Blood of Amber

Narrated by Will Wheaton. If you know him; you’ll either love it or not. If you don’t know him, you’ll probably enjoy the story – it is a good story. On the other hand, Mr. Wheaton is not the author; but the author is not the voice actor that Mr. Wheaton is. (I, personally kind of miss the Author’s readings – but I have heard Roger Zelazny read one of his other books when he came to our local library.) I haven’t finished listening to this whole story yet – there are some audio artifacts, drop outs, and distortions – not unlike the ones that the author has read. (I work with a recording/mastering engineer – I expect higher quality – hence 4 of 5 stars.) Each chapter is a single, large MP3 file – making it kind of hard to easily index through the story depending on your playback device. Despite the imperfections, I’m enjoying it – although I may get the non-MP3 version.

Merlin is like a junior Corwin but with magic abilities and a bit of naivete. The story is more convoluted but has better characters.

Trumps of Doom, the first book in the “second series” of Amber novels by Roger Zelazny, cleans up a bit on the fractured and somewhat slow first book. It still doesn’t have that boundless energy of the first books, but it feels like the author has now gotten comfortable with the new “flavor” of his tale as well as the protagonist.

Merlin, son of Corwin, heir to both sides of Order and Chaos, is well on his way to finding out who the players are on the board and whether he is but a pawn or someone who can take charge of his own destiny.

It still feels like Merlin is a bit unschooled, especially when considering motivations both political and personal. This troubled me as a reader, since one would assume the Courts of Chaos would be quite diligent in preparing him in these sensitivities.

Nevertheless, Merlin comports himself well against a myriad of foes and friends (who may also be foes). Magical battles and sword fights along with the regular brief bit of existential wanderings color the book.

Actually, it reads more closely like a straight adventure novel this time through. The complexities of politics and personal relationships seems to take a bit of a back seat. That’s not a terrible thing, as the pacing is much improved over the first book.

It’s entertaining, if not riveting, and probably does enough to get you interested in the third book.

Roger Zelazny’s 1986 novel ”

Chronicles of Amber, Book 07: Blood of Amber

” is the 2nd book in the Merlin sub-series of the Chronicles of Amber. It reads just about the same as the previous book in the series except that Merlin is beginning to smarten up. Only beginning, though. In one case here, he finally figures out something fairly obvious that Luke figures out in about 5 minutes (and, just a bit later, he totally misses the meaning of what happens in yet another attack). However, at the 88% he does actually plan something pro-actively and girds his loins in preparation. Yay! Hopefully, he’ll continue to do so in the later books. I’m rating the book at an OK 3 stars out of 5.

Merlin has been imprisoned by Luke, but he escapes. He tries a different tack by do something nice for Luke, and ends in a crazy situation due to a weird Trump.

Those Trump things are just a lot of trouble, too many frequently encountered variant edition and different versions. Bad enough using them, imagine trying to collect them!