floatsy, unraveling, dream music
Jesus, look at that shitty cover. Has nothing to do with the book, and they used it for both volumes. It’s an anthology of only the first half (didn’t know that at the time 😦 ) of the Amber Chronicles, something I’d started and stopped in college. It’s not bad. I’m partway through the first book, finding time when I can’t guilt myself into studying, or working on newfound responsiliberties.
It’s by Roger Zelazny, one of the few sci-fi/fantasy authors I’ll always read. He’s certainly not the best, nor the most groundbreaking, but the love is definitely there. He wrote Lord of Light (cosmonauts settle on new earth, install Hindu belief system into populace and place themselves as gods via their technology, one of their own wants to free the planet with his own mettle, and a Buddhist template) and This Immortal (Earth nuke’d itself, condescending alien imperialists save us, want to buy our planet as a quaintness, Earthling escorting one of them on a fact-finding mission, goes on to prove the worth of Earth much as say, a 19th century Indian subject would to a British imperialist jerkface).
It’s always a metastory about storytelling, and the strictures and empowerments that storytelling entail to the teller and the listener. In the Chronicles of Amber, there is a single true, ideal and greatest realm, that’s Amber. Every other plane, including Earth, is an imperfect Shadow of Amber; every imaginable world is there, with Amber reflected in some aspect of it. The royal family of Amber reside in Amber, in exile in Shadow realms (which they can freely imagine, then traverse into) or here and there, plotting, allying, and reclining before they plot again. It’s very strange.
You follow one prince in his ambitions, and the goal is always to rule Amber, and there’s nothing else to it. They’re immortal, and powerful, and they’re pleasantly embroiled in their game to take Amber. Even as he’s trying to take Amber, you come to care somewhat, but there’s this sense that it is just a game. It makes me think of creation myths, the really odd ones related to ‘the world is a turtle standing on another turtle, and it’s turtles all the way down.’ If the energy in the universe is created by a disembodied pair of hands clapping somewhere, then the game of Amber is that clapping.
The Amber royalty go into shadow worlds (like ours) and they enact and partake in the heroisms of that world. The protagonist was with Napoleon, survived the plague, drank with Van Gogh. But all of that is downtime to the MO of taking Amber; our cultural and imaginational energy is the frictional heat coming off of these archetypal men and women, and the central, hand-clapping heartbeat at the center of existence, which is the conquest of Amber.
I like that there isn’t really a central quest at work here. Oh, Corwin says he’s going to retake Amber if it’s the last thing he does, but it always seems to be said with a wink, then he goes off on a tangent journey, and you’re there for the safari. It’s a safari, not a journey: a walkabout. You’re watching the giants moving behind the screen that cast the silhouettes, and finding that what’s under there isn’t godly at all. It’s just another human mind, which is as satisfying a sensation as the best of sf/fantasy, as far as I’m concerned. These people can move into any Shadow place imaginable, whether it’s Whoville or an asteroid orbiting a near-dead sun, but they can never escape being human(oid), as we will never not look with human eyes and see a human world. Or not, who knows?
Ughh, that book cover.
simply warm and homey, fuzzy and wuzzy, bagpipey and rattley
full writeup
the ending trumpet.
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown’d,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
`Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn.’
. . . and I don’t even like dance music, but when it’s this lean and this catchy, I indulge.
full writeup
Pillow Vendor!
Grass sword, how can I sing your praises properly? You ring like a bell when swung, you have a lawnmower mode, and you slice the bearer’s image into the target, which is all nice and dandy until you attached yourself to Finn’s wrist. To his wrist. The same wrist that he was missing in the Pillow world . . .
With the breaking of the demon bloodsword, Finn is moving out of the shadow of his foster-father Joshua, a complicated relationship explored back in “Joshua’s Dungeon” when Finn’s crybaby-ness was on trial. The discovery of the grass blade is the next step in Finn’s process of individuation, in becoming his own hero instead of a copy of his father.
Read my full recap here, and lemme know whatcha think.
And it’s right here on Pitchfork advance. What’s it like? Not as immediately engaging as Deathconsciousness but still pretty cinematic in scope. Never would’ve labeled Deathconsciousness ambient as its pretty hook-heavy in parts, and lively in bass and percussion, but The Unnatural World‘s a bit more fitting for that appelation.