Nine Princes in Amber

The Chronicles of Amber, Book 1

By: Roger Zelazny

Narrated by: Alessandro Juliani

Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

Nine Princes in Amber is the first of the 10 books that are The Chronicles of Amber; an epic fantasy series written by six-time Hugo Award winning and three-time Nebula Award winning author, Roger Zelazny.

The ten books that make up the series are told in two story arcs: The Corwin Cycle and the Merlin Cycle.

The Audible audio rendition of this classic sci-fi/fantasy series is kicked off by 2012 Audie Award nominee, Alessandro Juliani, who reads the first five books that make up the Corwin Cycle and whose narration vividly brings the world of Amber to life.

Amber is the one real world, of which all others including our own Earth are but Shadows. Amber burns in Corwin's blood. Exiled on Shadow Earth for centuries, the prince is about to return to Amber to make a mad and desperate rush upon the throne.

From Arden to the Pattern deep in Castle Amber which defines the very structure of Reality, Corwin must contend with the powers of his eight immortal brothers, all Princes of Amber. His savage path is blocked and guarded by eerie structures beyond imagining impossible realities forged by demonic assassins and staggering Forces that challenge the might of Corwin's superhuman fury.

©1970 Roger Zelazny (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

A masterful story by one of the great fantasy writers of his time.

One of my all time favorite books. Roger Zelazny was a true master! this book written in the 70’s holds up so very well today. May Amber reign forever! This story will grab you and hold your attention to the end.

Always a favorite!

The Chronicles of Amber is a great favorite of mine. Prince Corwin is dashing figure and Roger Zelazny has created a lovable rogue. Great narrator! Wonderful rendition!

A rationale for fantasy that actually makes sense

Warning: Elves and dwarves do not appear in this book (and series). That's one of the most refreshing things about the Amber novels. They completely avoid Tolkien cliches. (Why must nearly every modern fantasy novel depend on these tropes?)
The explanation for why fantasy works in this story is splendid and one of the best (most satisfying) found in fantasy stories.
The reader is excellent. The story is wild! The characters, both female and male (the royal family of Amber consists of a chaotic, suspicious, conniving and powerful group of sisters and brothers), are terrific. This is classic fantasy. Don't miss it.

Loved It

Great performance! I loved reading these books ages ago, it's with great pleasure to hear the tale.

Read this book as a child can't count my listening

Science fiction, but without aliens and spaceship. A down to Earth story of that royal family who could make their own universe, yet crave only on location "AMBER."

Finally on audio!!

“I’d get what I needed and take what I wanted and I’d remember those who helped me and step on the rest. For this, I knew, was the law by which our family lived, and I was a true son of my father.”

When Corwin wakes up in a private hospital after driving his car over a cliff, he has no idea who he is. When he realizes that he has healed too fast and that he’s being drugged so he’ll stay unconscious, he decides that he better find out what’s going on.
The truth is strange: Corwin is one of the nine princes of Amber, the one true world, but for centuries he’s been exiled in the Shadowland we call Earth. The accident has actually dislodged the spell that his brother Eric was using to keep him out of Amber because Corwin is the biggest threat to Eric’s sovereignty there.

Nine Princes in Amber is the first (rather short) installment in a long epic that describes, from Corwin’s perspective and later his son’s, the struggle of his family to deal with both their internal treacheries and the evil forces that assail them from the forces of Chaos. In Nine Princes in Amber, Corwin must figure out who he is, assess his resources, gather some allies, wonder whether his father is dead or alive, and make a move on the throne of Amber. Here we learn what Corwin has been doing for centuries on Earth, meet several of his siblings, discover the way in and out of Amber, meet a race of people who live under the sea, and discover some of the special powers of Corwin’s family.

Ah… Corwin’s family… if you can call them a “family.” Corwin’s own description for them is “Machiavellian,” and that about covers it. Corwin and his brothers and sisters are clever, sophisticated, sarcastic, and extremely ambitious. They constantly scheme and plot to outmaneuver each other as they vie for political power. If you knew these people in real life, you’d probably hate them, but in Zelazny’s hands they’re kind of charming. These are people who plan to live forever, have the ability to design their own worlds to plunder, are incapable of trust, and have no reason to think about anyone other than themselves. In the end, Corwin rages against his brother and makes a rash decision that will negatively affect Amber’s future.

THE CHRONICLES OF AMBER was highly imaginative when it was published in the 1970s and it remains fresh and original today. The magic system is creative, Zelazny’s writing style is solid, the story is fast-paced, exciting, and mature. Plot twists and cliffhangers make it hard to stop reading. You’ll definitely want to have The Guns of Avalon, the second book in the series, ready to go as soon as you finish Nine Princes in Amber.

Nine Princes in Amber is a re-read for me because Audible Frontiers has recently produced THE CHRONICLES OF AMBER on audio — something I have been waiting years for. They’ve chosen one of their best narrators for Zelazny’s most famous work: Alessandro Juliani. He’s got the perfect voice and style to play Corwin, so I’m really pleased with this production. If you’re an audio reader, you’ll definitely want to download this classic!
Originally Posted at FanLit.

I Loved Amber in High School, But Now. . .

The first person narrator of Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber (1970) wakes up in a hospital without knowing who he is or how he came to be there. He does know that he's been being kept in a drugged sleep, so he feigns unconsciousness, takes out a thuggish orderly, threatens the doctor in charge, and, finally learning from him that his "sister" checked him into the hospital, heads off in a taxi for her home in NY. Thus begins his quest for identity and memory, which occupies the first half of the novel. By concealing his amnesia, acting as if he's considering his next move in some game of power, and examining every clue, he soon learns that his name is Corwin, that he is a prince of a place called Amber ("the key to everything"), and that his Machiavellian kin (eight brothers and at least four sisters) feel little kinship for each other: "I'd get what I needed and take what I wanted, and I'd remember those who helped me and step on the rest. For this, I knew, was the law by which our family lived." But how can he return to Amber, and what is the family game that stranded him memoryless on earth?

I remembering loving the first Amber cycle when I was in high school, painfully waiting for the fifth book to be published in 1978 so I could find out how Corwin's saga ends. Revisiting Nine Princes of Amber thirty-five years later, I still find good things in it. Zelazny's conception of Amber as the only real place, the one true substance from which all other cities and worlds, including earth, are "but a reflection of a shadow," is intriguing, as is his depiction of traveling through the Shadow worlds by mentally adding and subtracting features till you arrive at Amber. He tells a page-turning story. His strategy of having Corwin reveal early on that he's telling his tale as he is about to die somehow somewhere in the future is neat. There are some nice lines, like "As I sailed into Shadow, a white bird of my desire came and sat upon my right shoulder." And as he exploits the internecine machinations of a dysfunctional super-powered family, Zelazny explores the ways in which hatred shapes the world, partly through the filter of the Vietnam War: "I walked among Shadows, and found a race of furry creatures, dark and clawed and fanged, reasonably man-like, and about as intelligent as a freshman in the high school of your choice--sorry, kids, but what I mean is they were loyal, devoted, honest, and too easily screwed by bastards like me and my brother."

Alas, today I can also see many warts on the novel. For example, despite loving the soldiers fighting and dying for him, despite invoking the horror of napalm and mushroom clouds, despite having participated in appalling campaigns like Napoleon's march on Moscow, and despite having come to care for other lives during his centuries of exile on earth, Corwin (and Zelazny) really do treat the quarter of a million plus casualties of the Amber game as anonymous, "custom-made cannon fodder," when a truly caring prince might try first to mentally dominate his nemesis so as to avoid war via one of the nifty tarot-like cards that serve the royalty of Amber as combination telephones and teleporters. Corwin's "guilt" feels crocodilian.

Another: Despite Amber being the only real realm, Corwin's allusions to people, events, and works from our "Shadow earth" (like "I suddenly realized that I had known the mad, sad, bad Vincent Van Gogh") so outnumber those from Amber's history that Zelazny evokes our own world more than he develops Amber. This is especially so when Corwin uses American slang and sexism from 1970. He refers to a nurse as "a hippy broad," says that he can or can't "dig" certain things, decides to "play it cool," invites a friend to "make the scene," and so on. Zelazny is grounding his fantasy with an "authentic" language and manner, but it causes some cringes.

As for gender, early on Corwin devotes a paragraph each to describe his brothers and himself, but only a single paragraph for his sisters, and he often wonders what happened to his father but not to his mother. Only men are fit to rule Amber, and the royal sisters are basically concubines of the fittest. Corwin even gets to indulge in a Captain Kirk-like interlude with a suitably bare-breasted and green-nippled undersea queen.

Finally, Zelazny's depiction of Corwin as a macho, sensitive warrior-bard, expert at martial and liberal arts, fluent in hip slang and Shakespearean English, possessed of superhuman strength and regenerative powers (no wonder he can chain smoke without getting cancer!), starts feeling like a nerdy adolescent's ultimate cool guy power fantasy (no wonder I loved these books in high school!). With the possible exception of Random, Corwin's siblings appear flat next to him.

The reader Allesandro Juliani, excellent with Solaris, is good here, but his light and casual voice make Corwin seem less substantial and charismatic than he could be, and his attempts to vocally distinguish the other eight brothers from each other begin to sound strained. He also tends to make female voices too high and weak.

Later entries in the Amber cycle may correct my kvetches, but to find out I'll dust off my high school days' Avon paperbacks rather than pay Audible for each of the four remaining five-hour novels (when a single 25-hour omnibus audiobook would have been nice).

Great story but very unfortunate narration.

What did you like best about Nine Princes in Amber? What did you like least?

After a couple of decades (and more) I decided to revisit the great land of Amber. Unfortunately the regal persona of Corwin has been reduced to sounding like a 100 lbs. teenager who just discovered coffee. Narration is terribly rushed and simply does not match what I think a prince of Amber would sound like...maybe it's just me. The voice acting is not that great...the characters seem to take on almost a comic tone.

The story is of course wonderful which is why I will try and suffer through at least the next book in the series.

What didn’t you like about Alessandro Juliani’s performance?

Boy...to be honest just about everything. I would still encourage folks to give it a try since it's a wonderful tale.

An inspired rendition of a truly great series

Would you consider the audio edition of Nine Princes in Amber to be better than the print version?

Having read the Amber series as each book was published, I have read them all many times, each time seeing something new. This rendition is better than reading the book myself.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Corwin has always been one of my literary heroes, in a similar vein to the reluctant heroes of Moorcock's work and to Howard's Conan. But Corwin's time on earth and his suffering takes us through a journey of his desire for the throne and his jealousy of his siblings becoming one man's development of compassion and duty.

What about Alessandro Juliani’s performance did you like?

Mr Juliani's performance gives the listener a variety of voices to suit the characters, always an important point for me. He brings to life not just the characters but the settings not matter how mundane or exoticv they are.

Finally, AMBER!

Would you listen to Nine Princes in Amber again? Why?

Most certainly I would like to listen again. This series is one of my very favorite stories of all time, and this new reading is beautiful, full of life and personality. Each character feels vibrant with Alessandro's reading. I had the Roger Zelazny reading, and while the man was a genius, he lacked the flair to really bring his characters to life in the reading. I am glad to own this!

What other book might you compare Nine Princes in Amber to and why?

This book, and this story is incomparable to most other stories and you quickly can tell why through Corwin's eyes as he rediscovers his incredible powers. This series is undefinable as far as genre goes, because it's sci-fi AND high fantasy. It has cunning political intrigue, epic battles, swashbuckling mixed with the twin 'magics' of high technology and deep ritual magick.

Which scene was your favorite?

The opening scene struck me as most memorable and is what originally drew me into the rest of the series when I was a boy. Waking up in a hospital bed, who am I? What has happened to me? And more importantly, who is chasing me and why?

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Don't make this a film. Please no. It would be ruined, I'm sure.