Amber spam
Jul. 14th, 2005 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elabyBeen rereading the second half of the Amber series, since I reread the first half somewhat recently and then ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caitirin read it, and she's planning to read the second half sometime as well.
I now remember why I've only read this half of the series once through. It's because I find Merlin unbearably boring. He's like Corwin, only less so. Without all those Corwinish things you've grown to love about Corwin, like his dumbassery, and the fact that he can't even figure himself out, let alone everyone else, and his complex relationships with his family... It's like Merlin tries to have all that, and just kind of falls short. I don't think that Zelazy is really skilled at writing any kind of intense emotion in his first-person characters. He's perfectly fine at it when it comes to the people he's only describing - but when it comes to Corwin and Merle, it just doesn't work. And for some reason, Corwin can pull off that "Then I decided to examine my feelings for a little while. What I found was kind of... well... eh, fuck that. I didn't need feelings anyway" thing, but Merle... I think he comes across as more emotional than Corwin. And it just doesn't work right when Merle is describing his own actions as if they were some kind of symptoms of emotion, and then trying to analytically catagorize them as the rest of the plot is so wonderfully and aptly, for those kinds of situations, described. Because the intrigue and the storytelling and the wonderful reference-filled plottiness of the entire thing needs that kind of writing to pull it off. But emotions need a different kind.
Also (and this is entirely my personal opinion rather than what I think the most effective writing methods are) Amber and romance just don't mix well for me. Corwin I could roll my eyes at, because he'd be all "OMG, I love Moire so much," and then never think about her again until he was walking one Pattern or another, which is the trademarked Time To Think About People You've Shagged. And he can't fool me about where women and romance, aside from sex, lie on his ladder of priorities. The whole Dierdre thing pissed me off, too, because we were just supposed to take Corwin's word for it that they had this uber bond of magnificentness, or that he was even really that much in love with her. I wish we could have seen more interaction between them to make it a little more real, or some flashbacks, or something. But with Merle, it's really obvious he loved Julia... and with that relationship, it's written so it makes me care just enough to be annoyed that Merle's emotions there aren't written in the way I'd want them to be. Not that he didn't DO the right things regarding her (her death, I mean. That brilliant move of his when she was alive... right) I just couldn't get a good sense of how he felt from the writing.
I feel like the characters' relationships are all so complex to begin with that I don't want sex mucking things up, which is how I feel about some other things (LotR serious canon, for example, and The Dark is Rising). I guess it comes from that era in my life, around the middle of high school, in which I hated everything that had even remotely to do with romance. And when I grew out of that, I came to like romance in some fictional relationships and absolutely not in others.
Because the slash potential in Amber is just... no. The first generation (er... second? Counting Oberon? Whatever) is far too often at each others throats to even plausibly consider it. And it squicks me out big time anyway. The only slash potential we get in the second series is Merlin and Luke, and while one could argue that... my brain, even though I read this the first time at the height of my slash fangirlyness, goes AUGHGODNO.
I think the point I had to begin with was that the second half of the series really doesn't do anything for me that the first half did. Besides what I miss about Corwin, the secondary characters just don't interest me the way all of Corwin's siblings did. We never get to see Corwin in this series. We never get to see Benedict. Poor Random is up to his eyeballs in bureaucracy and political trouble, and has no time to be a reprobate. Julian has, like, one good scene*, and one scene that is only good because of what I read into it**. The only of Merlin's aunts and uncles we get much of is Fiona, and although she's my favorite of the women, I don't like her THAT much. In fact, I don' t like her at all. She's just interesting.
Um. I think that concludes my ranting for now.
*When Luke comes to fight Dalt or something, and Julian knows he's the one who killed Caine (for real this time), and he could totally kill him and plead revenge and Random would say it was okay... and they both have their hands on some kind of sharp pointy killy impliment, and then they just smiiiiile at each other, and that's that. Heh.
**At Caine's funeral, Gerard gives the speech. Merlin says it was because he and Caine were closest. It always irked me that Merlin conveniently forgets about how Caine was probably the closest thing Julian ever had approaching a friend, but he wouldn't have known this not growing up with them. Merlin remembers how Julian and Caine used to pal around when he brings Luke to meet him, but that's beside the point. Anyway, at the funeral, all it says is that everyone's standing around looking kind of bored and nervous and not terribly introspective about the dead, and Julian leaves halfway through "to check on the guard he had posted along the strand". And at first, I'm like, "Geez, Julian, way to pay respect to the only brother you gave a crap about." Then, reading it this time, I remember something that Corwin mentioned nearly every time he talked about Julian - that Julian dislikes showing strong emotion. So. It follows that he wouldn't hang around any longer than he had to, let alone be jumping to give the eulogy. Er. [/fangirlness]
Love this icon. Never get to use it.
caitirin read it, and she's planning to read the second half sometime as well.I now remember why I've only read this half of the series once through. It's because I find Merlin unbearably boring. He's like Corwin, only less so. Without all those Corwinish things you've grown to love about Corwin, like his dumbassery, and the fact that he can't even figure himself out, let alone everyone else, and his complex relationships with his family... It's like Merlin tries to have all that, and just kind of falls short. I don't think that Zelazy is really skilled at writing any kind of intense emotion in his first-person characters. He's perfectly fine at it when it comes to the people he's only describing - but when it comes to Corwin and Merle, it just doesn't work. And for some reason, Corwin can pull off that "Then I decided to examine my feelings for a little while. What I found was kind of... well... eh, fuck that. I didn't need feelings anyway" thing, but Merle... I think he comes across as more emotional than Corwin. And it just doesn't work right when Merle is describing his own actions as if they were some kind of symptoms of emotion, and then trying to analytically catagorize them as the rest of the plot is so wonderfully and aptly, for those kinds of situations, described. Because the intrigue and the storytelling and the wonderful reference-filled plottiness of the entire thing needs that kind of writing to pull it off. But emotions need a different kind.
Also (and this is entirely my personal opinion rather than what I think the most effective writing methods are) Amber and romance just don't mix well for me. Corwin I could roll my eyes at, because he'd be all "OMG, I love Moire so much," and then never think about her again until he was walking one Pattern or another, which is the trademarked Time To Think About People You've Shagged. And he can't fool me about where women and romance, aside from sex, lie on his ladder of priorities. The whole Dierdre thing pissed me off, too, because we were just supposed to take Corwin's word for it that they had this uber bond of magnificentness, or that he was even really that much in love with her. I wish we could have seen more interaction between them to make it a little more real, or some flashbacks, or something. But with Merle, it's really obvious he loved Julia... and with that relationship, it's written so it makes me care just enough to be annoyed that Merle's emotions there aren't written in the way I'd want them to be. Not that he didn't DO the right things regarding her (her death, I mean. That brilliant move of his when she was alive... right) I just couldn't get a good sense of how he felt from the writing.
I feel like the characters' relationships are all so complex to begin with that I don't want sex mucking things up, which is how I feel about some other things (LotR serious canon, for example, and The Dark is Rising). I guess it comes from that era in my life, around the middle of high school, in which I hated everything that had even remotely to do with romance. And when I grew out of that, I came to like romance in some fictional relationships and absolutely not in others.
Because the slash potential in Amber is just... no. The first generation (er... second? Counting Oberon? Whatever) is far too often at each others throats to even plausibly consider it. And it squicks me out big time anyway. The only slash potential we get in the second series is Merlin and Luke, and while one could argue that... my brain, even though I read this the first time at the height of my slash fangirlyness, goes AUGHGODNO.
I think the point I had to begin with was that the second half of the series really doesn't do anything for me that the first half did. Besides what I miss about Corwin, the secondary characters just don't interest me the way all of Corwin's siblings did. We never get to see Corwin in this series. We never get to see Benedict. Poor Random is up to his eyeballs in bureaucracy and political trouble, and has no time to be a reprobate. Julian has, like, one good scene*, and one scene that is only good because of what I read into it**. The only of Merlin's aunts and uncles we get much of is Fiona, and although she's my favorite of the women, I don't like her THAT much. In fact, I don' t like her at all. She's just interesting.
Um. I think that concludes my ranting for now.
*When Luke comes to fight Dalt or something, and Julian knows he's the one who killed Caine (for real this time), and he could totally kill him and plead revenge and Random would say it was okay... and they both have their hands on some kind of sharp pointy killy impliment, and then they just smiiiiile at each other, and that's that. Heh.
**At Caine's funeral, Gerard gives the speech. Merlin says it was because he and Caine were closest. It always irked me that Merlin conveniently forgets about how Caine was probably the closest thing Julian ever had approaching a friend, but he wouldn't have known this not growing up with them. Merlin remembers how Julian and Caine used to pal around when he brings Luke to meet him, but that's beside the point. Anyway, at the funeral, all it says is that everyone's standing around looking kind of bored and nervous and not terribly introspective about the dead, and Julian leaves halfway through "to check on the guard he had posted along the strand". And at first, I'm like, "Geez, Julian, way to pay respect to the only brother you gave a crap about." Then, reading it this time, I remember something that Corwin mentioned nearly every time he talked about Julian - that Julian dislikes showing strong emotion. So. It follows that he wouldn't hang around any longer than he had to, let alone be jumping to give the eulogy. Er. [/fangirlness]
Love this icon. Never get to use it.
