> 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. What struck me as strange about the first shadow walk was how Random could bring Grayswandir (possible misspelling here) from out of nowhere, when later it was a special ability of Brands to obtain specific objects by twisting shadow. I thought the idea was during a shadow walk they could obtain the general, but to obtain the specific you had to go to the place where you knew the specific to be. > 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. The second set of books, 'the Merlin books' started out well, but never caught me the way the original series did. > 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. Some of the trash that was released under RZs name but was never written by him was horrible, 'Mask of LOKI' for example. I hope none of these books were someone's first exposure to RZ. Regards Ian