A passing thought about the Amber books
In addition to reading ALL THE CHERRYH, I've been rereading bits and pieces of the Amber books lately, mostly to help with my first-person writing voice (it's not the only thing I'm rereading for that purpose, but I really like Zelazny's style and would much rather pick up elements of that than some recent first-person urban fantasy novel). Amber's one of those things I'll probably always reread now and again; I still really love it, even if certain flaws are more apparent to me now.
I'm aware, for example, of the parochialism of pastoral, England-derived Amber being the template world for the rest of the multiverse. But one of the things I was thinking about today is that, for Amber supposedly being the archetype of a city, on which all other cities are based, we sure don't see much of it, do we? And it's not like Zelazny is bad at sense of place. The books are full of vivid, interesting places; it's one of the things I like about them. It's just that Amber never really reads to me as "city." All the qualities I would associate with a city, especially a city that provided the template for the whole concept of "city" -- busy, crowded, bustling, metropolitan, full of commerce and different accents and ideas -- is just ... not even remotely what Amber is; it seems to mainly consist of a palace with a vaguely hinted-at town surrounding it. What Amber should be is a trading nexus for nearby Shadows, with people constantly coming and going. What it actually seems to be is a small, insular city-state whose urban elements are mostly just as a support structure for the ruling family.
Which isn't something that would have occurred to me to wonder about, except that Amber is specifically mentioned as the template of city, the ur-city, and it's not only incredibly non-city-like in nature, but it's also very vaguely described. Unlike, say, the forest of Arden, which is very solidly realized as a place and, even if Zelazny's idea of a primordial ur-forest isn't quite mine, it still gets the concept of ur-forest across. Amber as an ur-city is a lot less convincing.
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I'm aware, for example, of the parochialism of pastoral, England-derived Amber being the template world for the rest of the multiverse. But one of the things I was thinking about today is that, for Amber supposedly being the archetype of a city, on which all other cities are based, we sure don't see much of it, do we? And it's not like Zelazny is bad at sense of place. The books are full of vivid, interesting places; it's one of the things I like about them. It's just that Amber never really reads to me as "city." All the qualities I would associate with a city, especially a city that provided the template for the whole concept of "city" -- busy, crowded, bustling, metropolitan, full of commerce and different accents and ideas -- is just ... not even remotely what Amber is; it seems to mainly consist of a palace with a vaguely hinted-at town surrounding it. What Amber should be is a trading nexus for nearby Shadows, with people constantly coming and going. What it actually seems to be is a small, insular city-state whose urban elements are mostly just as a support structure for the ruling family.
Which isn't something that would have occurred to me to wonder about, except that Amber is specifically mentioned as the template of city, the ur-city, and it's not only incredibly non-city-like in nature, but it's also very vaguely described. Unlike, say, the forest of Arden, which is very solidly realized as a place and, even if Zelazny's idea of a primordial ur-forest isn't quite mine, it still gets the concept of ur-forest across. Amber as an ur-city is a lot less convincing.
This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1181601.html with
comments.