That evening in a club, a mutual friend, less into this kind of genre novel, asked me what it was about. A combination of alcohol, high-energy and a desire not to get into a discussion of Fantasy archetypes led me to say:

"It's about how you can do anything you want if you walk through the gaps in other people's perceptions, through the shadows between their mistaken assumptions, in the empty places where they don't even bother to look. The walls in this world are ones we imagine, they exist only because we believe in them; if we believe in ourselves and deny everything and everyone else as less than we are, we can do anything".

Well, its a paraphrase, but it was nearly as fluent as that!

Tbh, the plot is a little prosaic, although the first half of the first book is among the most thrilling section of prose I've ever read. But the meaning and power behind the book is, I must admit, unique. And I say that as someone who has read extensively in the genre and already had a stable of "favourite" authors into which I was reluctant to admit newcomers at the time I read it.

Corwin has become one of my favorite characters in fiction, along with Rogi Remillard of Julian May's Intervention he's one of life's survivors, caught up in events, though he's more an action figure than Rogi they have that similiar roguish mentality. Zelazny's writing, imagination, style and flow are second-to-none, the new amber books don't compare. Amber the archetypal city peopled by archetypes caught up in an archetypal war of Order vs Chaos, the book itself is deeper and richer than any archetype.

Thanks to this book I also read finally the second series, Merlin may not be Corwin but he's a good lead. My only complaint with the second series was hiding Corwin away until the last few pages and even then he doesn't come across so richly as he did in his own books.

For the follow ups do a search on Amber Shorts written by Zelazny prior to his death beginning with A Salesman's Tale.