The Road to Amber

The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny #6

by Roger Zelazny, Michael Whelan (Illustrator), Alice N.S. Lewis (Illustrator)

The last in a six-volume series The Road To Amber, covers the final five years of Zelazny's career in the early 1990s, when he reached for new ideas and continued familiar themes with stories such as Godson and Godson: A Play in Three Acts, two more Wild Cards stories (Concerto for Siren and Serotonin and The Long Sleep), and a linked sequence of five Amber stories leading to planned but unwritten Amber novels.

Table of Contents

Introductions
11 Roger Zelazny (by Jane Lindskold)
19 Remembering Roger (by Gerald Hausman)
25 The Trickster (by Gardner Dozois)

Stories
35 Godson
59 Godson: A Play in Three Acts
113 Come Back to the Killing Ground, Alice, My Love (series: Kalifriki)
157 Prince of the Powers of This World
165 The Long Crawl of Hugh Glass
197 Tunnel Vision
199 Epithalamium
221 Forever After: Preludes and Postlude
269 Lady of Steel
271 The Three Descents of Jeremy Baker
279 The Sleeper: Character Outline (series: Wild Cards)
283 Concerto for Siren and Serotonin (series: Wild Cards)
331 The Long Sleep(§ Wild Cards)

Amber
364 Amber Map
365 Prolog to Trumps of Doom
369 The Road to Amber
373 The Great Amber Questionnaire
381 A Secret of Amber (with Ed Greenwood)
385 The Salesman's Tale
399 Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains
405 The Shroudling and the Guisel
417 Coming to a Cord
425 Hall of Mirrors

Articles
445 On Writing Horror After Reading Clive Barker
447 "When It Comes It's Wonderful": Art versus Craft in Writing
461 Warriors and Dreams
469 "...And Call Me Roger": The Literary Life of Roger Zelazny, Part 6

Curiosities
523 Sandow's Shadow (outline) (series: Francis Sandow)
533 Shadowland (outline) (series: Shadowjack)
541 Dysonized Biologicals (outline)
545 Donnerjack, of Virtù: A Fable for the Machine Age (outline)

Celebration
555 A Zelazny Timeline
563 Z-World (by Michael Whelan)
575 The Quintessential Roger Zelazny
579 Isle of Regret (by Trent Zelazny)
583 In Memoriam: Roger Zelazny (by George R. R. Martin)

Songs (in "Godson: A Play in Three Acts")
60 My Given Name Is Death
63 Why Do Little Boys Lie?
68 It's Rough Being a Bike
72 Be a Doctor
76 Why's Good-bye So Easy for Him?
77 Remembering
78 Oh, How the Dying Goes On
82 Oh, Wondrous Weed
90 The Man Who Went Away
93 Betrayed
103 Let's Do It
107 Save That Quarterback

Poetry
110 Our Own Piece of the Sky
111 The Appetite and Rising Sun
112 Cry of the Needy
159 What Child Is This?
164 Storm
194 Walking, of Course
196 Spinning the Day Through My Head
218 Paranoid Game
220 The God and Frustrate Shrine
263 Ikhnaton's Hymn to the Sun
267 The Rational Gods
329 Spring Morning: Missive

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Speculative Fiction, Collections, Fiction, Poetry

576 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2009

About the author

Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American fantasy and science fiction writer known for his short stories and novels, best known for The Chronicles of Amber. He won the Nebula Award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo Award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965), subsequently published under the title This Immortal (1966), and the novel Lord of Light (1967).

Reviews

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 3 out of 5]

How much you enjoy this volume - the sixth of six* that collect Roger Zelazny's entire short story output, including some oddities and rarities - will depend on whether you are a Amber fan or a Zelazny fan. Amber fans will find that there are five linked Amber stories, told from five different points of view, set around the time of the second Amber series, that broaden the world of Amber a bit but are far from critical reading except for completists. Zelazny fans may enjoy a look at his short story output in the final years of his career, along with lots of notes about each story and a mini-biography that explains what was going on in Roger's life overall. The beautiful dust jacket was lovingly designed and fits with the other volumes in the series to form a really, really long single picture. So add an extra star to the rating if you are a Zelazny fan, not just an Amber fan, and if you are a RAVING Zelazny fan...well, then you probably already have this along with all the other volumes in the series.

One sad note gleamed from the biography section: many of Zelazny's solo books are currently out of print, with the exception of the "Great Book of Amber" that collects all 10 books in the series, and Lord of Light. That is a shame. Zelazny is too great a talent and too important to both the Fantasy and Science-Fiction genres to fade away forgotten like that.

This volume in the collection contains these stories from the late stages of Zelazny's career:

Godson - 4/5 - a riff on the Godfather Death fable
Godson: A Play in Three Acts - 3/5 - clever yet tedious; would make a nice Henry Selick film
Come Back to the Killing Ground, Alice, My Love (series: Kalifriki) - 2/5 - mashes up Alice in Wonderland with Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean with a bunch of other stuff thrown in
Prince of the Powers of This World -3/5 - Rosemary's Baby Jesus
The Long Crawl of Hugh Glass - 4/5 - based on the true life of Hugh Glass, a mountain man who survived a bear attack (see the film "Revenant")
Tunnel Vision - 2/5
Epithalamium - 3/5 - another riff on Alice in Wonderland, this time with an older Alice
Forever After: Preludes and Postlude - 4/5 - Zelazny's contributions to Forever After
Lady of Steel - 3/5
The Three Descents of Jeremy Baker - 3/5 - hard Sci-Fi based on theoretical physics

and two stories and a character outline from the Wild Cards series:

The Sleeper: Character Outline (series: Wild Cards) - 2/5 - Character outline for "the Sleeper," created by Zelazny for the Wild Cards shared universe
Concerto for Siren and Serotonin (series: Wild Cards) - 3/5
The Long Sleep (Wild Cards) - 3/5

and these Amber stories and tidbits:

Amber Map
Prolog to Trumps of Doom
The Road to Amber - Zelazny reflects on his writing of the original Amber series
The Great Amber Questionnaire - a Q&A with Zelazny about Amber
A Secret of Amber (with Ed Greenwood) - brief snippets written by Zelazny and a fan years apart
The Salesman's Tale - 3/5
Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains - 4/5
The Shroudling and the Guisel - 4/5
Coming to a Cord - 3/5
Hall of Mirrors - 4/5

Plus a bunch of other stuff.

* There is a seventh volume that is not a story collection

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! A great ending (save the bibliography) to a wonderful series. There is so much that just made this book.

Roger Zelazny by Jane Lindskold gives some insights into the man himself that can't be found elsewhere. As a fan, friend & then lover & co-author, Lindskold knew him as no other could have. The bit she shares is well done.

Remembering Roger by Gerald Hausman caused me to read Wilderness, a book about Hugh Glass & John Colter they co-authored. My review is here:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

There were a few 'new-to-me' stories, including "Lady of Steel" which was quite short, but excellent. And then there was a full Amber section. If you haven't managed track down all the stories, including the partial & only co-written short story, you'll find it here along with factual articles & speeches that Zelazny gave over the years. The record gets set straight on a few controversial items, such as Sheckley's work with Zelazny on the Millenial Trilogy.

But the crowning pieces were:
Sandow's Shadow (Outline) (series: Francis Sandow) &
Shadowland (Outline) (series: Shadowjack)

I loved Sandow in Isle of the Dead. He also appeared in a short story & made a cameo appearance in To Die In Italbar. It made this fairly well fleshed outline (almost a short story) a real joy to read.

Shadowland is a prequel to Jack of Shadows & tells how the world came to be. Jack plays a significant part, although he isn't really the hero of the story, but it was still a lot of fun.

All 7 books are really worth buying. There is plenty of advice for a writer, all of his short stories for those who just like his work, plus explanations which were wonderful. I even found out something new about A Night in the Lonesome October, a book I've pretty much studied & have shared discussions with in 2 different groups. How cool is that?

[Michael Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

So. Here we are at the last volume of Zelazny's short fiction but it definitely wasn't the way he would have written it up. Still actively working throughout this volume, he was diagnosed with cancer in 1994 . . . he was treated for it and in some regard seemed to be doing okay, but eventually in 1995 collapsed and died (a week and change shy of twenty-seven years to the day as I write this). Judging from quotes of people who knew him he didn't expect this to kill him and you wonder if he didn't think he was going to die until that final collapse. At the time it hit the world of SF and fantasy like a depth charge, even if it appeared that his critical prime had peaked decades ago he was still highly regarded as a writer and a person, nor was it widespread knowledge that he was sick. Needless to say the overall community was shocked and it might be safe to say that no one has ever really stepped up to fill the void that was created when he died. Even beyond his signature Myth-o-matic blending style, there was a lightness to his lyricism that made it all come across as somehow effortless.

With all that said, you're entering a final volume that is essentially gathering up odds and ends, not so much telling the story of a career coming to a graceful close as trying to come to grips with one that was mercilessly truncated long before the writer was ready to stop. They subtitled it "The Road to Amber" but in a sense we'd been on the Amber road for nearly twenty years at this point, with the first book coming out in 1970. He had recently written a second pentet (?) that does not seem to be as highly revered by fans as the first set was . . . that one had finished up in 1991 but in the meantime he had written several short stories between 1994-96 (the last "Hall of Mirrors" was published posthumously and is the last completed Zelazny short story published, anything else is either incomplete or finished by collaborators) that wound up serving as the last Amber story, even if that might not have been the intention at the time. Linked together and set after the last published Amber novel, they're fun if probably impenetrable to anyone not well versed in what Amber is all about . . . I've never read any Amber tales so for me they're more like interesting curios but for fans its probably nice to see them with some surrounding context (especially as the collection they originally appeared in "Manna From Heaven" is now back in print but probably costs as much as this volume does). There's also a fragment of an Amber tale he wrote with Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood, for the completists out there.

But there's a definite feeling throughout this entire volume of being at a wake, or at least a memorial service, as old friends and family gather together to try and sketch the outlines of the loss of something that for them at least almost seems too big to encompass. The opening foreward is from Jane Lindskold, his last companion during the remaining year or so of his life (having met while both were married to other people, they eventually left their respective spouses and got together) and even years after his passing it still radiates from the pages how strongly she felt about him and how his memory has barely faded. And that feeling pervades all of the other tributes that bookend this volume, Gardner Dozois and George R R Martin and Zelazny's son Trent all talking about the man as if he had just died two weeks prior, and too long ago.

It makes the stories themselves almost irrelevant, just a gathering of stuff that's left behind when the absence presents itself. For the first time in the entire series there's no minor classics scattered amongst the tales, just tiny revelations and reminders. We get two "Wild Cards" stories, one of which mostly exists to lead into another story arc and another that probably won't mean much to anyone not already vested in the Wild Cards universe (according to George R R Martin there were two more that Zelazny had planned to write before died before he could even start them). Coming along later in the series these aren't as wedded to the grim urban setting of the first pair (the second takes place at Los Alamos) but still don't really rank among the most memorable stories he ever did, although he was probably the most awardingest author to grace the series by that point. Interestingly, Marvel Comics released the first series of a new comics adaptation just last week as I write this, written by Paul Cornell, so maybe one of Zelazny's creations will finally get a second life (in fact, he's scheduled to be the focus of the third issue, to be released later in the summer).

With the Wild Cards and the Amber tales out of the way, you're left with a bit of a grab-bag. There's some cute stories, like the opening "Godson", featuring a boy who becomes good friends with someone who is possibly maybe not totally but yeah, he's death. Based on a Grimms Brothers fairy tale, its lighthearted (Death is apparently a big booster of the NFL) even when its about life and death, and it’s a sign of Zelazny's effortless talent that he's able to manage what could be drastic tonal shifts considering the subject matter and how goofy some of the story is (talking bicycle!). And while you might think this was written because he had mortality on the mind, by all reports that wasn't the case and as if to posthumously prove otherwise, he adapted his own story as a musical, complete with songs he performed just once for some friends. The musical's included here too, although its just the basic story in script format, with songs.

You also get "Forever After: Prelude and Postludes", a series of framing bits for an idea he had about what happens in fairy tales when the quest is over . . . other authors wrote the main stories but those aren't included here, making it again more a curiosity than anything else. "The Long Crawl of Hugh Glass" is an excerpt from the "Wilderness" novel (written with Gerald Hausman) about a guy who got nearly taken out by a bear and then proceeded to crawl a hundred miles to safety, years before Leonardo DiCaprio had to to do it, and if nothing else it proves his forte was more the fantastic than strict realism.

But its "Come Back to the Killing Ground, Alice, My Love" which for me probably stands as his last great story. Featuring bizarre assassin Kalifriki from the last volume, this one takes the strangeness quotient and ups it several magnitudes, featuring a truly odd environment, clones, and an overall sense on every page that something is utterly off-kilter. Like his best stuff it feels like a structured descent into the heart of things, fragments dancing around until the truth is revealed. Of all the stories in this volume it feels the most inspired, capturing a little bit of the edge that could be found in his earliest stories, a mixture of danger and exuberance, a bit more intensity. Even now, this one sticks with me more than the other ones do and if you're going to judge this volume's worth based on one story, this one is the keeper.

The rest are the rest. Once the stories are done and the tributes are set down the volume is rounded out by some random articles about writing and a number of outlines for stories that would be finished after his death. He appeared to be writing almost right up to the moment when he could no longer write, with at least three novels coming out after his death ("Psychoshop", finishing an Alfred Bester tale, and "Donnerjack" and "Lord Demon", both finished by Jane Lindskold). We also get an explanation for Michael Whelan's wraparound cover that adorns all six volumes, for those interested.

Is any of this essential? Probably not. Anyone choosing to skip this volume I don't think is missing out too much but for me at least getting five-sixths of the way through his career is like watching most of a movie and turning it off before the end arrives. I'm one of those people who likes to sit through the credits and there's a sense of that here, a closing out and a summing up, where even if the stories themselves don't represent his best work that hardly seems to be the goal here. Instead we're reminded why Zelazny was so much more than some guy who wrote stories and why his friends loved him so dearly. In this final volume that's what comes through most of all, this sad and somber realization that when someone is gone there's something vital lost that all the stories left behind and embedded memories can't replicate. Roger Zelazny can't come back to life in this pages, because he's no longer alive. But the fact that these six volumes exist at least means he was here and that has to be something.

Where is Zelazny today? Not as near as he once was. Twenty-five years after his passing he's far from the almost household name he once was, his best stories now sixty years behind us and an entire generation arriving and growing up without a new Zelazny tale in sight. Other than "Lord of Light" finding him now means you have to search for him a bit, in a world where content sprays at us like an endless ceaseless array of T-shirt cannons pointed directly at our heads. Its probably the fate of all writers that aren't fortunate enough to transcend mediums and achieve a sort of enveloping ubiquity, but its not a fate you would have once thought possible for Zelazny. Even when he was gone you hoped he'd still be there, humming along in the background.

His twin peaks, one critical, one commercial, have flash frozen him into a certain image. The guy who came out of nowhere and wrote mindblowing stories in the sixties was also the same guy who sold a lot of books with a popular fantasy series throughout the seventies and eighties, though sometimes they get treated as two different people. But before, in between, and after there was more, so much more, and if this series is valuable at all its not because it gave us a reason to trot out "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" one more time for posterity but to remind us he wasn't some kind of weird three hit wonder but someone who spent a (too short) lifetime giving us interesting dispatches from his imagination. Time has threatened to turn everything non-Amber into an afterthought or a perennial chestnut included in "Best SF of All Time" anthologies, part of the canon the same way the Mona Lisa is. Its always been there, it seems, and so we take it for granted. But there was a time when those stories were new and startingly alive and if this series does one thing right it blows the dust off and gives us an idea what it was like to experience these when they were new and fresh, when the supply was endless and you didn't know what you were getting next. I'm grateful for all the work this series did putting it all in context and not just giving us a dry parade of stories. That would have been easy enough and probably would have sold just fine. But they took the harder road and tried to give us the writer, tried to give us a sense of his seriousness, his humor, his sheer inhumanly insatiable capacity to absorb everything in sight and synthesize it all into what we have here. If they don't totally succeed in capturing him that's fine, because it's an impossible task. But we have what was here and what was left behind and its wonderful that we got this much. As influential as he might have been, there was no one like him before he came along and there's been no like him since, as a writer and as a person. Which is the higher compliment I'll leave for you to decide.

[Brok3n · Rating 5 out of 5]

An impressive collection

The Road to Amber is the final volume of the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny. This volume covers his final years from 1990 - his death from colorectal cancer in 1995.

I'm going to do something a bit different for this review than for the previous five. For those my review and evaluation were based mostly on the stories they contained. But that's not really fair to the Zelazny Editor Dream Team of David G. Grubbs, Christopher S. Kovacs, and Ann Crimmins (whom I will henceforth call GKC), who put this massive collection together, and NESFA Press, which published it in six beautifully produced hardback volumes, not to mention A Pictorial Bibliography, which I will review presently. (NESFA is New England Science Fiction Association.) I can't help but feel that I've been unfair to GKC by not giving them a five-star rating of their own, so that's what I'm going to do here.

Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) is one of the all-time greats of science fiction. His work has been widely praised, won all the awards, and is still popular. The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny is an extraordinary resource for Zelazny scholars. I would not dare call myself a Zelazny scholar, but I am a scholar of other fields, and recognize what GKC have done. It is especially valuable because Zelazny's greatest gift was writing short stories. (The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny is slightly misnamed, however, because it includes almost all Zelazny's short works -- that includes poetry and essays as well as stories. GKC did yeoman's work in collecting even formerly unpublished fragments.) Zelazny wanted to write, and did, almost from the moment he learned to read. His first love was poetry. In college, however, he recognized that if he wanted to earn a living as a writer, poetry was not a real option. (As he wrote, Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg were the only Americans doing it.) Thus he switched to stories. Later he recognized that, word-for-word, novels pay better than stories, and directed most of his effort in that direction. But he still loved stories best and never ceased to write them until his death.

Many of the stories are followed by "A Word from Zelazny", containing text that Zelazny himself wrote about the story. And almost all are followed by "Notes" written by GKC that explain things in the story that may need explaining. These range from a sentence or two to nine pages (for "He Who Shapes"). The series includes a six-part biography of Zelazny ...And Call Me Roger, written by Kovacs. The volumes contain Zelazny's short fiction in chronological order, and the biography in each volume describes what was going on in Zelazny's life while the works in that volume were being produced.

The cover art is a beautiful painting by famed F&SF illustrator Michael Whelan called Z-World. (For the story behind this see my review of Nine Black Doves.) Here is that painting, as it appears on the spines of the books of the series:



Whelan includes an essay called "Z-World" in which he describes how he made this painting and explains some of what's in it.

This is a spectacular resource for any hard-core Zelazny fan. My one complaint about The Collected Stories is that it's available only in hardback. This may put it beyond the reach of many fans and even libraries.

Blog review.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the capstone of the posthumously published stories of Zelazny. There's a bit of overlap with Manna From Heaven, and the items here that weren't published before are mostly curios; poems, plays and assorted odds and ends, still a must-have for hard-core Zelazny fans. There are some interesting forewords, short stories, then there's the complete set of all the Amber-related material that Zelazny wrote after the 10 part Chronicles of Amber, and then there's some essays, outlines of unfinished works, afterwords and poetry. Many of the stories have added comments, either by Zelazny or the editors, that give more context to the items. On my first read of this collection I focused on the Amber-related items, having just finished the Amber Chronicles. These items were written by Zelazny to give some closure of all the story threads left open after the main books. However clearly the short stories here also were meant to create the openings for a sequel series, based e.g. around the 'spikards', powerful magical artifacts. It's unfortunate that that sequel will remain unwritten. You can see this collection as the last footnotes to a great body of work, but I think they're still great footnotes.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-road-to-amber-by-roger-zelazny/

It starts with an adaptation of the Grimm tale Godfather Death, which Zelazny also turned into a musical (never staged); the final Amber stories are here, but so also is some background writing about Amber which was not widely available in his lifetime; and there are some non-fiction pieces about his concept of his own craft, as well as emotional reminiscences about Zelazny the man and mentor, from friends and family. It’s a thoroughly satisfactory capstone to the five volumes that went before.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection, if not as strong as the previous collections in the series. Poignant reading about the too-early end of his life. One of my favorite authors.

[Metaphorosis · Rating 4 out of 5]

reviews.metaphorosis.com

4 stars

Roger Zelazny deserves every bit of his status as a legendary SFF author. At his best (which he often was - see Lord of Light), his prose verged on poetry without ever losing its readability. His short fiction (gathered in several partial collections over the years) was as good, if not better. So, running across a complete collection of his short works is as exciting to an SF fan as finding that a (more) affordable version of the [Jack] Vance Integral Edition is being published. Zelazny and Vance were not only among the top SF writers, but were two of the absolute best for those who love good writing for its own sake.

Which is why the editorial policy behind this collection (published by NESFA) is so puzzling. Curious decisions include: - stories are not in chronological order, nor in series groups, nor in topical order. Yes, there's a general chronological sequence here, but stories are often presented out of order, for no evident reason. - Zelazny aspired to be a poet, and there's a lot of his poetry here. Ironically, for a writer whose prose was so beautifully poetic, his actual poetry is pretty poor. The poems are scattered throughout the volumes of the collection - often topically linked with the following story. It's a little hard to argue with the editors on this - several hundred pages of poetry in one place would have seriously weakened one of the volumes in the set. And if the poetry had just been left out entirely, you'd wonder about it, and how good it must have been. - Several excerpts from novels. Frankly, I just resent this. I have the novels - they're mostly available for purchase. I bought this set for the short stories. - One little quibble. One the inside back jacket, Michael Whelan gets as much space as Zelazny himself. Yes, he's a famous (if overrated) artist, but hey, he just did the one cover, not the six volumes of content.

Strange sequencing, etc. aside, the collection is well done. There is excellent information on publication dates and how the stories fit the various series. There are many previously unpublished (or underpublished) pieces. There are carefully collated comments from Zelazny about each story, and there are (over-) copious interpretive notes about the allusions in each story. Also, there's a nicely written biographical piece included in each volume. While they're all respectful of Zelazny's talent, they're not sycophantic in tone. There are also introductions by guest notables for each volume - some good, some that lead you to question why the editors selected people who clearly did not know Zelazny well.

Finally - the stories themselves. If you're a Zelazny fan, this collection is well worth your time. Otherwise, it's not your best introduction. Some of the underpublished (e.g. in a fanzine) stuff just isn't that good. And the strange sequencing ends up undercutting the effect of the really great stories that are also here. I'm a long time, committed Zelazny enthusiast, and I'm confident that this is not the collection I'd give my spouse in order to share my burning enthusiasm for Zelazny's work. If you're already a fan, though, this will satisfy your completist desires, and give you access to a lot of new work, uneven though it may be.

[Alazzar · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I said in my recap of the first five volumes of this series, everything is awesome, especially the notes after each story that give some insight into Zelazny’s writing. Also, the biographical stuff and the speeches and essays at the end are great.

With that out of the way, here’s a list of all the stories in the book (not including poetry/articles/whatever). I’ve bolded the ones I felt stood out.


Godson
Godson: A Play in Three Acts
Come Back to the Killing Ground, Alice, My Love (series: Kalifriki)
Prince of the Powers of This World
The Long Crawl of Hugh Glass
Tunnel Vision
Epithalamium
Forever After: Preludes and Postlude
Lady of Steel
The Three Descents of Jeremy Baker
The Sleeper: Character Outline (series: Wild Cards)
Concerto for Siren and Serotonin (series: Wild Cards)
The Long Sleep(§ Wild Cards)

Amber

Amber Map
Prolog to Trumps of Doom
The Road to Amber
The Great Amber Questionnaire
A Secret of Amber (with Ed Greenwood)
The Salesman's Tale
Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains
The Shroudling and the Guisel
Coming to a Cord
Hall of Mirrors

And now, a few individual notes.

To start things off, I didn’t give many stories ye olde bold(e) this time around. I’m not sure if these stories just weren’t as memorable as the previous, or what. Several of them I didn’t read this time around because I’d read them previously in Manna From Heaven--including the Amber stories. I’d originally planned to re-read all the Amber tales when I got to that point in the book, but I was so eager to get to the final installment of “. . . And Call Me Roger” that I had to skip ahead. That being said, some of the Amber tales may deserve the bold, but I don’t really remember—I just gave it to “Coming to a Cord” because I recall that being a standout amongst the Amber shorts.

After the Amber stories, we get to the part I’d been waiting for. The highlight of this volume (for me, anyway) was the final installment of “. . . And Call Me Roger.” I’d like to be a published writer some day (even if I realize the chances are slim at best), and getting this insight on Zelazny’s literary life is a real treat. It was also damn sad—I got to the point, after six volumes of biography, that I felt like I knew Roger personally—and then, in this segment, I had to read about his final days. Sad times . . .

I wasn’t even a Zelazny fan until after he was gone, but maybe that’s for the best—-I’m not sure how I would have gotten myself out of bed after hearing the news of June 14, 1995.

RIP, Roger—you’re still the best, and always will be.

[Shannon Appelcline]

I picked this up mainly to read the five connected Amber short stories. Was it worth picking up this volume just for those stories? Perhaps not, but they were worth reading.

The Salesman's Tale. It's great to see Luke as the point-of-view character. Not only does this story nicely answer several open questions from the Merlin series, but it also begins to setup an intriguing new plot line [7/10].

Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains. It's very nice to see Corwin at the center of things again, and once more we have what looks like a setup for exciting stuff. Unfortunately, this story is almost all setup [6/10].

The Shroudling and the Guisel. As with the other Amber shorts, Zelazny does a great job here of really opening up the world with new, evocative sorts of magic and enchantment. Unfortunately the story as a whole doesn't hold up to that imagination. He annoyingly walks back part of the ending of Prince of Chaos by introducing new claimants to the throne, then solves the problems too easily with super magic [5/10].

Coming to a Cord. This Frakir story is rather delightful and also does a good job of tying together the Amber shorts to date, showing that they were really heading somewhere. I thought the Werewindel reveal was a little blatant, but otherwise it's a good story [7+/10].

Hall of Mirrors. Again, you could really see things coming together in this, which is the last story. Unfortunately Zelazny also returned to some of the more annoying features of his late Amber stories: anthropomorphized, omniscient beings taking away the free will from our characters. Still, I enjoyed one last story with Luke and Corwin. [5/10].

I also read some of the Amber ephemera:

Prolog to Trumps of Doom. It's a pity this isn't in any of the normal printings of the book, since it's a great little tease for the story [7/10].

A Secret of Amber. This story serially written with Ed Greenwood is just a silly little fragment, but it's still fun nonetheless [5+/10].

[Mayank Agarwal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read only the short stories of Amber, got to say they are better written then the original series. This must be mainly due to the fact of them being written more recently. As for the particular stories it’s a mix bag of excellent and mediocre -

The Salesman's Tale 4/5 – Loved the story, tells us what actually happened at the end of Amber Chronicles in regard to Luke. Ties up few loose ends and develops many interesting plot for future Amber series.

Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains 1/5 – While it’s not a hell ride which i detest still it’s a ride by Corwin from Chaos to Amber. Zelazny’s ride always seems like filler never adding anything to the story just adding pages.

The Shroudling and the Guisel 4/5 – Another great story, this one picks up on Merlin, when we left him in the end of Amber Chronicles. This time Zelazny builds up another beautiful word with an interesting race. Also the introduction of his two childhood friends and there weird power adds to the series.

Coming to a Cord 1/5 – While I like how it combines the other short stories and continues them but it actually brings in a lot of questions – Last time we checked Frakir couldn’t talk in Amber, If the swords were as powerful as the rings and Brand was in possession of them why didn’t he just take over the throne as he wanted.

Hall of Mirrors 2/5- Lots of stuff happening and it’s all ambiguous, instead of resolving loose ends it creates more.