If you were, like me, a haunter of the science fiction and fantasy shelves of used bookstores in the 1980s, Roger Zelazny and his Amber novels were a frequent resident of his shelves, though I never took the final step of pulling it down and asking my mother to buy this one or that one for me (she would have if I asked, but I always made other choices).

When poor old Borders was going out of business, I often looked at the Great Book of Amber, a collection of, shall we say, the ten canonical Amber novels. But I always waited for the prices to go down just a little bit more and when they did finally go down ‘enough,’ the copies were gone.

C’est la vie.

And it all worked out anyway, because I saw a used copy for ten dollars at trusty old Capitol Hill Books.

The first book, Nine Princes in Amber, breezed by quickly and pleasurably, so much so that I was about a quarter of the way into the second book before I stopped to ask where I was.

The hero, Corwin, is definitely a post-Michael Moorcock, specifically, a post-Elric, hero. Elric was conceived as a sort of a fantasy new wave version of the redoubtable Conan. The difference is not in intelligence (Conan was written as an intelligent and well-read character) nor in moral ambiguity (Conan rarely acted in a truly heroic manner, except in some of the stories where he has become a king), but rather in introspection and retrospection, something Conan was not known for. But Elric – and Corwin – frequently ponder their current ideas and ideals and their past actions.

But, onto the book itself…

The opening is blockbuster. Really great. Fantastic. A brilliant, noirish nailbiter. Naturally, the rest of the book cannot live up to it.

Corwin awakens in a hospital room, where he is both recovering from an accident (car accident, as it turns out) and being held against his will. And he has little or no memory, including his own name. The tale of how he escapes, which is partly by the threat of physical violence, but mostly by bluffing his way around his memory loss to hide it from those encounters, is great. Clearly, he is someone important and clearly part of some conflict or conspiracy or… something. It’s written from the first person perspective, so we learn who he is (one of the nine Princes of Amber referenced in the title, in case you hadn’t guessed), but by the time we’ve learned everything important there is to know, well, it’s become a much more prosaic (though still very, very good) fantasy novel.

One cool thing: Corwin’s sword is called Grayswandir – surely a reference Graywand, as Fafhrd, the Gray Mouser’s inimitable companion in crime and adventure, always names his broadsword.

And, again, I find myself committed to some multi-volume fantasy series. I’ll be dead before I finish all these, I fear.