Roger Zelazny's The Dawn of Amber

by John Gregory Betancourt

Overview

Fans of the late Roger Zelazny's popular Amber series should flock to this workmanlike, authorized prequel, the first of a projected trilogy, by Betancourt (Infection and three other Star Trek novels). Readers familiar with the heroes Corwin and Merlin from the earlier books will soon catch on that Betancourt's protagonist, the Conan-like Oberon (aka Obere), will one day be their father. In the realm of Chaos, Obere is as handy with his sword as with his sweethearts, serving the king of an outlying world. He is innocent of the magic that rules in his universe until he discovers he is not an orphan but has a nearly 200-year-old father, Dworkin, with vast magical abilities and many progeny from a wide assortment of mothers. Not all these siblings are loving, Obere finds. Betancourt captures the fantastic nature of the original and peppers his story with Amber-familiar terms such as Logrus, that mystical gift which enables its holders to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks and travel vast distances instantly; Trumps, the illustrated cards that assist those with Logrus to travel and even to foretell the future; and Courts of Chaos, the center of this pre-Amberian world. The narrative may lack the sparkling wit of its predecessors, but the cliffhanger ending should leave the faithful hungry for the next installment. Snatched from the jaws of death by the mysterious figure he knows only as Dworkin, young Obere travels to the realm of Juniper, one of the lands of Shadow that mirror the Courts of Chaos. There he learns his true identity and his flawed heritage and meets his eccentric and magically powerful family for the first time. Working under authorization from the estate of the late Roger Zelazny, Betancourt inaugurates a new series that takes place in the popular world of the Amber novels. Exploring the origins of Amber itself and the nature of the world's most enigmatic character, Dworkin the "mad," Betancourt creates a thrill-a-minute series opener that should appeal to longtime fans of the previous series. For most fantasy collections. --Library Journal

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743445528
Publisher:	ibooks, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/06/2012
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

JOHN GREGORY BETANCOURT is an editor, publisher, and bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. He has had 36 books published, including the bestselling Star Trek novel, Infection, and three other Star Trek novels; a trilogy of mythic novels starring Hercules; the critically acclaimed Born of Elven Blood; Rememory; Johnny Zed; The Blind Archer; and many others. He is personally responsible for the revival of Weird Tales, the classic magazine of the fantastic, and has authored two critical works in conjunction with the Sci-Fi Channel: The Sci-Fi Channel Trivia Book and The Sci-Fi Channel Encyclopedia of TV Science Fiction.

ROGER ZELAZNY authored many science fiction and fantasy classics, and won three Nebula Awards and six Hugo Awards over the course of his long and distinguished career. While he is best known for his ten-volume Chronicles of Amber series of novels (beginning with 1970s Nine Princes in Amber), Zelazny also wrote many other novels, short stories, and novellas, including Psychoshop (with Alfred Bester), Damnation Alley, the award-winning The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Isle of the Dead, and the stories "24 Views of Mount Fuji, by Hokusai," "Permafrost," and "Home is the Hangman." Zelazny died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in June 1995.

Editorial Reviews

"A new trilogy that will delight a legion of fans eager to learn how Amber came to be."

From the Publisher

The Barnes & Noble Review
When Roger Zelazny died in 1995, I thought the questions I had about the Amber universe -- like how and why it was created -- would never be answered. As a longtime fan of the Amber Chronicles, I was excited to hear that the Zelazny estate had authorized a prequel trilogy to be written that explored the events that led up to the first installment in the ten-book series, Nine Princes in Amber.

While in a desperate battle against hell-creatures, the young soldier Oberon is whisked away from his kingdom by his mysterious uncle Dworkin to the shadow world of Juniper, where he meets a family he never knew he had. The enigmatic Dworkin, it turns out, is not only Oberon's father but also an exiled prince in the Courts of Chaos, the one true world. As Oberon struggles to understand Dworkin's centuries-old feud with Chaos, Juniper is attacked by the same hell-creatures that savaged his shadow world.

Like Zelazny's own fantastic Amber novels, Betancourt's The Dawn of Amber is fast-paced and filled with action and intrigue. And although the novel does begin to answer some of the questions I had regarding the creation of Amber, the cliff-hanger at the book's conclusion left me pulling out my hair waiting for the second and third books in this trilogy. Paul Goat Allen

Fans of the late Roger Zelazny's popular Amber series should flock to this workmanlike, authorized prequel, the first of a projected trilogy, by Betancourt (Infection and three other Star Trek novels). Readers familiar with the heroes Corwin and Merlin from the earlier books will soon catch on that Betancourt's protagonist, the Conan-like Oberon (aka Obere), will one day be their father. In the realm of Chaos, Obere is as handy with his sword as with his sweethearts, serving the king of an outlying world. He is innocent of the magic that rules in his universe until he discovers he is not an orphan but has a nearly 200-year-old father, Dworkin, with vast magical abilities and many progeny from a wide assortment of mothers. Not all these siblings are loving, Obere finds. Betancourt captures the fantastic nature of the original and peppers his story with Amber-familiar terms such as Logrus, that mystical gift which enables its holders to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks and travel vast distances instantly; Trumps, the illustrated cards that assist those with Logrus to travel and even to foretell the future; and Courts of Chaos, the center of this pre-Amberian world. The narrative may lack the sparkling wit of its predecessors, but the cliffhanger ending should leave the faithful hungry for the next installment. (Sept.) Forecast: A featured alternate of the SF Book Club, this spinoff should benefit from a four-hour Chronicles of Amber miniseries due to air on the Sci Fi Channel in 2003. The author is also the proprietor of Wildside Press (see "PW Talks with John Gregory Betancourt," Forecasts, Apr. 1). Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Snatched from the jaws of death by the mysterious figure he knows only as Dworkin, young Obere travels to the realm of Juniper, one of the lands of Shadow that mirror the Courts of Chaos. There he learns his true identity and his flawed heritage and meets his eccentric and magically powerful family for the first time. Working under authorization from the estate of the late Roger Zelazny, Betancourt inaugurates a new series that takes place in the popular world of the Amber novels. Exploring the origins of Amber itself and the nature of the world's most enigmatic character, Dworkin the "mad," Betancourt creates a thrill-a-minute series opener that should appeal to longtime fans of the previous series. For most fantasy collections. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal