[Lani]

Long time ago I read Roger Zelazny's Amber series. They were my favourite books for a long time and stil are. But one question always buged me. Is is fantasy or sci-fi books? They have some aspects from both of them.I always thought about these books as fantasy, but what do you think?

[FitzChivalry]

Roger Zelazny is my favorite author and Amber is among my favorite series.
I think Amber is fantasy, a not too deep definition of fantasy is stories that can't happen in real life. unlike sci fi that is stories that may happen someday...
So, eventhough Earth exists in the amber series, it's fantasy in my opinion.

[Monty Mike]

I really love the Amber series too, and have always seen it as fantasy :D

[Swift]

Ive never read the Amber series. What would you compare it to?

[Monty Mike]

I'm no good at comparing books, here's a link to the review:

http://www.sffworld.com/brev/si358p0.html

Sorry if that doesn't help, it's just that I've not read enough books to be able to compare it.

[Lani]

Swift, I'd say it's rather difficult to compare the Amber series to anything other than maybe some other Zelazny's books which I doubt will help any. I could give a general description of the kind of books they are though. The first five are written in the first POV and start out on Earth and then well, everything pretty much ends up to be very different from what it seems. A lot of the book are about Corwin's adventures, interactions with his very large family of half-sisters and half-brother, and a lot of discovering and political intrigue is involved. The books are fairly short (about 200 pages) and the writing style is sophisticated but readable. And of course I am a fan, so I definitely recommend the series :)

[Blackwing]

I've always thought of them as fantasy. Also, they have been published in the fantasy masterworks series.

[Soon Lee]

Zelazny's stuff generally tends to be hard to categorise but generally brilliant. LOCUS magazine readers' polls consistently have him in the all-time top 10 best SF AND FANTASY writer lists. I tend to credit LOCUS polls given that it is the de-facto trade magazine for SF/FANTASY/Horror, therefore its readership is well-informed.

Here's a link to LOCUS (http://www.locusmag.com/)

As for AMBER, that would be FANTASY but the sort of FANTASY that is grounded in that parts of it intersect with our reality. For example, if a gun makes an appearence, it would not be an anachronism.

[vgunn]

I'd definately say fantasy --just not the traditional high fantasy of some of the epics out there.

Here is a blurb on the books written and what they are about:

"Zelanzy spun a remarkable tale of a vast cosmos in which literally anything was possible...and of a powerful but flawed Royal Family, who ruled it all by virtue of their unique ability to make those possibilities come to life.

The Amber stories encompass a universe both strange and familiar; a place where the history, culture and natural laws with which you and I are familiar become no more than distorted Shadows of the reality which is Amber.

The beauty and the majesty of the One True City inspire its children to works of rare artistic genius, to unparallelled heroism, and to the most terrible of crimes; even for immortals with all of creation as their playground--gods in all but name--Amber remains unforgettable and, in the end, inescapable.

The first five books in the series are told from the point of view of Corwin, a Prince of Amber, who wakens in a hospital in the Shadow world of Earth, unaware of his true identity. Step by step, he recovers his memory and retraces his steps to the Eternal City, rediscovering his place in the struggle to determine the fate of Amber (and, by extension, all of reality.)

The second five books recount the adventures of Merlin, Corwin's son, as he tries to reconcile his father's legacy with his upbringing in the Courts of Chaos, a realm which stands in direct opposition to Amber. Unable to distinguish friend from foe--often confronted with people who may be both at once--Merlin must either accept his own status as a game piece in the contests of the great...or pay the price to take his place among them.

Sadly, Zelazny did not live to write further Amber novels. He did, however, leave fragments of the continuing tale:

Amber Short Stories

* The Salesman's Tale
* The Shroudling and the Guisel
* Coming to a Cord
* Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains
* Hall of Mirrors

Other Amber-related Books

* Two long out-of-print "choose your own adventure"-style paperbacks, Seven No Trump and The Black Road War;

* The oft-maligned, but occasionally useful, Visual Guide to Castle Amber by Roger Zelazny and Neil Randall, which includes a commentary by Princess Florimel and drawings of the characters and places described in the novels; and

* The Complete Amber Sourcebook, a sort of Amber encyclopedia (edited by Theodore Krulik), of dubious authenticity in its detail, but handy for looking up basic Amber facts."

-- About Amber (ADRPG)

I believe another series has since been written as well. Cannot remember the author.

Hope this helps!

[Lani]

The other series that vgunn mentioned are being written by John Gregory Betancourt wrote a series called "Roger Zelazny's Dawn of Amber" and I believe the third book was just published last year.

It's pretty much a series of prequels to the Amber novels and they are not nearly up to par with anything Zelazny wrote. I'd say that the language is on a totally different level and I don't particularly recognize the characters either. I suppose it could be worse of course... The books are fairly entertaining still.