Nine princes in Amber Book

I will make it brief. This series is the first of the two reasons 75% of the books I read are fantasy. Howard's Conan was the second reason. Thus the rating for this book and all following is 5 stars, period.

Do you really want the longer version? Even if you do not here it is. An unnamed guy woke up from drugged stupor in a hospital. His mental abilities were good enough to realize he was kept under drugs. He escaped and managed to acquire the address of a woman who placed him there - supposedly his sister. The sister bit was true by the way, but I am getting ahead of myself.


Trying to regain his memory the poor guy soon learned the true story is much deeper than he suspected and to get to the bottom of this he needed to visit a mysterious and fascinating place called Amber. The only problem was, the place and all the roads leading to it were full of people literally dreaming of killing unlucky amnesiac.


What follows is the best world-building in fantasy. I am very serious when I say nothing comes even remotely close. I tried to summarize it in my notes and realized that their length was not much shorter than the book itself (less than 150 pages). The latter also contained non-stop action and occasional descriptions that made the places in question come alive.


This ability - to write short and to the point - is completely lost in modern literature. Modern writers think endless descriptions of food, heraldic, and so on constitute world-building. In case any aspiring fantasy writer read this let me assure you: these above constitute boredom. If you bored the book feels longer, so I can only assume this is done on purpose. This quote was written in Victorian Britain and still rings true:

"Nothing is easier to write than scenery; nothing more difficult
and unnecessary to read."
Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel


Roger Zelazny knew how to write an exciting book that makes your imagination to go full throttle in minimal number of pages. Only true Masters possessed this ability. It feels almost like blasphemy to make long talks about such short and brilliant book, so I will shut up. Besides, I said everything I wanted about it.