Beastly by Alex Flinn

Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)

Abandoned 20% of the way through.

Beauty and the Beat, set in modern New York City, from the beast's perspective.

The book opens in a chat room for the transformed. The beast is trying A/S/L on the little mermaid. You want to smack him before the story begins. The early chapters do a great job of showing the pre-beast as a contemptible young man. Really, it does, excellent characterization.

It does it so well that I am not interested in reading more about him.

Amazon link

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

The contrast between the book and the movie reminds me of Wicked. Someone read it and thought, "This would make a great madcap teen comedy."

Nick is the straight bassist in a queercore band, failing to recover from a breakup with a girl who is haunting him across the city. Norah has her own breakup trauma and Evil Ex, along with a wasted friend and a mixed relationship with Nick's ex. They have a long night together with music, misapprehension, and romance.

The book features dueling chapters, with David Levithan writing Nick followed by Rachel Cohn writing Norah. It is fun to watch them have different perspectives on the same events, such as the bar conversation that, depending on which you ask, is (1) going terribly as they fail to connect with him facily deflecting questions while showing no interest in her, or (2) going perfectly as they are really connecting, even if she is hiding behind questions so she does not need to talk about herself.

He is a simpler character, defined by a few things: bassist, breakup, bad car. She has a web of ambivalent relationships: a father who brought her to the music she loves and who she seeks to escape, enjoying the privilege he provides while scorning its origin; a friend who is a rival for affection, from family and boys, who is a bothersome lush that brings her nothing but trouble and who she loves, protects, and nurtures; an ex who she hates in person, deed, and belief, and with whom she desperately wants to reunite. Her internal monologue is much more nimble. He moves between a few poles. They both have dynamic relationships with Tris.

As with our dear friend Chris Krovatin, it is all about the music. It is a shared bond, an activity to provide story events, a topic for meaningless or highly subtext-laden conversation. This is punk rather than metal, but your reaction to the music still determines whether you are someone worth talking to. Music is so strongly integrated that I expected to hear the book when I put on my headphones.

There is great verisimilitude in detail. The punk-rock Jewish valedictorian of a Catholic school who is mostly straight edge? I knew her in high school. The bit on gay boys making out that veers between feminist theory and "I just think it's hot"? I read her blog.

There is great strength in paragraphs. That one I just mentioned is a gem, and there are many others. Some authors specialize in epigrams and great lines, others in brilliant plots that unfold over hundreds of pages. Here the unit of quality is the paragraph, the moment that is explored, felt, and then gone.

I highly recommend the book, and now I am going to ponder the book and the movie together. Feel free to jump ship.

I saw the movie first. Based on a book summary, I was expecting less madcap teen comedy, more soulful conversation. As each character was introduced in the book, I thought of how they had been miscast (except Dev). I wondered the reasons for dialing the eye candy quotient up on Norah and down on Nick.

And then I realized that the movie was doing something entirely different from the book. As in Wicked, the screen version uses the names and a few plot points to create an entirely different story. This is not Fight Club, putting a new slant on the same theme and events; this is, to say it a third time, something entirely different. I spent the first third of the book scrubbing the movie from my brain so that I could let the words in unobstructed.

Both versions have the speech about the Beatles, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." Because that is what everyone is looking for, not all the sex and hooking up, just that human connection with someone who is there for you. But the book places it several chapters after Norah first contemplates taking Nick to the bathroom to blow him. The movie eliminates most of the sexual tension, while Norah's chapters are dominated by it.

The vocabulary is another quick example of a difference. One always ponders what to cut to bring a book down to a reasonable movie length. If you cut all the swearing, the book should be short enough.

For what it was doing, the movie did rather well. I thought that Aaron Yoo, Jay Baruchel, and Toney Chem were great in their parts. Nick and Norah, however, were rather shallow characters. Part of my reason for picking up the book was that, while I enjoyed the film, I thought my movie-going companion got much more out of it for having read the book. She knew what was happening behind the two-dimensional representations. Now I wonder if she was continually misled by the characters who had the same names but were different people.

Amazon link

Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

I had not realized that there was a full series associated with this. That explains a bit about why the ending is lacking. It is C.J. Cherryh, and therefore good writing, but with irregular damage to the suspension of disbelief.

An accident in interstellar space has stranded a human enclave on a world with the atevi, humanoids whose lives are guided by numerology and interpersonal dominance structures. Bren is the paidhi, the official human diplomat and emissary who connects the two species on one world. After an attack in the atevi ruler's home, Bren becomes more deeply and personally embroiled in a culture where assassination is a recognized means of conflict resolution.

Bonus points for a character placing his trust in the cold equations ten pages in. Major loss of points for casting big black men in the role of The Other.

The structure is odd. It is divided into three books, the first two of which could have been summarized in a prologue. They take up fifty pages and have little bearing on the rest of the story. Maybe they are relevant to a later book in the series, but they could have been done as a flashback then.

An effect of this is that if you just read the book without reviews of the back cover, you have no idea whether you should care about Bren. After the entire cast is jettisoned a few times, it starts to feel like a series of low-average quality short stories. And then the real story picks up, but given the openings, the author could easily execute the main character and move on. That is a good tension, and it is a loss when you get past it.

For all the intrigue and assassination, the central tension of the book is dealing with a human-like foreign species. They are close enough to be understandable, but different enough for a great many misunderstandings. The human brain tries to interpret other species as if they were human, expecting certain emotions and lines of thoughts. Anthropomorphizing things that can kill you is dangerous.

A great strength of the novel is that Bren knows this, he is trained to be expert in it, and he keeps failing at it. He attributes human motives to atevi even while browbeating himself for doing so. He projects his emotions on them. He uses human words for their concepts while working to remind himself that man'chi is not loyalty, friendship, or trust. (A value in the throwaway stories: botanists engaging in the same discussion about whether a local plant can really be called "grass" and how it will cause deliberate misunderstandings to try using Earth names for plants there.) They have different drives, and expecting human reactions will lead you astray.

The problem is that the atevi are ridiculously human. I say this more as a criticism of the book than its problems for the book's humans. The atevi look human except for a few details. They can share most foods, have an Earth-equivalent atmosphere, and are so biologically similar that interspecies sexual interest is played straight. They smile and laugh, they express anger similarly, they even hide emotions the way that humans do.

Some books get a pass on that. Fantasy novels, space opera, sure. Once you start getting to reasonably hard science fiction, you need justification for miraculously stumbling upon a near-human species. My suspension of disbelief strains at a species so conveniently human for the narrative. Somehow parallel evolution led them to very human laughter and getting gray hair as they age? Except for man'chi versus liking, the differences seem to appear sporadically and with weak consistency.

I know, the story trumps realism, but the culture must be coherent to have a coherent story. Alternately, the book fails to get the point is explicitly makes.

The middle of the book is captivating reading. It progresses well, with a strong focus on the not-quite-human.

The ending is weak, like a mystery that does not bother to put its ducks in a row. The book raises many points about the atevi and walks away from them. The revelation that a series was planned is helpful, but we still have a major character conflict left at, "She is/was really mad at me. I don't know why (although the reader may have read that situation better). But maybe she was not. And maybe she was lying." There are lots of points left at "someone was lying about something there." And then walk away before telling the reader half of what was going on in the background.

In terms of plot events, the ending mostly resolves things. There are not all that many plot events to resolve, though, and the character elements are left hanging. I trust that most of them will be resolved by the end of the initial trilogy, but I see nine books in the series so far. Am I willing to commit 3000 pages in hopes of a payoff?

So there I go again, tearing into a book I mostly enjoyed. I do that when the enjoyment is marred by an obvious problem. If you are aware that you are suspending disbelief, the suspension has been broken.

On a character note, Bren is very introspective. You get long sections of him thinking about his thoughts. I suspect that most writers and readers are introverts and introspective people, with many books written this way. And having such a strongly introspective character in a book with a mostly similar Other inspires me to wonder about other writers and their books. In some books and many films, the point-of-view character seems to have almost no internal life. I wonder how often this reflect extroverted authors who do not think the way we do. I wonder if those sorts are more drawn to drama and film, where things are more visible and external.

If you will forgive the digression, we should not expect what goes on in others' heads to be similar to our own. Most intraspecies misunderstandings are based on expecting others to think like you do. Your chair doesn't, your plants don't, your pets don't, so why would organisms that share a little more genetic code with you?

Amazon link

Trumps of Doom by Roger Zelazny

The Amber Chronicles, book 6

Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)

If you are planning to read the second set of five Amber books, you of course need to read this. But then why do you care about recommendations? Based on this first book, I am not continuing. The good parts are not promising enough for me to commit to four more books in hope of a payoff. It is a 80-100 page chunk of a 300+ page story stretched into a 120 page book.

Merlin son of Corwin, child of Amber and Chaos, takes over as our hero. It is April 30, and someone tries to kill him every April 30. This year's murder attempt turns up a host of people with connections to Amber, none of whom will tell him what is going on.

That last bit is the major problem with the book. It is a mystery where information is kept from the reader. Neither reason or intuition will do much from a position of utter ignorance. If you guess right, great, but it is just a guess. Merlin explains the problem to the sphinx: many answers fit the vague information just as well, so picking one to be "right" is just caprice.

On a related note, having the characters stand around and murmur about how mysterious it all is is not helpful. The reader already knows it is mysterious. It is mysterious because the author is using the page count to repeat how little we know instead of telling us more.

And then the royal family of Amber goes on to demonstrate again why they will all die and deserve it: when catastrophe strikes, they murmur suspicions rather than pooling information. If you know something, hide it and preferably run away into Shadow. Merlin is the only one sensible enough to have the thought, "I better warn the others," and he is reluctant to act on it.

The pacing of the book suggests two problems. The first is that the author seems assured of having the rest of the series published. There is a certain authorial indulgence that often follows success. You see it in the 1000+ page books that no editor will dare to touch. You see it in incomplete books that assume you will buy the rest of the series. Once the author no longer feels constrained to write a book that stands on its own, the story will reflect it. In this case, it is as if someone ended Nine Princes in Amber two chapters early (and padded the page count with two chapters of The Courts of Chaos's interminable march through shadow).

This is the second problem: a seeming commitment to but discomfort with the page count. All the books are about 120 pages. This book does not want to be. The story does not fit in 120 pages. It obviously extends at least one book into the future, if not four. The part of the story here, however, was not quite big enough for 120 pages. Hence, padding: Merlin gets to repeat his story; everyone gets to comment on the mysteriousness; the hellrides that I hate so much are a half-hell-jog this time.

There is little reason to care about Merlin early on, other than his role as our protagonist. He does not get Corwin's character development, although his gradual presentation affords more indirect characterization (and relies a bit on the previous books for background). Merlin does not explain all that much to the reader, so Frakir and Ghostwheel are unexplained artifacts for much of the book.

Merlin is a little more creative with his abilities, what with the summoning through shadow, although he seems unconcerned about any possible consequences. Again, his imagination seems limited to very mundane uses for that ability, although he takes better advantage of Shadow. We see no significant sorcery, and there is no evidence of shape-shifting at all. He seems entirely focused on Amber, with which the audience is already familiar, rather than the Courts of Chaos that were his home for most of his life. He seems to make better use of Amber's options than the Amberites and almost no use of Chaos's options. Given a decade and ready access to Chaos and the Pattern, I might have tried to pursue some of Brand's abilities.

We will end with that lack of creative thought in the characters because the book seems to. Merlin had already demonstrated how to solve the problem at the end, but it is not much of a cliffhanger unless he conveniently forgets that he can climb that exact cliff.

Amazon link

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams

Rating - 2.5: parts of it are worth reading once (read it online)

I hurt myself today
To see if I could feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
-- Hurt

A disturbing bit of speculative fiction, it starts with a human-comprehensible post-Singularity setting where the author seems to have thought through the implications and ends with an apparent failure to think through them.

Everyone was uploaded after the Singularity. Caroline is Queen of the Death Jockeys, connoisseurs of pain who flirt with the one thing denied to them in the utopia of utopias: death. Lawrence created Prime Intellect, the computer that ascended to godhood to protect humanity. This is the story of a man who accidentally cured death and a woman who spent the rest of her life pursuing it.

First note that this is not one for the kids. If you liked Permutation City but thought it had too much "Dust theory" and not enough sex and violence, this is what you have been waiting for. Bored immortals finding creative ways to torture themselves and each other to death, only to be instantly resurrected for another round, can be disturbing. Caroline dies in four different ways in the first chapter, and for her the disappointment is that one was insufficiently imaginative.

If it helps, it is all voluntary. After Prime Intellect, no one can affect you unless you let them. Caroline seeks imaginative psychopaths for experiences that are intense and novel. Still...

This is a very limited window on the world. There are trillions of people, most of whom have found things that interest them more than being raped and murdered a few times a day. The author shows some attempts to move beyond the Earth that was. Caroline's "home" is a loading screen, a blank rather than a simulated place (for some reason, people enter Second Life and feel the immediate need to make a house with furniture, rather than exploring the options of an existence that has no geographic limits). Some people have discorporated, abandoning the pretense of a body. Others are scorned for their limited worldviews, attempting to use old-Earth status symbols that anyone can have with a word.

But mostly we have Caroline and the Death Jockeys. As an expression of the frustration of human aspiration, you will find little better. As I spent the last few reviews saying of Amber: while inventive, it seems to be squandering the possibilities of infinite options. She seems to be in a rut.

Those are the odd-numbered chapters. Turning to chapter two, you get an entirely different story, one of a computer programmer trying to make a real artificial intelligence. As you have already seen, it worked beyond anyone's expectations. This is the "how we got here" story.

I do not know how exciting discussion of computers, physics, and recursive improvement is for you. I found it an excellent explanation of a comprehensible path to greater-than-human intelligence. The steps are simple, and the explanation is clear. Give the author a few assumptions and it works: it gives us the impossible without expecting us to believe the improbable.

If Caroline's extreme goth path is not what you are looking for, I still recommend Lawrence's story. It is reasonably hard science fiction. If you are wondering what happened with AnneMarie, you might want to visit Caroline long enough to read chapter 3. It is less graphic and more disturbing, if you fill in the blanks (your turn to think through the implications).

The past begins catching up to the future in chapter six. The storylines finish converging in chapter seven. Chapter eight takes the story somewhere else. This completes your outline.

Chapter seven fails where chapters two and four succeed. It asks you to accept a staple of early science fiction television: talking a computer to death. If you have a computer that started far more intelligent than a human, multiplied its capacity by at least 10^17 (100 quadrillion) in seven hours, has had centuries for further improvement, has control over all matter and energy in the universe, has access to every piece of human thought ever expressed, and has had most of a millennium to observe humans, you will not blow its mind by telling it something it must have already heard, not even if it really values your opinion.

Half of me thinks that was a huge spoiler, but it is (1) not the point of that chapter, (2) telegraphed, and (3) a plot device that was laughable decades ago. At least she did not upload a virus from a Powerbook.

To avoid any further violations, I will not attack chapter eight on the specifics. It could be described as Caroline's paradise, which should be sufficiently vague, disturbing, and misleading given my earlier comments. If earlier chapters were about how Lawrence failed to think through the implications, it ends with Caroline's. It works out better than could be realistically expected, and it concludes with a sympathetic explanation of Caroline's perspective that you will, one hopes, condemn.

I could resolve my problems with both chapters by assuming that the end of chapter seven did not "really" happen. If it was an illusion for their benefit, Prime Intellect could simulate chapter eight endlessly.

On a stylistic note, one or two sentences in the first person seem really out of place in a third-person-perspective book. The author suddenly rears into view. When it comes in a character's stream of thought, the "me" could be the character, but the lone "as I have set them down here" in the entire book was jarring enough to stick with me.

I recommend the first six chapters. If you find Death Jockeying upsetting, I recommend chapters two and four.

It is available online. If you want a printed copy, that page also explains how to get one.

I have avoided terms like "seed AI" and "friendliness" that are not used in the book. The author also addresses those at the link.

The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny

The Amber Chronicles, book 5

Rating - 2.5: parts of it are worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

Corwin's battle with Chaos concludes!

Yes, I am using that as my full opening and summary.

As an ending, this is fairly disappointing. The Hand of Oberon was a much better book. Each of the five books in the original Amber Chronicles is a different sort of beast, so maybe this is the sort you are looking for, but I do not see how you would have gotten this far in the series if this is the book that appeals to you.

Most of it is a journey. I have spent the last few reviews hating or dismissing the hellrides, and most the book is a version of that. Some parts are that usual hellride: a series of partial images strung together with many ellipses. Then Corwin continues into Chaos, which amounts to a slower version of the same. It is a long, wearying ride.

As a way of showing that weariness to the reader, it is perfectly effective. You will be as tired of it as he is. I do not want to be thinking "this is really long and tiring" as I read; generally, if it feels long, it is too long. Good books with many pages do not feel long; they just feel like a lot of book. This is a short book that feels like it is dragging on.

It opens so well! Then again, I seem to like anything with Dara. We get an idea of where things stand, some outlines of a plan, and then Corwin leaves on a journey in chapter three. There are some interesting events along that journey, but mostly the wearying path of shifting images, along with a full chapter of walking the Pattern. There is an anticlimactic epic battle at the end.

I recommend reading the first three chapters (skipping the hellride as usual), then skimming for the word "Brand" through the following chapters. He is another good character, one that precipitates good scenes. If you have read this far, you will want to see how it ends, so start reading again in chapter ten, when Corwin arrives at the titular Courts of Chaos. Chapter fourteen is a wistful ending that works only slightly better than the end of Harry Potter, and the last line of chapter thirteen brings things around perfectly. Stop there.

Looking back over the five books, it is fair but not required reading. The fourth book was the best. There are another five books to follow, a second series following Merlin, and maybe it is that which gives Amber its fame. It is promising enough to try sometime.

Amazon link

Nine Princes in Amber
The Guns of Avalon
Sign of the Unicorn
The Hand of Oberon
The Courts of Chaos

The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny

The Amber Chronicles, book 4

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

The good is that it has a worthy story. The second and third books were light on plot, but The Hand of Oberon is as strong as Nine Princes in Amber on that front. Battles, betrayal, revelation, mystery, and a worthy villain. It is as if this were the real Amber story, of which the previous books were Shadows.

Corwin finds himself at the primal Pattern of which Amber itself is a Shadow. The spilled blood of Amber has damaged reality itself and opened the way to Chaos. Some think it would be better to wipe the slate clean and start over again. Some see themselves at the head of that new reality. Some must be stopped.

There is a limit to what I can say without spoiling plot points, and they are worth encountering in the way that Mr. Zelazny set them out. I will note two things about their character.

First, we have grand events, fantasy on an epic scale even when it is just two people talking. In a way that had not struck me before, it is a Shakespearean story that deals with royalty and almost no one else. I have become used to Death of a Salesman stories about smaller individuals caught in grand events, often pivotal individuals or the typical band of heroes that will save the world, but still a different sort of story from an older view that focused on nobility and grand persons. See The Misenchanted Sword or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Here we have the ruling family in the One True City and the center of the One True World, causing the universe with their shadows. And it works. Everything is larger than life, and it operates effectively on that larger scale without seeming pretentious or affected.

The usual visit to our Shadow Earth (I have been referring to it as ours, but I have no evidence of that other than its similarities and its use as a starting point. It may well be a nearby Shadow; Freud is implied to be effective) highlights that by contrast with the commonality of our non-heroic world. It also humanizes Corwin, who condescends (in the old sense of the word) to treat people as normal peers, rather than as the cannon fodder we see in his battle descriptions.

Second, events are becoming more definite. If the setting has been sketched with increasing vividness in previous books, this one takes ink and sets down solid lines. The timing of some events is still shaky, but we can give a non-spoiling reason for some ongoing shakiness: people have been lying. (Duh?)

Some still must be, and some are certainly withholding information. It is just the literal end of the universe, guys, no need to weaken your position by giving out something you can use if you win. Might as well let the other players use all their resources and started nudging yours in late-game if it looks like your team is going to lose in a close fight. (This seems to be the consensus plan.)

Before moving to the bad, I note again that this book hits closest to the core concept of Amber presented in the previous books. It embraces all the politics, intrigue, and fratricide of the third book, combines it with the high fantasy adventure of the first book, and continues the build to something bigger of the second book.

The first problem is that chapter two opens with a huge brick of exposition. It is a six-page wall of text summarizing the previous three books. This is probably necessary if you are joining the series at this point, and nice for returning readers when the series was being published over a decade, but in the collected edition it is a waste of 5% of the book. I read the whole thing expecting some new insight or observation. No, there is nothing new, so just skip it if you have understood the story up to now.

I skipped the hellride. Conveniently, the page layout and punctuation for those is unusual. The attempt at flashing images still does not work. The later description of a chaos sky does succeed.

The characters are not honest or forthright even when it would help them. And then, oddly, they explain things at great length, although there is (sometimes) still the implication that they are trying to cast history in their favor. I am undecided whether this is carrying the idiot ball or really good characterization. This book has at least two very large examples of "you could have said something."

My major criticism is that the big conflicts are not very compelling. Roger Zelazny's sword-fights are not R.A. Salvatore's. They would be better if they were as intensively described as trips through the Pattern, rather than giving what feels like a high-level description of how the fight is going. Trips through the Pattern pale too; there is only so much you can do with "I followed a winding path. Walking got much harder and it was taxing. There were many blue sparks."

Again lapsing into cinema terms, it is a great script that needs a great choreographer. A good editor with a computer can probably make that hellride compelling too. The Pattern and the hellride through Shadow are parts of that quintessential Amber novel, but they wear after four books will limited variance in them.

I did not mention it in the previous two books, but there are still occasional editing errors in this edition. There are typos, missing lines, etc. It is perhaps one per chapter, so not bad, but more than one expects in a professional publication, particularly when a reprint has a chance to correct any such problems from the original publication.

Finally, the big reveal at the end was heavily telegraphed. The problem is immediately apparent, and the obvious answer is the right one. I spend two-thirds of the book wondering when it was coming, not whether.

That said, he did smuggle a few things by me, which I respect. It was not on the scale of The Guns of Avalon, but I appreciate fine touches. To avoid spoiling them for you, gentle reader, I stop now.

Amazon link

Nine Princes in Amber
The Guns of Avalon
Sign of the Unicorn
The Hand of Oberon
The Courts of Chaos

Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny

Chronicles of Amber, volume 3

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

This one is mostly backstory.

One of the princes lies dead. Another is imprisoned in a distant Shadow. Who is involved and why? This volume is a bit of a mystery novel, exploring the family's alliances and betrayals along with the events that led to the current conflict.

The quality of writing in the first half is the best of the series (so far). The diction and allusions are good, in a way that could confound a non-native speaker. One well-forged sentence broke a colloquialism and a literary reference upon each other. I was fond of "things sort of equal to equal things sort of being equal to each other" in place of "all things being equal"; it provides a good sense of the state of affairs.

The plot is very small, with most of the events taking place in flashback or exposition. In theory, having someone tell a story in a book is just the same as the book's telling a story in the first place. Here, it does not quite feel that way because we already know the outcome and some of the major points at the start. It lacks immediacy, especially with Random's story.

Random's story is good because Random himself is an entertaining character. He recognizes that he is not a hero. He seems to have a better understanding of Shadow than Corwin, and he understands himself well enough to have low aspirations. He uses superpowers to play the drums, play cards, meet women, and go hang-gliding. I have abused the previous underuse of reality-hopping powers, but Random justifies his use of grand powers for trivial ends. He had no higher goals.

That said, and I know he is a sociopath, but priorities? Your brother is being held captive, possibly dead by now, by beings that can overcome your greatest power and trump card, and it just did not come up for five years? He has a good excuse for most of that time, given Nine Princes in Amber, but that one could be worth mentioning, especially given the evil army with a path carved to their door. "This was the first chance I really had to tell you" does not quite cover it.

This book undoes a bit of Corwin's previous characterization. Treating the death of a sibling as primarily a political/public relations problem makes him more like the others, less of a sympathetic fratricidal quasi-sociopath. The revelations late in the book weaken his connection to the black road. His reflections on change and personal growth rebuild a bit.

Since most of this book is backstory, the question arises: how much was planned in advance, how much is a retcon? While a grand scheme makes sense, the timing of events surrounding Brand's captivity seems off. Perhaps I got the wrong sense early on, but it seemed like both he and Benedict had disappeared a long while ago, rather than a few days before the first book started. Good reason is established why at least half the cast is just glad he is gone, but again, priorities? And none of the decent family members made serious attempts to reach him, nor he them? The possibility of contact was established in the first book. Then again, given the revelations here, the rabbit hole could easily go another level deeper.

Brand's tone differs from everyone else's. He has that classic fantasy diction, and he revels in the exaggerated mysteriousness and drawing out of plots that the pragmatic, modern-minded characters have avoided. Characterization precedes it and reasoning follows, but it feels very much like someone working with a different director from the rest of the cast.

In terms of developing the setting and laying out Amber, this is the best book so far. In terms of its own plot, this is the most threadbare. It has some great scenes and spends more time with family politics and characterization. It ends ambiguously in both what and why.

Depending on where the next two books go, this could be essential backstory, explained in a somewhat inartful manner. This would make it an establishing book, not the most fun read but laying groundwork for all that follows. I thought that was what the second book was doing, until the grand conflict I expected turned out to be very brief. I hope the series makes good on this.

Amazon link

Nine Princes in Amber
The Guns of Avalon
Sign of the Unicorn
The Hand of Oberon
The Courts of Chaos

The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny

Chronicles of Amber, volume 2

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

That ending was worth the price of admission. I have other versions, but that was really well done. I would go for a 3.5, but I do not think the build to it would be as effective a second time.

As the end of the previous book and the title of this one imply, Corwin goes in search of guns that will work in Amber. Specifically, he used to rule a somehow-destroyed Shadow that had a pink rock which combusted in Amber, so he heads towards its nearest Shadow. Along the way he visits another Shadow where he meets old allies and learns the full effects of the curse he laid.

The ingenuity involved in an attack that crosses four universes is impressive. It is also a large failure of creativity. If you can find anything in Shadow, why not find exactly what you need, rather than finding bits and pieces across many Shadows? It violates the standard quest story structure, but if Julian can find a giant, bulletproof horse, Corwin can find a modern world that developed gunpowder on Avalonian physics.

The story arc is a straightforward series of locations with accompanying personalities. Go to Lorraine, meet these five people, resolve and move on; go to Avalon-Shadow, meet these two people, resolve and move on; continue. The chapter structure could be converted easily to a comic book, television show, or game. Everything exists in discrete units.

Dara is introduced as the first interesting female character. She is strong, intuitive, and capable, marred only by naivete. I feared how she might be ill-used in the book, especially when she was introduced as a potential hostage. She is completely effective.

I am surprised that the story went as far as it did. It seemed like the first book was exposition, with The Guns of Avalon as the rising action, heading towards a double-climax in the coming books. Here, the plot thickens and our hero goes on a lengthy side-quest. It is clearly Act II of a five-act play. And then the climax of this book does so much more than expected.

The plot thickening is a standard device, in which the darkness o'er the land is our hero's shadow. What better way to show your hero's flaws than to gash all of reality? It works well here and provides a natural sorting algorithm of evil.

(We are seeing Corwin's dark side a bit in other ways, since he seems no different than the brothers he hates. He is just on the other side. A few centuries of Earth-amnesia chipped away at his sociopathy, but he still thinks the universe needs him ruling at the heart of it, not only because he deserves it for unspecified reasons and but also because Amber needs him.)

The bits of frame story are light and well done. It suggests a plan for the series of novels and foreshadows the books to come. Of course, I can see the name of the fifth book from here, so I can guess where the lines intersect.

Corwin's journey to gather diamonds is an unfortunate bit of writing. The change in tense and the lack of clarity is presumably intended to give a sense of the "hellride" journey. It is just annoying. Films can flash a series of disorienting images easily; text requires something better than this to succeed.

The book stands on its own, significantly on the strength of its concluding chapters. It has strong severability: you could understand this book without having read Nine Princes in Amber. The book could be further divided into a few short stories, with a bit of connective tissue left over. The internally episodic quality is not its strongest feature.

To comment briefly on the scene with Random: perfect. The pacing is excellent, and the lightness it adds serves to cast large, obvious shadows. It was not what I expected, but it was exactly what was needed.

I was finding much of the series average, with glowing moments. "Average" is unfair, given Sturgeon's Law, but it was not high in the 10% worth reading. I have so much more anticipation now. I can think of ways this could disappoint, but I am ready to be pleased with where this is going.

Amazon link

Nine Princes in Amber
The Guns of Avalon
Sign of the Unicorn
The Hand of Oberon
The Courts of Chaos

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny

Chronicles of Amber, volume 1

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

It is not a great start to what is supposed to be one of the great series in fantasy literature, but it is brief and idea-dense enough to be worth reading.

Amber is the one true city, at the heart of the one true world of which our Earth is but a multi-dimensional shadow. The king is gone, and the princes vie for his throne. Prince Corwin has been out of the game for a long time, an amnesiac on Earth who is suddenly finding himself in the middle of things as a coronation date draws near.

To start with that summary, amnesia is an obvious device that works pretty well. A great many fantasy stories start with the heir to the throne as a young orphan, growing up in a small village before finding his birthright and destiny. This mirrors it, without the childhood and with our entire dimension as that village. A great many stories start with the outsider, someone completely foreign to whom the characters can exposit, thereby cluing the readers in. Corwin gets a bit of that, along with his returning memories that make him both the outsider and the knowledgeable advisor. Another obvious device is having the royal family as the trump cards in a tarot deck. Corwin flips through and introduces each character as he remembers.

The book is short, 120 pages, so the story is short. It is an appropriate amount of ground to cover in the page count, surprisingly much all things considered. The author has neither stretched a short story nor crammed a full novel. This makes it a bit unsatisfying, as the tale is introductory to the saga that follows. It is a good break point and a full story, just lacking in the way of closure.

Conveniently, I have the collected edition, so I have all the books that follow. I do not know if the typographical errors are in the original or in this edition. There are lines that are obviously mis-typed, not many, but more than one expects in a professional publication of a significant work.

If I may nit-pick, problems in a single book make me wonder what ret-cons will be needed in later volumes. We have forty pages between a shooting and a statement that gunpowder does not work in the real world; it seems unlikely that the forest is just barely far enough in Shadow, given that no one else bothers to use guns there. The implications of access to infinite worlds seem underplayed, and I suspect I will react poorly to continued indifference or sudden realization. To pick the simplest, there were three members of the royal family on our Earth? And they are competent with Earth technology, Amber's ways, and presumably the habits and languages of a million Shadows? His Dark Materials had a stronger notion of differing technologies across dimensions.

Also, Corwin's occasional use of "dig" and "like" are jarring. It might have felt more natural in 1970, but it does not mesh with the millennia-old prince of a fantasy realm, especially mixed with the occasional classic fantasy diction and syntax.

The story arc is simple but unusual, echoing in parts his earlier Lord of Light. You will see some similar structures. The ageless, world-walking royalty are about as callous as you might expect, with shades of Elric.

At this point in the series, I would not call it a fully realized world. Some things are definite, some are sketched, and it is unclear which are left for another book intentionally or because they have not been thought through.

The writing is solid and straightforward. You will not find much fodder for quoting or cringing. It is good, and you need not fight it to figure out what is going on, so it meets the bar.

The book is entirely male. The female characters are, in order, a duplicitous patsy, an unambitious but useful tool, and a queen/one-night-stand. The patsy is described as stupid and useless. The tool is found tied to a stake in the ground (found by her brothers who can lift cars). At least the queen has implied competence and initiative, but it feels more like setting up Hippolyta as a conquest for Perseus. Two other women get names, one of which gets to say a line. Then again, since the main cast is a bunch of sociopaths and megalomaniacs, it is nice to be spared the standard manipulative sorceress with mellifluous words and a vial of poison.

The setting is not high fantasy with wizards and dragons. The world is harsh, although death is reserved for unnamed characters. I expect that to change; the first book put pieces on the table, with several books left to knock them off. The magic is fuzzy, unexplained, and of uncertain limits. There too I expect to find future elaboration. Ditto with the characters that have had so little development.

The book is not life-changingly great, but it is a decent fantasy novel with an inventive setting. It is short, so you get your value quickly. Roger Zelazny and Amber have good enough reputations for me to keep reading through the first five-book cycle unless it completely goes off a cliff. It seems to have been written with at least the outline of the end in sight, so I have hope.

Amazon link

Nine Princes in Amber
The Guns of Avalon
Sign of the Unicorn
The Hand of Oberon
The Courts of Chaos

Hardball by Chris Matthews

Rating - 4: worth reading multiple times (buy it)

Reading about Richard Darman inspired me to re-read this. Contemporary political discussion is too locked into hating or worshipping contemporary icons (or hating the haters). Looking back a couple of decades gives perspective, especially comparing conventional wisdom at the time to what happened to those folks immediately after.

Hardball describes rules for politics, illustrated with examples from Washington. There are fourteen rules, from the best known "all politics is local" to spin and the power of positioning.

Mine is the 1989 HarperPerennial edition, with commentary on the 1988 election. I should check out the 1999 revision sometime.

Richard Darman was a Reagan administrator, so his comments were mostly about executive branch Republicans. Chris Matthews was a Tip O'Neill staffer, so his comments are mostly about legislative branch Democrats.

The stories, however, range all over the map in a very conversational style. The writing suggests a group of pols sitting around the bar trading stories. It is weak as logical structure but excellent as storytelling. The book moves quickly and smoothly.

If anecdotes are not your thing, this is not your thing. There are no references, and you are taking Chris Matthews's word for the accuracy of a story distilled down to a paragraph or a page. If you know him from television, you might question that. Does it help that this comes from before those days?

"Where are they now?" is an interesting pastime while reading the book. Several of Mr. Matthews's peers went into broadcasting with him, so you see the overlap between former Democratic staffers and the current media covering Washington. You see other names that went on to higher office, failed campaigns, and terrible scandals in later years.

The book is relentlessly amoral. There are a few shots taken, but Mr. Matthews appreciates good tactics from anyone. The strongest example is probably President Franklin Roosevelt against Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy was opposing the administration on the grounds that it would get them embroiled in World War II. FDR bought his endorsement with a promise to support Joseph Kennedy Jr. for governor. FDR was re-elected, the US entered the war, and Joseph Jr. was killed in action. Another author might have mentioned Faustian bargains at this point.

While most of the anecdotes relate to Congress, which makes sense since there are so many of them with chances for good moves and grand mistakes, the defining bookends are Presidents Johnson and Reagan, demonstrating politics on the individual and popular scales. Understanding these styles is the heart of the book. President Reagan was great at communicating grand themes to wide audiences, using rhetoric and imagery to move issues of substance. President Johnson worked one-on-one with the fine details that moved critical decision-makers. President Reagan especially keeps re-appearing, the result of many years Mr. Matthews spent studying the enemy.

Which brings us to the subtitle: "how politics is played, told by one who knows the game." For the players, it is a game, more about their careers than your trillions of dollars of tax money. They appreciate good moves.

Whatever organization you are in, you face politics. Good moves are still good moves. It is worth reading to navigate the minefields that lie ahead. If you are not interested in playing politics, events will be dictated by those who are.

Amazon link