Blood of Amber (The Chronicles of Amber #7) by Roger Zelazny

Blood of Amber (The Chronicles of Amber #7) Reviews

• 
  Dan Schwent

  Picking up where Trumps of Doom left off, Merle continues trying to figure out who's trying to kill him. Along the way, he discovers more about his friend Luke Raynard, saves the family from being killed at the funeral of one of their own, learns of previously unknown members of the royal family, and discovers he has an ally of sorts that can switch bodies. But can he figure out how these clues fit together before he is killed and Amber is destroyed...
  
  Blood of Amber has more than its share of twists. I had an idea who Luke was but I was a little off. Dalt's identity was much more of a surprise. I'm still not sure who the body-swapper really is or what he/she has in store for Merle. I have a feeling Merle will meet up with Corwin before the series is over.
  
  On to the next volume!
• 
  Elisabeth

  Well, that took forever.
  Merlin is boring. His life is boring; his problems are boring. And now he's in Wonderland. WTF Zelazny? How's the LSD?
  
  Seriously. I will keep reading the series, because potential. And completion. But I miss Corwin I think more than Merlin does. I like the potential of sorcery, but I really think this thing is being dragged out for no damn reason. Why were the first five books so much more engaging and fantastical? Even the 900th trip through Shadow held my interest better than this.
  
  Well, not everything can be perfect. Carry on.
• 
  Graeme Rodaughan

  Magic Garden Gone Wrong! Mage Dumps Fertilizer in Final Insult! "Well, I was certain that I had Merlin on the back foot with my magical attacks, but then he trumps out while dumping a truckload of manure on my head! I mean ... who gets to do that in a magical battle?!" - Mask - The Wizards' Weekly
  
  Merlin largely spends this book trying to work out, 'What the Bloody Frack is Going ON!!!' and 'Who the Hell is Trying to Kill Me!!!' Frankly, it's one mysterious villain after another, even the help - here's looking at whoever is possessing Vinta Bayle - is mysterious. That said, he begins to seize the initiative by the end of this volume and assert some authority on events.
  
  Recommended. 5 'Villain du Jour,' stars.
• 
  Stjepan Cobets

  My rating 4.5
  
  I could write a lot about this book, but a lot has already been written. Mostly Merlin, as in previous books, discovers new enemies, old enemies come back, former enemies change, and you can expect a lot and be sure it isn't everything it looks like.
  
• 
  RJ - Slayer of Trolls

  Book two of the Second Chronicles of Amber expands the family tree and introduces some new settings. The plot continues to revolve around the various intrigues involving the First Family of Amber as well as the duality between Amber and the Courts of Chaos that plays out across infinite shadow worlds. But there is a strong feeling of "been there done that" which pervades the story, a lack of distinction that makes it all feel like just another episode along the way to the eventual conclusion.
• 
  William

  This was my favorite one of the series, and I loved the ending. Can't wait to see if Merlin and Renaldo make it back up the rabbit hole!
• 
  Caro the Helmet Lady

  While still not sure if Merlin's ark was necessary, I liked this one more than number 6 - it was faster paced and generally more fun. I finished it and immediately got to number 8!
• 
  Ivana Books Are Magic

  Blood of Amber is such a brilliant novel. It is well written, extremely eventful and interesting. In other words, a fine addition to the series. By introducing clever plot twists, this book creates not only fascinating mysteries and questions but it also does a great job of adding depth to the characters. I enjoyed it immensely and read on with great interest. Merlin in the first book wasn't easy to relate (for some reason), but once he find himself neck deep in problems, it's hard not to feel sympathy for him.
  
  As I said, I like how different Merlin is from Corwin. Merlin speaks and even thinks differently, and that's good because it keeps the reader on his/her toes. If I remember well, Blood of Amber opens with Merlin trying to escape his imprisonment. It's quite a ride from there. There are many iconic episodes in this one, and found myself warming up to Merlin more than I did in the first one. The poor guy just can't catch a break.
  
  “Life is full of doors that don't open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when don't want them to.”
• 
  Kevin

  One thing I noticed early on in the series that I've failed to mention is that when Zelazny moves his character through shadow it reads almost like poetry, not the forced trying to be like Tolkien poetry that once fantasy writer seemed to have to insert to have a "proper" fantasy. The descriptions aren't formatted like poetry it just sounds like a very poetic movement.
• 
  Pam Baddeley

  This is the seventh Amber novel by Zelazny, and the second in the follow-up five-book sequence about Corwin's son Merlin. In this book, Merlin, also called Merle, escapes the prison where his 'friend' Luke stowed him - at the end of previous book, Luke was revealed to be the son of Brand, the psychotic Amberite who tried to destroy the others in the original series. He is seeking revenge for his father, who the others had no choice but to kill, but it seems he's mixed-up because although he was responsible for the first few assassination attempts against Merle, committed every 30th April over about 8 years, he apparently stopped and someone else, possibly his mother, took over later. Merle discovers in this volume that various odd characters who approached him in book 1 are actually people who have been possessed by an entity who claims to want to protect him. That entity finally breaks cover and agrees to an exchange of information, but as Merlin insists on a quid pro quo, the sequence where they laboriously trade snippets is very tedious.
  
  The plot of the present volume is rambling in the extreme. Zelazny could obviously write - I loved a section of description where Merlin walks down by the docks en route to a restaurant - but seemed here to be going through the motions plot-wise. A lot happens including blow-by-blow fight sequences which I found confusing and also unconvincingly detailed for someone caught up in the adrenaline of a fight, various people try to kill Merle and he spends a lot of time discussing who this could be and also refusing to confide in people, including his uncle Random, now King of Amber, who might be able to help him. Yet he naively trusts Luke who has admitted to making attempts on his life and appears to continue to have his own agenda. A lot of characters arrive and depart, almost on a revolving door basis, and don't add much to the story, and more are introduced in passing - e.g. two more siblings of his fathers turn up in the form of Trumps (the cards the royal family use to contact each other) whom I believe were mentioned in the first series as being thought dead long before Corwin was born - and I would guess these characters probably feature in later volumes. There are sudden rather jarring flashbacks to Merlin's upbringing at the Courts of Chaos where he had terrible fights with a person who hated him for no apparent reason his brother and it seems pretty obvious that the shape-shifting sorcerer who trails him in this volume and eventually attacks him must be that person, yet he doesn't draw the obvious inference even when he thinks back to how this person behaved. Instead he is unable to work out who might be trying to kill him, despite the fact that this person tried at least twice when they were growing up, once by trying to shoot him in the back.
  
  It is also far too 'easy' for Merle compared to his father - in the earlier story, Corwin was enough of a superhero: he had the ability to travel through Shadow, that is, from world to world, was a master swordsman, had above human healing powers, an extended lifespan (when banished to our Earth, he lived there for hundreds of our years), and could use the Trumps - special cards developed by his grandfather - some of these abilities developed through walking the Pattern, an energy grid used to bring the worlds into being originally. All these powers were shared with his siblings and made his family powerful enough, in my opinion. But Merlin also inherits powers from his mother Dara who is one of the Chaos party, so he can use something called the Logrus to create spells including an invisibility one, and he can shape-shift into other forms including that of an apparently fearsome beast (he uses this ability to best a demon at one point though it isn't shown as the chapter ends and the next one switches to after he has done so). He can also reach into Shadow and pull out new clothes whenever he needs them or a sword or just about anything else he needs. Frankly, this makes him far too boring a character and his general naive stupidity doesn't endear him to the reader either.
  
  The book ends as its predecessor did - Merlin is now a prisoner somewhere, this time in a very surreal placeLewis Carroll's Wonderland. With the lack of real character development or a half-decent plot, I can't believe it would be worth the bother of tracking down the final three volumes of this (I have only the first two) as there is no real incentive to read on.
• 
  Loreley

  საინტერესო რაღაცეები ხდება :3 ისე მართლა, ცოტა უფრო პატა��ა სანათესაო რომ ჰქონოდათ ამბერის პრინცებს, გაცილებით უფრო მშვიდად იცხოვრებდნენ :))
  
  P.S. აჩრდილის ბორბალმა მამა რომ დაუძახა ჩავიხოცე :D
• 
  Bryan

  I thought Zelazny really stepped it up on this one.
  
  The previous book in the series, Trumps Of Doom, featured a new character as the protagonist/narrator; Merlin, the son of Corwin of Amber, who narrated the first five books. In Trumps, Merlin failed to live up to his father's sheer coolness, and thus that book excited me less than the first five. In fact, the Merlin we meet in Trumps came across as a bit of a chump, and we still see some of that in Blood Of Amber as well(seriously, he can't figure out that the one-eyed, one-eared wolf that hates him and wants to kill him is actually his one-eyed, one-eared shapeshifter brother who hates him and wants to kill him?). However, Merlin decides to try to take control of his own destiny in this book, and in my mind this makes his flaws much easier to deal with, and also helps move the action along at quite a good clip. By the end of the book, it seemed that Zelazny had really hit his stride, and things were happening so quickly and furiously that I could barely put the book down.
  
  I can't wait to read the next one and figure out what the hell happened with the completely bizzare Alice In Wonderland ending.
• 
  Deborah Ideiosepius

  Book seven in the Chronicles of Amber, and book two in the Merle Corey
  
  ARE YOU DUCKING KIDDING ME GOODREADS? YOU DELETED MY WHOLE REVIEW!!!! ALL OF IT????
  
  Since I can't seem to recover the actual review;
  - I did not love this book as much as previous Amber books.
  -I still loved this book more than many others.
  -Merlin is modelled on Corwin but not as good a character.
  -Zelazny uses too many themes from Corwin's cycle and does not seem as invested in this book.
  -We get to see more of Amber.
  -We get to see more of Flora (whose real name is never used any more)and Fiona.
  -It is beyond belief that Merlin trusts Luke as much, as often as he does.
  -It is beyond idiotic that you would be that chummy with someone who has done you NOTHING but bad turns, including murder and imprisonment.
  - Merlin tells everyone everything he knows without getting any real information back.
  -Did I mention that Zelazny is using the Corwin themes, but not putting enough effort into them?
  -Rescuing homicidal Luke's mother made no sense.
  -Acting as a solitary individual made no sense (it did for Corwin, but not Merlin).
  - Still loved it, will still go on to the next one.
  
• 
  Patrick

  To be quite honest, I didn't find this installment to be interesting at all. It seemed to drag on forever and, like all the Amber books, has chapters that are far too long for their own good. The book just couldn't hold my attention or interest and is probably the weakest installment for Amber to date, in my personal opinion.
• 
  Mike

  Turning the last page in the Blood of Amber, the 7th of 10 books in the Chronicles of Amber, I find myself asking the same question that has dogged me throughout the series so far: Did Zelazny have an editor?
  
  While the obvious answer lay somewhere in the "It was early fantasy, give the guy a break" realm, it still boggles my mind that these books are considered some of the best written in the genre. Sadly, for me, this doesn't stand up to many of it's contemporaries, and certainly fades when viewed in comparison with the more modern classics of it's ilk.
  
  Characters continue to shuffle like cards in a deck, but many times the card is face down when a chapter begins and your frame of reference is little more than guesswork.
  
  Zelazny continues to flush pages of prose full of redundancy, using the same word many times across short spans, and explaining the same ideas, thoughts, and imagery far too frequently for comfort.
  
  For all his literary shortcomings (and as nothing more than a hobbyist in the genre I have no hat to hang my opinion on) Zelazny still manages to sprinkle the wasteland of pointless prose with scenes of brilliant beauty. Through the overall vision his creativity is clear; he supplies you with enough wonder that you're forced to continue on.
  
  While my interest in the series has waned, my promise to complete the series remains in tact, and I will begin shortly book 8 of the Chronicles of Amber.
• 
  Joel

  This part of the series is picking up again - now that I've adjusted to Merlin as a main character (even though he's oddly similar to Corwin), as well as the seemingly new rules surrounding magic (Marlin is just a spellslinger now?).
  
  I still am not enjoying this arc as much as the initial 5, but they move fast and are still very entertaining. I look forward to finishing out the entire arc.
• 
  Pinko Palest

  the violence keeps getting too graphic and a little too gratuitous here for my liking. Plus the saga seems to be spinning out of control for no particular reason. Sadly, this seems more like HP Lovecraft than what has gone before. One thing that is tiring in Zelazny is his elaborate descriptions of duels with fantastic weapons, and this one has one too many of these
• 
  Alberto Galassi

  Questo volume come il precedente, fa parte di un frammento delle cronache di ambra di passaggio, c'è molta carne al fuoco e spesso genera confusione... ma piccolo spoiler tranquilli con il volume 8 che sto leggendo in questo istante tutto ritorna al posto giusto.... mi manca Corwin e il suo "Sta bene!!!"
• 
  Slytherpuff

  As usual these books are full of twists and turns. I did not expect the trump to work in reverse at the end. I found some of the spells Merle used rather funny and interesting. I did not expect Vinta to have taken many forms. I also didn't expect Merle rescuing Jasra on his own.
• 
  Cathy

  I like these books even better than the original Amber series. Not quite the same magic of originality, but a much tighter and more suspenseful story. With nice touches of humor.
• 
  Emre

  Yazarın büyünün yapılışını değil de, bu yeteneğin ardındaki gücü ve felsefesini betimleme şekli beni mest ediyor.
• 
  Florin Pitea

  Quite good, but it reads less like a novel and more like a section from a larger novel.
• 
  Милан

  Заиста је Мерлинов циклус доста слабији у односу на Корвинов и вероватно бих одустао да нисам дошао до последње књиге у серијалу. Наркотичка, дивља и психоделична атмосфера 70-их напуштена је зарад штурог и неуверљивог описа магијских система уз по коју референцу на научне принципе нашег света.
  
  Приповедање је јасније структурисано и више не личи на препричавање живописног сна; иронично, ликови су мање развијени и свесно удаљени од главног тога приче. Зелазни се тако одриче оригиналних замисли чврсто изграђених у првих пет књига, да би испричао једну генеричку фантазијску приповест о уображеном "изабраном" јунаку. Мерлин је сву своју посебност - што карактерну, што магијску - наследио рођењем; он је спој најмоћнијих сила универзума и током обуке није имао потешкоћа да овлада са оба пола магијских моћи. Поседује и ствара најбоље магијске чаролије и артефакте и тако даље, клише за клишеом.
  
  Ако се сетимо да је Корвин четири године провео у самици док су му поново израстале ископане очи, јасно је колико циклус о Мерлину разочарава.
• 
  Jenny

  Okay, Merlin has completely won me over. I'm not saying I like him better than Corwin--I could never--but I love him equally. Except I refuse to call him Merle, even in my mind. Merlin is a much better name (no offense to anyone who goes by Merle).
  I'm not sure what happened at the end of this book. It's so strange and bizarre, and it literally involves the Mad Hatter, but it somehow makes sense for this narrator who is a child of Amber and a prince of Chaos at the same time. I am still wondering who Mask is, and I'm really, really hoping that it's not Corwin. The only thing that could be strong enough to completely justify all the suspense and the only thing that would make me want to throw The Great Book of Amber at Zelazny's head is if Corwin is Merlin's antagonist.
  But we shall see. Onto Book 8.
• 
  Книжни Криле

  Том втори от „Хрониките на Амбър” съдържа поредните четири романа (части от 4 до 7) от многотомната фентъзи сага на доайена Роджър Зелазни. Легендарната поредица е задължителна за феновете на жанра и съвсем с право е включена в колекцията на издателство „Бард” „Велики майстори на фентъзи и фантастика”. Прочетете ревюто на "Книжни Криле":
  
  
  https://knijnikrile.wordpress.com/201...
• 
  Chris Gager

  Full review under "The Great Book of Amber."
• 
  Sopho Bandzeladze

  Merlin is my love.