trying to remember a series of books i read in the early 90's

[Matt]

I'm not sure if this is the place to ask, but I'm trying to recall an older series of fantasy books. I read them in the early 90's and the basic premise was some normal guy ended up in a castle that had doors to different universes/planes of existence.

the main character was a guy, and i think he had a female companion that was familiar with how things worked.

does anyone remember any series similar to this? (it is not Terry Brooks' Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold series)

[Matthew]

Were they using playing cards to travel around? I'm trying to think of the series, but there was one I read a long time ago where the castle was in the center "world" and all other worlds were connected. It was a family that ruled it and they were fighting each other.
Damn - I can't think of the writer, but might have it at home.

[Matt]

i think the Castle was in a different universe, and yeah, was the nexus for all the other places.

i think there was a race of people that was a predominant bad guy.

the overall tone of the books was fairly light. more Robert Asprin's Myth series rather than Jordan's Wheel of Time.

i don't remember the playing card thing. (there was another series of books that used a D&D game to get 4 or 5 people into the "game world" with them as their characters that was fairly interesting, too, but i think that had to have been written even farther back.)

thinking about it makes me want to read David Brin's "The Practice Effect" again, but it wasn't related to that series either... :P

[Tassie Dave, S&L Historian]

How about Castle Perilous by John DeChancie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_DeC...

[Matt]

i think that's it! if it's not, it sure sounds like what i remember :)

thanks so much!

[Matthew]

And it's not the one I was thinking about - and turns out I don't have any of the books on the book shelf.

This is going to haunt me for the next few days until I get distracted :)

So is Castle Perilous worth checking out?

[Matt]

i devoured the books that were available at the time. (i borrowed from a friend.) i also think i listened to the album "Slip" by Quicksand repeatedly while reading them all.

so i think they were pretty good at the time. i'm not sure what i would say today, but i'm looking at getting the kindle version of Castle Perilous to find out.

Looking at DeChancie's blog, as of Sept. of last year, he had actual begun writing a new Castle novel.

[Brian]

Mattarse wrote: "And it's not the one I was thinking about - and turns out I don't have any of the books on the book shelf.

This is going to haunt me for the next few days until I get distracted :)

So is Castle P..."

I'm almost positive you are talking about the 9 Princes of Amber series

[Matthew]

@Brian - Thank you! That's exactly it!

[Mike]

I loved the Castle Perilous series when they originally came out back in the early '90s. I'll check out DeChancie's blog later, but the news that he's working on a new CP novel makes me happy.

I'll have to start grabbing the Kindle versions of the books, though the covers are seriously lacking compared to the originals.

[Been]

The little I can find out about this series really makes me want to read some. Just a shame there doesn't seem to be a Kindle (UK) version available. Curious where you've found one Mike as it looks like the US store doesn't have it either.

[Matt]

http://www.amazon.com/Castle-Perilous... is the link I used for the Kindle version of Castle Perilous from the US store. Hope that helps!