On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 08:50:30PM -0500, Gaertk at aol.com wrote: > > who cannot be struck by the beautiful, striking imagery of > > Zelazny's work as his characters walk through shadow to a > > new place? > > Me. I've never been impressed by "wierd shit for the sake of > wierd shit". And by the second quintet that's all that was > left. I was incredibly impressed by the first shadow walk. By the fourth book I just skimmed down to where the story started again. There were a couple of reasons for it. The first walk was incredibly detailed, with fun and interesting detailed things along the way. 'We covir the earth' and 'the driver covered me with abuse.' Dino burgers. Interesting things in the back seat. It was long and somewhat difficult journey, and we had a good time riding a long. By book four it became just what you describe, a few paragraphs of wierd shit for the sake of wierd shit. Zelazny was clearly grinding out those paragraphs rather than doing the good work he was capable of. Shadow walks became formulaic, and Zelazny wasn't putting good ingredients into the mix. I probably shouldn't be so harsh on the later Amber books. As was pointed out earlier, 'Courts of Chaos' was actually pretty decent, and the second run had some interesting things like Ghostwheel. And Zelazny had honed his prose style and sensibilities to the point that he couldn't help writing better formulae books than 90% of the formula writers out there. But it was still formula. My presumption is that Zelazny, like Gordy Dickson in his last few years, made a financial decision to do the Amber work for money rather than craft or art. I certianly understand and respect that decision, and as a husband and father I'll even salute it. But it doesn't mean I have to respect the work turned out because of that decision. And I am very pleased that Zelazny still set aside time and effort to write Zelazny books alongside the Amber books. If only Gordy's health and circumstances could have permitted the same, sigh. the other Steve