Nine Princes in Amber

The story starts with the protagonist Corwin in a hospital bed and without any memories. He had suffered an car accident and although he could not remember anything, he knew that he had to get out of there.

Not wanting to betray his condition, lest others try to lie him, he bluffs his way throughout the book until he can find out who to trust. As he finds his sister, a thought comes to his mind: he may not know recollect much, but he is certain of one thing: never trust anyone, specially if they are your kin.

He begins to suspect that his accident may have been a murder attempt, and try to figure it out which brother or sister was responsible, and why. What's so important about him?

I wanted to give this a 4 because it is so rare for me to like something, and this is slightly above average.

This book is a bit light on Fantasy, since it mostly passes on our contemporary world.

This started out strong, but as the mystery receded and the main characters' swaggering smugness came to the fore, I lost interest. The female characters are atrocious, the setting is too fluid and insubstantial, and there is hardly any characterization, aside from every key character being a violent egomaniac. As it progresses, the battle descriptions become the focus of the story, and they are extremely tiresome.

There are some interesting ideas, such as the narrator having amnesia and the magical playing cards. It's just not nearly enough to sustain my interest for a whole novel.

This one's a bit odd. There is some great epic story woven in it but it's buried under poor story telling and decent characterization.

I liked Corwin but the whole amnesia thing was ridiculous. Not knowing who he is, he bluffed his way half way through this book with some insanely high stakes - his own life. It was done to explain how the world works as it's usual for characters with amnesia. But couldn't it be the other way around somehow? Like he would pretend he has amnesia but he really remembers everything? Or something like that.

Then there are the vague shadows and magic system which make little sense. Basically stuff is possible or impossible based on plot requirements. There are deus ex machinas as well.

I'm reading SF Masterworks edition and there were quite a few typos in the book which is odd since the book is more than 50 years old. You'd think they would've fixed it by now. There were letters missing or words contained typos. Once there were two sentences that repeated themselves with unique third sentence following. As if the draft wasn't edited and author forgot to cross one out. I don't know. So weird to see them in a modern printing of such old story.

But despite that I was intrigued enough to continue in hopes that this series will improve. This book is short enough that I'm willing to invest more of my reading time to this series.

Characters were interesting, this family drama upon which fate of the universe potentially lies. All of the characters are flawed in some way though I don't fully understand why everyone is suppose to dislike Random. Corwin makes for a good flawed, charming and selfish protagonist and given what he's against and his found love of humanity it's easy to sympathize with him.

If this book was aimed at 13yo kids in the 70's then it had fulfilled its purpose well but for today's standards it's out of date. Especially for adults. Which leaves me wondering if it's the 60 and 70 year olds of today that still sing praises for this series because they grew up with it. I can't fathom anyone giving this more than 3* unless it's out of nostalgia.