The_Snark]

The first five Amber books are pretty good- can't say anything about the later ones, as I haven't read them.

I will, however, say that the man was a genius at writing short stories. Damnation Alley was pretty good, and there are a lot of others. They tend to be wierd concepts, things you couldn't write a whole book on but are fun to write about (and read) for several pages. My personal favorite of these is The Game of Dust and Blood, although that is admittedly one of the strangest ones.