Nine Princes in Amber, by Roger Zelazny

[snarp]

(Not an actual review, just random thoughts.)

This book would actually work better as a manga or TV show, I think. Zelazny only really writes in one voice - taken out of context, it's hard to say whether any given line came from the angry exiled prince, the lazy trickster, or the talking dog.

So he's written this series about a bunch of eccentric siblings, all larger-than-life archetypes and neatly color-coded - whom we cannot actually tell apart all that easily, because his storytelling style is so dialog-dependent. This would be much less of a problem if we could see their faces.

The narrative voice itself is a little weird, because it wanders around so much in tone. Like, this conversation:

"Save possibly for Benedict. He is gone these twelve years and ten, however, and Lir knows where his bones may lie. Pity."

"I did not know this," I said. "My memory is so screwed up. Please bear with me. I shall miss Benedict, an' he be dead."

"So screwed up," huh. The narrator's upset in this scene, but the thing is, a lot of what he says sounds like this. A lot of what everyone says! The implied reason, for him and many of the others, is that they travel frequently, but people who have lived in several different cultural milieus don't actually usually mix their idioms so freely. What they do is code-switch: talk one way at a gas station in rural Tennessee, then switch to another when their cell phone rings and it's their friend who's the drummer for a London punk band. There's going to be some leakage - I mean, I've been back from Japan for a year and I still keep making an "X" with my forearms to say "wrong" - but these guys do it so much and so inconsistently that it can be jarring.

Aside from that, I enjoyed this book! Corwin is a pretty clearly-conceived and interesting character, regardless of the way he talks - sort of Archie Goodwin the Dark Lord, which is a combination guaranteed to please me. The worldbuilding was interesting, if subject to the eventual problems that all oozy relativistic settings are when you want the characters to have non-relativistic problems, like murders with a clear culprit. (I just started book three and it's clear that Zelazny regretted some of the ooziness potential. There's some visible retconning going on.)

Is there a name for the genre of stories about semi-godlike, larger-than-life, archetypal figures who wander around and mess things up for ordinary people by means of their interpersonal dramas? The genre would include this, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and Elizabeth Willey's The Well-Favored Man. The latter of which, now that I think of it, may well be fanfic of this.

Comments

[the_rck]

I have a deep fondness for this series that comes partly from having read the Corwin books when I was in sixth grade (the final book was still only available serialized in a magazine. I had to learn how to check magazines out from the library) and partly from years of playing the role playing game based on the books. The role playing game works well because one can reinterpret most of the characters in multiple ways without contradicting the canon.

[nagaina]

Wiley's books most definitely read like Amber fanfic -- the tendency is even more pronounced in the sequels, A Sorcerer and a Gentleman and The Price of Blood and Honor. I consider this a recommendation.

[snarp]

In that case, I should probably read them! I didn't realize there even were sequels.

[nagaina]

I only wish there were more! I read A Sorcerer and a Gentleman and The Price of Blood and Honor first, and only got my hands on A Well Favored Man years later -- the end of APofBH reads like there ought to be far more story there, because there's a huuuuuge gap in time between where that novel ends and the events of A Well Favored Man begins. HUGE. Gaston and Freya are major characters but haven't even yet admitted they have anything resembling romantic feelings for one another yet type huge.

Oh, and to give an answer to the actual question you asked: I've heard fantasy of this type described as 'mannerist fantasy,' and that's how Elizabeth Willey actually describes her fiction on her website...which unfortunately no longer seems to exist.

[branchandroot]

Is there a name for the genre of stories about semi-godlike, larger-than-life, archetypal figures who wander around and mess things up for ordinary people by means of their interpersonal dramas?

Aside from "the entirety of Greek mythology" I don't think so. There should be, though, I'm sure it would come in handy.

[dhara]

but people who have lived in several different cultural milieus don't actually usually mix their idioms so freely. What they do is code-switch

you've very neatly put your finger on what used to bother me about the dialogue; I never managed to quite articulate what was annoying me besides "oh my god pick a style of speaking already." Which seemed a bit unfair, as they have lived in all sorts of times and places, and yet it still seemed contrived rather than organic.

[snarp]

Though I can't think of any examples right off the bat, I'm sure that there is a way to accomplish this and make it seem organic. It's just that Zelazny wasn't really trying to, I think! I'm assuming he uses the same narrative voice everywhere, given that A Night in the Lonesome October, in which the narrator is a very well-behaved and polite talking dog, sounds pretty much the same.

[(Anonymous)]

There's also Kage Baker's The Company series, though I really hated the last few books. In the Garden of Iden was great, though.

She was originally very good at distinct voices, but the got a little more uniform as time went on and the characters got more OOC from how they'd been established.

[fulselden]

Heh, another one in the 'I have no objectivity on these books because I read them when I was little' camp, here (not that I wasn't annoyed by plenty of stuff about them back then, not least Zelazny's very much of-his-time take on gender roles, poor princesses in Amber ...). I do see what you mean about the voices, or lack thereof, but I'm fond enough of Zelazny's Raymond Chandler-in-fantasyland idiom that I don't really object to its prevalence.

And it strikes me (though I haven't read the books for a while) that it might be defensible when it comes to Corwin in particular - and help explain why he works pretty well as a narrator - because, at least for most of this book, he really doesn't have any clear idea who he is, where he's from, or even where he is - as your quote highlights, in fact. So I can buy his code-switching being all over the place - and perhaps even Random's, given that Random goes out of his way to be the odd one out in many ways. But, yep, it's not exactly defensible in general, and it's worth noting that it works vastly less well when Zelazny isn't dealing with a hard boiled, vaguely Chandleresque protagonist like Corwin - I don't think I'm spoiling anything when I say that the 'Merlin' sequels to the Amber series are hugely inferior, and this certainly has something to do with it.

I can't help on the genre-name question, but I really like 'mannerist fantasy' as a term.

Oh, uh, also: hi! I think I'm delurking here.

[mikkeneko]

I didn't think I was going to enjoy the Merlin books at all, but the opening line hooked me. :)

[fulselden]

True, it was a pretty awesome first line! And, I mean, even inferior Zelazny is good times in my book (plus, the women get a better deal this time around). But I just felt he explained and de-oozified his world to a crippling extent and generally lost control of tone and pacing to a ridiculous degree. But then I think his health may have been failing when it came to writing, or at least finishing off, the Merlin books, so I feel pretty churlish moaning about them. And they were fun, for sure.