Villains by Necessity is not a masterpiece of literature, but it is a fun fantasy book that doesn't feel the need to be part of a trilogy or take itself too seriously. Perfect for when you want to pick up a book because you are tired, not because you want to work your brain to dust. First work of Eve Forward, it is rather inconsistent, moving from silly to dead serious and back and making the heroes of the story oscillate between pointlessly evil and uncharacteristically good.

The best part of the book, though, is the concept. The world enjoys an age of light and good after a bitter war that saw all the forces of darkness and evil be defeated. The world is filled with happy people, no conflict, beautiful weather, lush vegetation. In a word, it is fucking boring. An unlikely party of evildoers gets together to save the world by bringing darkness back!

Alas, it was a concept that was not really well used. The characters, borrowed from classical fantasy, are "evil" by their professions only, but not by behaviour. Sam is an assassin, but he doesn't enjoy the suffering of his victims and is proud of his prowess. Archie is a mischievous thief, but other than that he is an OK fellow. Even Valerie, the dark sorceress, eats sentient beings just because it is her race's culture and her evil is more often artificial. Not to mention Blackmail, who acts as the classic stoic hero. Similarly, the forces of good are blood thirsty thugs that want to either kill everything dark or brainwash them, as a humane solution. This basically makes our heroes... err... heroes, not villains, and viceversa.

Now, the book wasn't bad. The style was amateurish, but it is Eve Forward's first book, after all. I could read it and I got caught by the story. I was more attracted to the original concept, though, and I was very curious how it would go. It is so difficult to present bad people as the protagonists, I know, because many people, including writers as they write, want them to be redeemed somehow. In the end, the moral of the story - excruciatingly laid out in a few paragraphs that shouldn't have existed - felt really heavy handed and simplistic. Ok, good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things, but it is important to explore what makes them good and bad, not just lazily assign them dark fantasy classes and be done with it.

Bottom line: fun read, but nothing special.

There are several stories happening at the same time in The White Luck Warrior, with almost no direct connection between them. There is the Great Ordeal, advancing slowly towards Golgoterath while being besieged by hordes of Sranc, also containing the story of this kid prince forced to march with it; then there is the palace life, with Esmenet left to rule the empire while Kellhus is away, while various factions are ready to take advantage of the lack of man power of the leadership and her half Dunyain children prove to be either insane or really insane; there is the trek of Achamian in search of the origin place of Kellhus. Among these there is a vague and a few paragraphs long subplot of The White Luck Warrior, a mysterious figure that seems to know all of its future, making him an automaton, I guess and some bits about the Fanim.

Why the smallest and insignificant portion of the book gave its title I do not know, but remember that the first book in the Aspect-Emperor series was called The Judging Eye, which is most prominently used or described in this volume. By far the most interesting and captivating storyline is that of Achamian, although I have to say that the logistics of long duration travel within enemy territory and the psychological factors involved seemed to me poorly described by Bakker.

What I knew will happen happened. I finished the book before the third volume in the series was released and now I am in withdrawal pains. That proves that the book captivated me. At very few moments I felt the need to "fast forward" and, considering the amount of distraction and that I had resolved to draw this book out a little bit in the hope that the third volume would be released, I finished it rather quickly.

Even if enjoyable, to me it felt more like a filler. I couldn't empathize with Esmenet or any of her demented children, nor could I care less what happened to Maithanet, who is one of the less fleshed out characters in the book. Similarly, the Sorweel story arch described a confused and frustrated teen, which was relatable, but uninteresting as a character. Unlike in the first four books, Kellhus sounds less godly and dominating and is mostly relegated to a minor role in the overall story. No, the most interesting characters and storyline revolve around Achamian, Mimara, The Captain and the mysterious Cleric, plus any of other members of the crazy bunch of mercenaries known as The Skin Eaters. And they just walk and walk and walk, only to end the book in a cliffhanger. While I await eagerly the sixth book, I have my misgivings and fears that it will not be as good as this one, just as this one felt a little bit short of the first.

The Prince of Nothing trilogy was a total masterpiece, full of harrowing experiences of flawed men and women and characters so deep and original that they defied belief. You get the godlike Kellhus, not only freezingly rational and intelligent, but also mastering the Gnosis, the art of magic, while being a textbook example of a charismatic psychopath. You get Akkamian, a worldly sorcerer and spy, a teacher and a hopeless romantic. You get Cnaiür, a monstrous barbarian driven by revenge, but trapped by love. Esmenet, the whore empress mother, being heartbreakingly and treacherously a woman. And all these complex characters get to live in an epic world of different cultures, with politics, and military campaigns and evil creatures serving the No-god, shape shifting assassins and magic schools. In fact, it was so great that I found myself feeling dread of reading more, so terrifying the deep and personal pain of the characters that it was becoming mine.

Now I have finished The Judging Eye, the first book of the Aspect-Emperor trilogy, itself no more than a direct continuation of Prince of Nothing. R. Scott Bakker kind of cheats by using the same basic scaffolding for this story: a military campaign where an innocent and sympathetic character is being eroded by Kellhus' influence, a dark character driven by revenge on a lonely and dangerous quest, against himself slowly warming himself to the presence of a woman, court machinations driven by self serving creatures and the general backdrop of a clash between religions. He does it masterfully, though, switching the characters around and adding new ones to fill the roles left empty. In The Judging Eye one gets something as similar to The Darkness That Comes Before as needed to please the crowds that enjoyed Prince of Nothing, but as different to make it a completely different story. You get more of the same, so to speak, with an emphasis on 'more'. But also a little bit less.

Not everything is perfect. I feel that the inner dialogues of the characters have become more opaque, more strained. The metaphors flow just as in the previous books, but they communicate less, one makes more of an effort to get them and feel what the author meant, giving it a slight air of pompousness. I mean even a little kid philosophizes more than all the adults I know. The book has slightly more action scenes than I remember in Prince of Nothing, but they also feel more confusing. For all of Bakker's talent, I think he doesn't really understand combat and physical violence. He more than compensates with emotional and visceral violence, I agree, but I can't stop myself thinking of all the tactical applications that were never explored in battles purportedly fought by hardened veteran mercenaries.

His biggest sin, I believe, is that he doesn't follow through with the revelations that he awards the reader. I remember he was doing something similar in Prince of Nothing as well. He takes one through the labyrinthine mental processes of a character that marches uneventfully, but he fails to explain what exactly is happening - or at least what the characters are thinking - when something extraordinary happens. For example, in one scene, they discover a crazed individual with an eye on his heart, driven mad by the darkness that his heart is plunged into. A very powerful image. Yet Bakker doesn't explain anything. How was that possible? How did Akka know to look at his heart? What the hell were hordes of Sranc doing in a sterile dead mountain tunnel? No, instead we get to read about every single internal thought that the characters have about themselves and their lives. To quote from the book: "the work of a race that has gone insane for staring inward".

Bottom line: there is so much introspection in this book that barely anything happens. Falling into his own trap, Bakker gets seduced by his characters to the point of ignoring the universe in which they live. The book remains incredibly good and so I will venture to read the next one in the series. I already lament the fact that the third book of the Aspect-Emperor is not yet published and dread the moment when I will finish the second.

Another really nice book I am glad I readlistened to. In 2001 Neil Gaiman published this book, American Gods, and then,ten years later, a special tenth anniversary edition, with the "author's preferred text" and including an additional 12,000 words, was published by William Morrow in June 2011. Both versions of the book were adapted to audiobooks, the first just narrated, the second with a full (and talented) cast. This second version I listened to, on YouTube no less. Long story short, I liked the book a lot, even if it was a bit too long winding.

The story is not only interesting in concept - gods being created and fed by people's beliefs, then being forgotten and dying as belief wanes, but also in its many details borrowed from the world's superstitions and religions. We start with a man in prison, a calm, cerebral man, but also big and muscular. He is about to be freed from prison and return to his wife and his best friend to start his life anew. From then he is just thrown into this crazy world of supernatural beings, but not like all these lazy TV shows where there are vampires and werewolves at war, but slowly and subtly. Gods are at the same time what we remember them to be: big spiders, thunderbirds, gods of war, but also men and women that can be killed. They can be pitiful beings, old creatures that resent the newness of the world and of its people. I also liked that there was not a lot of the major religions, just a few hints at the end. No Christian or Muslim stuff, I mean. At the end of the audio book there is an appendix, Shadow meeting Jesus, that the author wrote but decided to keep out of the book because it didn't feel like it was part of it. I agree with him.

There is also a kind of Lord of the Rings ending to the book. Even if the main story arches ended, there are still several chapters after that. I could have lived without them, I guess. This verbosity is also the problem with the book. Laden with details and side stories and keeping the pace slow can be slightly boring. I never read the version published in 2001, but it was shorter, which was probably for the better. I liked that Gaiman left a lot of hints in his writing and even I was able to see through them. That was maybe another reason why the pace felt too slow, since I've glimpsed a little of the whole story and then just waited for it to reach that point. However, that is the exact reaction of the protagonist, when he figures stuff out. He feels like he already knew, but refused to actually bring it into consciousness.

The adaptation of the book was top notch, the protagonist, but more than this the man called Wednesday, were interpreted by talented actors and I found myself drawn into the story like a man slowly being pulled down in quicksand. Give it a try.

It was announced by Starz in July 2014 that they are preparing an adaptation of the book into a TV series. Also, while there are other Gaiman books and stories in the same universe (like Anansi Boys, from 2005, which some call American Gods #2), the author announced he is working on a direct sequel of the book only in 2011.

Another fantasy audio book, The Black Company is the first of ten of the ongoing series with the same name. Glen Cook probably thought about it for a while before writing it, because you can see that the first three books in the saga were published mere months apart (*cough*R.R.Martin*cough*). I was attracted by the story, because it seemed similar to my favorite Malazan Book of the Fallen series: a mercenary company fighting under the flag of powerful god-like magical beings that want to conquer the world. And in part the plot and characters were satisfactory. Alas, the many details and focus on small things like what games they played to pass time or what each character was like or maybe the narration style... I don't know; it all made it hard to focus on the story. I felt like the book could (and should) have been half in size, and better for it.

The main character is the doctor and analyst of the company, Croaker. Before your filthy mind thinks of other things, analyst in this context means he is a keeper of records, a chronicler of the company's history and, occasionally, the person who draws parallels between past experiences and current events. Croaker is an inquisitive person, often risking his personal safety to unlock a riddle or reveal a secret. Unlike Malazan, he is the lead character, through and through, and the company itself with its many soldiers and camaraderie just the backdrop.

Plot follows the Black Company in employment of The Lady, a powerful magician who wants to conquer the world, fighting the Rebel, a group of lesser magicians who have gathered the people of the land in response. Croaker has romantic fantasies about her, but throughout the book he discovers that his affections are misdirected, even if a strange relationship develops between them. Most of the story is about various battles, painstakingly (and painfully) described, only to be followed by the occasional interesting bit of character and plot development. In fact, I was kind of annoyed when I read the book summary on Wikipedia and I couldn't think of much that was left out. I mean, it's a big book.

The bottom line is that I am unsure if I want to listen to the rest of the series. While I can't say it was a bad book, or that is had weak plot or characters, I am reluctant to go through all that again for nine times. Basically I feel that the characters were never made empathetic enough, at least for me, and in the end all I cared about was what was going to happen next and how it would all end. In that case I would be better off reading synopses rather than listening to the entire thing. The overall structure of the story, though, has a lot of potential and I don't know if the series would not become really cool afterwards. To make the final parallel with Malazan, the first book in that series was not really making people eager to read the next, but it turned out to be great overall. I guess time will tell.

The Gift of Fear has popped up repeatedly in my field of view, recommended by multiple sources. I started reading it and at the beginning I thought it had a nice concept: the systematic study of violence perpetrated by people, written for reasons of protecting ourselves. However, Gavin de Becker has a writing style that got to me really fast. He sounds like he is the lecturer in a police conference, and half of everything he says is just marketing for the bits that are going to come next. You know the type: "I will reveal to you the secrets of the universe, but before I do that in one of the next chapters, let me tell you a little story". I mean, what he is saying makes sense, but he oversells it so brutally that I could not continue reading past the half of the book. You know, he sounds a lot like Walter O'Brien, the guy who's life is supposedly the basis of the TV show Scorpion. He doesn't sound like the O'Brien on TV, but like the actual guy, always overselling and overstating everything he allegedly did. Also the little anecdotes are useful in the book, but his explanations are so over the top. Man!

Anyway, the things that I chose to take from the book is the JACA system for assessing threats and the fact that when your intuition is telling you something, it either means it has access to some data that you are not conscious of or that it malfunctions and in either case you need to pay attention. The JACA system is about someone being more of a credible threat if they pass four tests. J: they feel Justified to harm you. A: they feel that they have no Alternative to violence. C: they believe the Consequences of violent action will be manageable. A: they believe they are Able to do you harm. Of course, that immediately makes someone believe that the first step of counteracting such a person is to convince them they are not justified, which fails on so many levels, especially with an antagonist.

The book covers all kind of violence: rape, murder, stalking, assassination, road rage, office vengeance, domestic violence, even violent children (I haven't gotten to that part). I can imagine how this book would be very useful to young people, scared women, maybe even children, but with the language being so pretentious and the guy making it all sound like a marketing pitch, I doubt it would be accessible to any of them. Let me reiterate: I believe the subject of the book is a good one and it should be addressed. I also don't criticize the conclusions that Becker reaches or doubt his professional experience. What I am saying is that the way the book is written stylistically made it unreadable for me. So instead of reading a few pages every week, I've decided to stop reading it. Sorry, Gavin! I only wish someone would make a short summary of it, since a lot of the stuff there is at least interesting, if not downright useful.

A World Out of Time is a book out of time as well. Larry Niven wrote the book in 1976 and it describes events that happen over a span of three million years, but it feels like The Time Machine. The hero is a guy from the 70s who's memory gets uploaded in the body of a convict hundreds years later, sent on a mission that was supposed to last tens of thousand of years (Earth time), but ending up in a joyride around the galaxy that brings him back on Earth millions of years later. The strange world of immortal creatures living like feudal savages in a world filled with broken and discarded technological wonder, but somehow still looking human, is difficult to take in. The cowboyish behaviour of the lead character and his inconsistent switch between genius and ineptitude don't help either.

It doesn't mean the book is not entertaining. I had fun with it. However it feels really long and old and I don't intend to read the other two Niven books in the same batch: The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring, even if they sound slightly more interesting.

The second book of The Reckoners series revolves around Firefight, a character from Steelheart, the first book, that I cannot explain without spoiling it. Brandon Sanderson outdid himself, managing to describe a dark world of bright colors, a desperate and dramatic situation in which hope shines through, an impossible romance inside a war story and a totally positive view on fear. Contrasts everywhere, like a bad metaphor that discovers it is a simile before a book ends. Well, if you read Firefight you will get the reference.

The action and plot of the book are much more detailed and a level above what happened in Steelheart. The villain is more interesting, the interactions between the members of the team are more complex, with various shades of conflict, plus an interesting new location in a sunken city filled with glowing plants that feed the people and provide light at the same time. I can't wait for Calamity, the third book in the series, to appear in 2016.

I am starting to like Brandon Sanderson. Only at the end of Steelheart did I realize that he kind of used the same plot device that he used for Elantris: the ten-years-ago one. Ten years before the action of the book, Calamity struck: a red star-like light in the sky that gave random people immense powers. The governments of the world tried to fight back, but all of them ended up capitulating, declaring "epics" as impossible to control as natural disasters. Enter David (the name probably not chosen at random) an eight year old child who witnesses the death of his father at the hands of an epic that then proceeds on taking over Chicago as his personal fiefdom. Now, at 18, David meets with The Reckoners - a group dedicated to fight back - in order to avenge his father.

First book in The Reckoners series, which is a planned trilogy, Steelheart is a very refreshing take on the superhero genre, original in the sense that it takes its name after the main villain and follows a young boy who advances in life using his cunning, knowledge and personal effort, not some random superpower. The characters are easy to sympathize with and the story is very nice. Not everything is perfect, as the story contains many political, economic and even technical plotholes. However, the writing is very well done, easily making the reader forget and forgive any inconsistencies between reality and the storyline.

As with Elantris, I listened to the audio version of the book. Classical narration, but was very nice. The book is a sort of young adult thing, but I enjoyed it very much nonetheless. I can't wait for the second book in the series: Firefight. I may have to first read Mitosis, a short story placed in the same universe.

In a world dominated by trilogies and quadrilogies and sagas, it is refreshing to see that some people are writing stand-alone fantasy books. I've first heard of Brandon Sanderson when he ended up writing the last books in the Wheel of Time series, after its initial author died; those books were the best in the series, even if he had to work with Jordan's notes. Recently, I've stumbled upon this audio adaptation of Sanderson's book Elantris, produced by Graphic Audio, a company that doesn't just created narrations of books, but full audio plays - while changing nothing of the initial text.

Despite some parts being a bit too optimistic, some too slow and some really obvious - waiting for a character to catch up with you is not fun - the book was really entertaining and original. It also was Sanderson's first widely released book, so I can forgive his lack of perfection :). I really liked the story and the characters in the book. In truth, the book's message is one of hope, one of encouragement toward the human spirit becoming the best it can be. I couldn't help thinking that Sanderson probably portrayed himself in Raoden, and that guy is great.

Anyway, the plot revolves around the magical city of Elantris, populated by God like creatures that shine with the light of magic and are almost omnipotent. However, the story starts ten years after a horrible collapse of said city, which transformed every Elantrian into an immortal husk, heart not beating, hair falling, skin blotched by dark spots, incapable of healing the smallest cut or bruise, but fully capable of pain, unneeding of food, but fully able to feel ravenous hunger at all times. The process, called Shaod, has not ended, it still occasionally picks people at random and turns them into these creatures of eternal pain. The human inhabitants of nearby towns have quarantined Elantris and anyone affected by the Shaod is thrown inside the rotting city.

There are two main characters: prince Raoden and his bride to be, princess of a nearby kingdom, called Sarene. Not only them, but almost every actor is full of spirit (pun intended) and really likable, even the antagonists can be understood and sympathized with. The story is full of events that lead to character development, politics, smart plotting, drama and comedy.

Well, in the end, with all my talk of stand alone books, I was a bit sad to see the story end. I wanted more, and that's a good sign, right? Sanderson is supposedly considering writing a sequel, but it's not something that will happen soon and it will involve different characters. I liked Elantris and I recommend it to all fantasy fans.

There would be no point for reviewing the individual books, since, like with Corwin, it is one big story spanning five books. Eight years after the first five disappointing books in the series were published, Roger Zelazny comes back with a little more writing skill, a more interesting plot and a different character. That's the good news. The bad news is that it is pretty much like the Corwin cycle, only with a guy that uses magic instead of a stupid sword. His name is Merlin and he is Corwin's and Dara's son, inheriting both Amber and Chaotic blood. Somehow he still gets his ass kicked by his father, though.

The characters are again, like something from a high school teen movie set in the middle ages. People are mortal enemies and then make conversation, make up and help each other against another mortal enemy, who will probably help them both sometimes later. Arrogant nobility behavior mixes with a general ineptitude to use any knowledge from the "shadow lands" even if a lot of the characters gain their education on Earth. The only interesting thing seems to be an AI that Merlin created... which then calls him dad and acts just like every other generic character in the books. And everybody is just so amazingly and mind stunningly stupid! I couldn't take another book in this crappy series.

Bottom line: The Amber Chronicles was a total waste of my time, the only advantage it has being that its writer ended both cycles and then died, making any sequels improbable. I kid you not, Eragon was way better and it was written by a 19 year old!

And thus ends the fifth book in the Chronicles of Amber, and the last in the Corwin cycle. Written between 1970 and 1978 by Roger Zelazny, it was one of the most lazy fantasy series I've read so far. The Courts of Chaos is once again a book that has no connection with its title. Nothing really happens in the courts of chaos except at the very end. All previous developments in the story are discarded completely and it feels like the author slept through writing the book. It was one of the most WTF books in the series so far, as well. At every section there was at least one scene where I felt like those people watching football games and shouting at their TV about what the player should have done.

Let me give you some examples. The book itself starts with a circular time paradox, where we get to see Corwin cut off Benedict's artificial arm. This had already happened in the previous book, but from the other perspective. Thus the metallic arm was only there to be severed because it has been severed in the past, its origins non existent. Then each of the children are given orders by their father. Why would they listen to them is beyond me, as was his entire reason for leaving, reappearing, etc. Anyway, he sends Corwin on a quest to carry the Jewel of Judgement (nobody did any judgement with that stone!!) to the courts of chaos, where Benedict already went using a trump card. Of course, why call Corwin's grandfather to make another card so that he can get there instantaneously? Why indeed. So we are exposed to this totally boring expedition where people fight like children with swords and crossbows and throwing rocks at each other. No guns, of course, that would be cheating. When Corwin uses a stone to make his enemy drop his crossbow, he ignores the crossbow and almost dies in the process. When he gets to the crossbow again, he smashes it! Why use a ranged weapon at all? Oberon made a blood raven out of a bit of Corwin's blood, to accompany and protect him in shadow. Why not make a bloody (pun intended) army of ravens? Wouldn't that have been better? And it just goes on and on. They never use the cards in this book, for example, after it was already obvious they can be used as communication devices as well as offensive weapons.

Nothing really made sense, in a nutshell. I am pretty convinced Zelazny was stoned out of his mind when he wrote this, but with some bad shit, since it never seems to increase his creativity. The ending was like a slap in the face, as after their victory, using armies of pedestrians and cavalry, a funeral procession for Oberon appears out of nowhere, with a lot of people and dragons. I kid you not, they had dragons, but their only use was decorative, like some sort of Chinatown celebration paper-mache things. And they got there not by treading the land like idiot Corwin, they actually came directly there. Oh, and since Corwin didn't feel like being king, they crowned another brother. Who, you might ask? Is it the brilliant strategist Benedict? Is it the loyal and strong Gerard? Is it the devious and aloof Julian? No, it's totally Random (another pun, couldn't help myself).

The next book in the series is the first in the Merlin cycle and the first book was written in 1986. It gives me hope that in 10 years Zelazny learned to fucking write!

The pattern (ahem!) becomes apparent once again: same lead character doing stuff in random order just to make the story be the way it was imaged by the author, same boring exposition, same artificial drama that could have been avoided easily if Corwin would have acted like a real character and not some cardboard placeholder of the lead, same stupid and obvious twist at the end, giving the name of the book even if most of it was about something else, same lackluster secondary characters, completely oblivious and helpless if not for the main protagonist and the mighty writer god. Indeed, the mock metaphor is not so far stretched when you think that in order to do anything worthwhile, people have to step on a pattern drawn on the floor and follow the lines exactly, without stopping, or they die. Maybe so we understand the villain better, trying to spill the blood of the children of Oberon, in order to destroy the existing pattern and build one anew: a book worth reading.

In The Hand of Oberon, Roger Zelazny again throws his Corwin character into a series of unlikely events, wooden dialogues and implausible behaviors. All strange events, that by all established rules should not be possible, are completely ignored by the characters until they appear relevant to some great reveal. Again a villain must walk the pattern and they must stop him, by posting guards, by walking the pattern after him, yadda yadda yadda. No one even considers taking a stone off the ground and hitting him on the head with it while they are hopping around the magical Hopscotch (not to mention a rubber bullet gun which would have solved everything in most situations). No one interrogates the corroborating witnesses or the people involved in the same situations until it is too late and they themselves don't act unless confronted later on in a sort of "oh, yeah" moment that is nothing but embarrassing.

The ending is just as muddled, with a scene that sees the villain put in storage for later use and a great reveal that had been obvious for a book and a half. No one seems to really care that the shadow realms have different rates of time passage either, so instead of using some trump to go to the fastest realm to talk or plan and return with entire plans made up, they sit around in feudal palaces in Amber, looking all important. I mean, Zelazny never truly describes their attire (unless it's some girl, and then he must describe her to the size of her cups), but I think that a kevlar shirt and some blue jeans and sneakers would have done wonders to the politics of the place. Oh yeah, kevlar probably doesn't work in Amber.

One book to go until the protagonist changes. At least there is some hope there...

Sign of the Unicorn continues where the second book ended and ends with another cliffhanger reveal that more or less has little to do with the content of the book! While I admit this book is slightly more interesting than the first two, the way the characters act and particularly the way Roger Zelazny completely ignores some of the main points in those books is becoming increasingly annoying. And just like the guns in The Guns of Avalon were a mere detail in an otherwise completely unrelated story, the Unicorn is something that just appears twice in the same book!

OK, enough ranting. This particular volume of the story (because it would be quite impossible to read the book without the first two, so in essence it is still the same book) is hinting about the origin of the strange forces attacking the realm, as well as explaining some more what had happened to Corwin and the court intrigues that led to it all. More of the siblings make their appearance, but their characters are reduced to conversation pieces in feudal Poirot-like instances, when they just come when bidden or do something that is instrumental to the plot going... in the same direction it was going. Instead of walking around with two Ingrams on his belt, Corwin continues to depend on his sword and reflexes, while sleeping underneath the same roof as his murderous and treacherous relatives. Instead of getting the man who sprung him from jail and using his unparalleled gift, Corwin seems to have forgotten about him completely. When he misses an important piece of jewelry that actually saves his life, he just abandons it and goes to do his usual business. And what about Bleys? After finding a solution for enhancing the power of the tarot cards, he just decides to use it once, on a single person. What about Oberon, man?! He's your dad!

Apparently, it wasn't enough ranting. It is kind of difficult for me to accept the layout of the story. Like any young adult movie recently, the author takes your sight and nails it to his narrow perspective, his favourite character and the things he feels he needs to do. Same unsympathetic shallow characters, same disaffectionate way of describing events, same predictable deus-ex-machina devices to promote the plot. Thank God these books are short!

The Guns of Avalon continues the story from the moment the previous book ended. Roger Zelazny is taking his Corwin character through some shadow land towards Avalon, where he might find the answer to his desire to claim the throne: an explosive agent that works in Amber.

His plans are soon thrown into disarray by several happenings. We meet the smart strategist brother Benedict, another blood relative Dara, we meet Gerard as well as learn a little bit more about the Amber world. However, the dispassionate style of writing as well as the dispassionate style of reading the book by its very author, made me feel close to nothing about the characters or events described. Again, I felt like learning nothing, as all the interactions between characters are very shallow and there is nothing described in enough detail to expand on the knowledge of the world or on some skill that the characters have. The author has attempted to show in the book that Corwin is a compassionate man, saving women from rape and wounded men from dying, helping his friends and being reluctant to dispatch or even harm his treacherous brothers, yet it all comes out like some guy playing a multiple option game: "Do you want to save the woman or keep going?" "Oh, what the hell, let's save the woman, see what happens". The ending of the book comes down brutally, solving several problems in a very lazy way, avoiding any controversial decisions that Corwin would (and should) have taken and introducing a magical nemesis that has no reason to exist that the reader would care about.

I am starting to feel that I've stumbled upon a dud. Two out of ten books to go (five if we consider that from the sixth book there will be a different main protagonist), and the only reasons I keep going are a promise to finish the series and my lack of strength for doing anything else.