=== The Chronicle's of Amber, by Roger Zelazny === Consists of 10 books all in mobi, pdf & epub formats.

The Corwin Cycle (Books 1-5): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Nine Princes in Amber The Guns of Avalon Sign of the Unicorn The Hand of Oberon The Courts of Chaos

The Merlin Cycle (Books 6-10): 6. Trumps of Doom 7. Blood of Amber 8. Sign of Chaos 9. Knight of Shadows 10. Prince of Chaos ====================================================== 1. Nine Princes in Amber: Corwin wakes up from a coma in a hospital in New York with amnesia. He soon discovers that he's part of a superhuman royal family that can wander among infinite parallel worlds (called "shadows"), and who rule over the one true world, Amber. He meets members of this newly-rediscovered family, and then later is shown and walks the Pattern, a labyrinth inscribed in the dungeons of Castle Amber which gives the multiverse its order. Walking the Pattern of Rebma (a city in Amber that mirrors the true city of Amber, down to the smallest detail, including the Pattern) restores Corwin's memory and his abilities to travel through shadow. In alliance with his brother Bleys, he attempts to conquer Amber, which is currently ruled by his elder brother Eric, who took power after the disappearance of their father, Oberon. Their attempt fails. Bleys falls from the side of Kolvir and Corwin is captured, blinded and imprisoned. Thanks to his genetic regenerative ability, his eyes regrow and he regains his vision. Dworkin Barimen, the mad sorcerer who created the Pattern enters Corwin's prison through the walls of Corwin's prison cell, and eventually draws on the wall the door through which Corwin escapes.

====================================================== 2. The Guns of Avalon Corwin has escaped the dungeons of Amber, where he was imprisoned by his hated brother Eric, who had seized the throne of Amber. All of Corwin's siblings believe that guns cannot function in Amber, as gunpowder is inert there. But Corwin has secret knowledge: in the shadow world of Avalon, where he once ruled, there exists a jeweler's rouge that will function in Amber as gunpowder should. Corwin plans to raise a legion of shadow soldiers, and arm them with automatic rifles from the shadow world Earth. While gathering these forces Corwin discovers a more sinister problem growing among the shadows. He meets Dara, a woman claiming to be his great-grandniece, and later discovers a threat to Amber; a black road which runs across universes from the Courts of Chaos to Amber. With his newly-trained army, Corwin marches on Castle Amber only to find it already under siege. Eric is mortally wounded and passes the Jewel of Judgment to Corwin, making Corwin Regent. The immediate danger passes, but Dara threatens greater peril after walking the Pattern and revealing herself to be a creature of the Courts of Chaos, intent on destroying both Amber and the Shadows . ====================================================== 3. Sign of the Unicorn Eric is dead, and Corwin now rules Amber as Regent. But someone has murdered the ir brother Caine and framed Corwin. This leads to questions about other missing mem bers of the royal family. Random (another brother) tells of his attempts to rescue Br and (also a brother), and Corwin decides to find out what happened to the latter. Af ter many intrafamily exchanges, Brand is rescued but is stabbed by one of the family in the attempt. In the midst of the ensuing intrigue an assassination attempt is ma

de on Corwin and he finds himself incapacitated on Earth. Before returning to Amber he hides the Jewel of Judgment on Earth. After Brand recovers, he tells Corwin of s everal incidents leading up to his capture. Corwin travels to Tir-na Ng'th, the mysterio us, moonlit Amber-in-the-sky where he hopes to gain insight into the situation, and upon his return finds himself at the Primal Pattern rather than Amber. ====================================================== 4. The Hand of Oberon: Corwin finds the Primal Pattern damaged, with a dark stain obscuring parts of it . On further investigation it is found that the blood of one of the members of his fa mily has created the stain. Corwin descends back to the dungeons and meets with Dwork in who explains how the Pattern might be repaired. After being chased from the Pattern, Corwin eventually discovers that Brand is responsible for the damage and that he now ha s the Jewel of Judgment. Corwin must now prevent Brand from attuning himself to the je wel or Brand's plot to destroy the Pattern will succeed. Corwin and his family band tog ether to prevent this, eventually recover the jewel, and discover that their father Ob eron, the true King of Amber, still lives. Roger Zelazny makes a brief cameo appearance in the book as a guard in a dungeon , smoking a pipe and working on a novel which may or may not be The Chronicles of Amber itself. ====================================================== 5. The Courts of Chaos: Oberon, having resumed the throne, organizes an assault on the Courts of Chaos. Oberon

plans to repair the Primal Pattern at the cost of his life, and offers the thron e to Corwin with Dara as his Queen. Corwin refuses and is tasked to bring the Jewel o f Judgment across the shadows to the battle that will ensue after the Pattern is r edrawn. He sets off along the black road and is soon pursued by Brand and a great storm. Through the storm and across the multiverse he comes to doubt his father's success. As h e approaches the Courts of Chaos he is assailed by fantastic beings who try to dis suade him, and he finally decides that his father must have failed. Corwin then create s a new Pattern and uses it to get to the Courts. In a final confrontation with Brand, t he Jewel of Judgment is stolen and lost. It is recovered by a unicorn who bestows it on R andom, who is then accepted as the new King. The Trumps and multiverse are restored and Corwin begins to relate the first Five novels to his son Merlin. ====================================================== 6. Trumps of Doom: Merlin has been studying computer science on Earth while constructing a secret p roject called Ghostwheel, a sentient computer based on the Trumps that Merlin hopes wil l be able to locate Corwin, who vanished after visiting the Courts of Chaos in the pr evious novel. Merlin discovers the body of his ex-girlfriend Julia, apparently killed b y beasts from another shadow, and subsequently finds himself in sorcerous combat with a l ady named Jasra, who has a poisonous sting in her bite. More unnerving is that his best fr iend Luke apparently knows about both Ghostwheel and Merlin's connection to Amber. He even tually returns to Amber, which is in mourning: the news has just come that Caine has be en murdered,

and Bleys injured, by a mystery assassin with a rifle - an assassin who demonst rates (with a thrown bomb at Caine's funeral, which misses any other family members) t hat he has access to something with explosive properties in Amber. After the funeral, K ing Random orders Merlin to shut down Ghostwheel, but the artifact shows it is capab le of self-defense, even against its creator, who is saved by the unexpected appearanc e of Luke - who thus proves, with the ability to traverse Shadow, that he too is no o rdinary human. He soon finds that Luke is in fact Rinaldo, son of Brand of Amber, and ha s been responsible for yearly attempts on his life, on the anniversary of when Luke fou nd out about Brand's death. Luke imprisons Merlin in a cave of blue crystal which negat es his magic abilities and from which he cannot escape. ====================================================== 7. Blood of Amber: Merlin escapes from the blue crystal cave, meets and confronts Jasra, nearly tak ing her prisoner, but is forced to retreat when she calls in reinforcements using the Tr umps. Further mystery ensues back on Earth when several people who apparently knew a l ot more about Merlin than they should, turn out to have no memory of previous meetings. Merlin traces his way back to his first confrontation with Jasra, where he finds himsel f at a magical fort, the Keep of the Four Worlds, a nexus of magical energies which has recently fallen under the control of a mysterious blue-masked sorcerer calling himself "M ask", who seems to have a vendetta against Merlin. However, the Keep is also currently under siege by Dalt the Mercenary, a known enemy of Amber and friend of Luke/Rinaldo. A

meeting with a deserter reveals that Jasra (the previous owner of the Keep - now presumably deposed) is Luke/Rinaldo's mother. Merlin returns to Amber, ventures out into Amber City, escapes an assassination attempt, and is saved by Caine's mistr ess, Vinta Bayle - who, also, appears to know more than she ought about him. Merlin t hen finds himself having to rescue Luke from Dalt, the two having apparently come to blows. Luke reveals that Jasra has indeed lost power and is now a prisoner - and has th e cheek to ask for Merlin's help. "Vinta" reveals that she is not what she seems, but is a being that has apparently appeared to Merlin in "possession" of several dif ferent bodies. Luke ends up in the crystal cave himself - and Merlin, after yet another uncanny encounter with a shape-shifting werewolf (which escapes, minus an ear an d with severe burns) and that appears to be backed by Mask. Merlin decides to gain leverage over Luke by "rescuing" Jasra without Luke's help, and then taking Jasr a as a prisoner in Amber. He confronts Mask, escapes with the now-petrified Jasra, an d returns to Amber, where an unusual Trump summoning imprisons him in the Mad Hatt er's tea party from Wonderland. ====================================================== 8. Sign of Chaos: Merlin realises that Wonderland, where he and Luke are trapped, is an LSD-induce d hallucination made real by Luke's powers over shadow. (It is Luke who has droppe d the acid - he, too, having been taken prisoner in an independent attempt to resc ue Jasra, and having apparently been given it as an experiment.) He is ambushed by a

creature from Chaos, a Fire Angel, but defeats it with the help of a Jabberwock and a vorpal sword. He leaves Luke to sober up and seeks his stepbrother Mandor, who thinks that their half-brother Jurt may be at least one of the assassins trying to kill Merlin - right now, most likely, for headship of the House of Sawall once its cu rrent lord dies, since Mandor (the eldest son) has stepped aside, leaving that office to be disputed between Merlin and Jurt (who was indeed the werewolf from earlier.) The y meet up with Fiona and discover that the Logrus is making an attempt to damage Corwin 's Pattern: but Merlin refuses to help Mandor and Fiona learn more, and returns to Amber, only to be embroiled in diplomatic controversy: in order to avoid Luke's possibl e accession to the throne of the Shadow kingdom Kashfa, Random is playing politics to put his own candidate on the throne, and the neighbouring kingdom of Begma objec ts to that particular candidate's territorial ambitions. The Begman duke's elder daugh ter Coral, and Luke's old friend Dalt the Mercenary, are both revealed to be bastard Amberites, sired by Oberon out of wedlock: Coral walks the Pattern and disappear s completely, apparently held prisoner by it. Dalt challenges Amber with an armed force, demanding Luke be surrendered to him as prisoner, but Luke has sworn off his ven detta and is under Queen Vialle's protection. Negotiations result in an arranged fistf ight between Dalt and Luke, which Dalt wins and captures Luke. Coral's younger sister Nayda is revealed to be possessed by the mysterious body-possessing "t'yiga" demon whi ch had previously been Vinta Bayle (and, for a short while, several other people on Ear th, in

"Trumps of Doom"): but since the real Nayda actually died of a long-standing hea rt condition just as the t'yiga possessed her (possession is normally harmless), it is now trapped in her form permanently. Merlin calls in Mandor to imprison the t'yiga, which turns out (a) to have been sent with orders to act as a bodyguard to Merlin, by an unknown sponsor, and (b) reveals that Jurt is in league with Mask, and is trying to gain power from the Keep of the Four Worlds in the same way that Brand did, and becom e a Living Trump. Merlin and Mandor free Jasra, since Jasra is Mask's enemy, and tog ether they wrest the Keep of the Four Worlds from Jurt and Mask. Mask is wounded by Me rlin, but then it is revealed that "he" is in fact Merlin's ex-girlfriend Julia, whom he had thought dead. ====================================================== 9. Knight of Shadows: Jasra is left in charge of the Keep of the Four Worlds, where she had ruled befo re as Julia's teacher, before Julia decided to outwit her and take over. She turns out to be exactly the right person to leave in charge there, as she does not wish for t he power of the Fount of the Four Worlds herself, but is quite happy to prevent oth ers using it, since gaining its power destroyed the last of Brand's humanity, and sh e appears to have genuinely loved him, and lost him to his power-lust. Merlin trie s to use Trump magic to locate Coral - with the help of Mandor, Jasra and even his ow n creation Ghostwheel, with whom he is back on good terms - but is ambushed by var ious ghostly constructs of people that have walked the Pattern and Logrus, and even b y

Corwin's most recent Pattern-ghost (from his own Pattern, not the Pattern of Amb er), and finds himself drawn into a struggle between the Logrus, the fundamental powe r of chaos, and the Pattern, the fundamental power of order. It is revealed that t he Pattern, and its chaotic counterpart the Logrus, are sentient, and wish Merlin t o choose a side to tip the balance of the multiverse towards one or the other - wi th other Pattern- and Logrus-ghosts also taking part in the "trial" to influence hi m one way or the other. He attempts to refuse the "test" but is confronted by the Powers That Be themselves, the Unicorn of Order and Serpent of Chaos. They try to make him choose between them using ghosts of family members who have traversed their two paths. He attempts to walk the route of neutrality to avoid choosing sides, but ends up being tricked into taking sides twice - firstly by having a Chaos dagger planted on him as he sleeps before attempting to take the middle path in a three-way choice between the extremes of Order and Chaos (this is rather appropriate: he would ra ther aid neither side, but his chosen method is usually the magic of Chaos), and seco ndly he is coerced into aiding the Pattern to strengthen its position in Shadows, whi le rescuing Coral from her imprisonment. During the trial he somehow obtains posses sion of the Jewel of Judgement: the attempt to return it to Castle Amber provokes a confrontation between the Pattern and Logrus themselves, causing a mighty explos ion in which Mandor suffers a broken arm and Coral loses an eye. The ty'iga demon in Nayda's body escapes and tries to return the Jewel to the Logrus, but is capture d by Ghostwheel - which, after removing both Nayda and the Jewel, passes its own

synthetic "consciousness" through the Jewel, thus traversing the Pattern. Coral' s damaged eye is operated on by Dworkin, who replaces it with the Jewel of Judgeme nt. Merlin investigates Brand's old quarters, and finds his old sword Werewindle, an d a mysterious and powerful "spikard" ring, which he keeps. Random sends him to the kingdom of Kashfa as the Amberite representative at a coronation... that of none other than Luke, who is crowned as "King Rinaldo I", having overthrown Random's candidate Duke Arkans, in a largely bloodless coup. Since he has a fairly legiti mate claim on the throne himself, is on better terms with his neighbours (Begma, who objected to Duke Arkans), and has given up his vendetta on Amber, Random is lett ing things stand. Further complications ensue when it turns out that Coral - now Mer lin's lover - is actually Luke's long-forgotten wife following a diplomatic arranged marriage in childhood (although Luke seems willing enough to have it annulled in the future). Merlin goes to present Luke with Werewindle as a memento of his father, but they are ambushed by Jurt (again). Jurt is defeated but steals Werewindle as he flees. ====================================================== 10. Prince of Chaos: Merlin returns to his birthplace in the Courts of Chaos in order to solve the ex istential riddle in which he is involved - to find that he is suddenly a lot closer to the throne of Chaos itself than he thought, King Swayvill having finally died of a long-sta nding illness (aggravated, it is said, by the death curse of Eric of Amber), and many other candidates having either been assassinated or dropped out, which pushes his own house of Sawall unexpectedly to the forefront. Of course, besides there being two othe r

candidates from rival houses, this pushes Jurt very close to the succession too. In a conversation with his mother Dara - mistress of Corwin once, and a descendant of Benedict, also from the royal house of Chaos - he finds that she was the one who sent the t'yiga demon which is now Coral's sister Nayda (and appears to be developing something of an affection for Luke.) Merlin realizes he is but a pawn in the han ds of the powerful and cynical superpowers that rule the universe, that neither the Pa ttern nor the Logrus (or their manifestations as Unicorn and Serpent) care much about their "minions", and that someone or something wants him to rule Chaos - and that othe rs will try to manipulate him when he is. Merlin - and a Pattern-ghost of Luke - are bot h adopted by Corwin's Pattern (which has previously rejected Fiona), at the instan ce of a Pattern-ghost of Corwin himself, as it appears that his own Pattern is also sent ient and resisting incursions from both the Logrus and Amber's Pattern - and taking a hand in the conflict between the two. It becomes apparent that the real Corwin is hel d prisoner by Dara herself - ironically, in a chapel devoted to Corwin (chapels de voted to Amberites having apparently become a popular cult in Chaos after the Patternf all War: Jurt worshipped Brand, House Hendrake idolised Benedict, and Mandor's patro n was Fiona.) Jurt, frightened by the power politics, declares truce on Merlin, and ca lls off his own vendetta - suggesting that Dara and Mandor intend, themselves, to ma nipulate Merlin when becomes King, after first putting him on the throne. The assassinati on of the two remaining candidates throws things into confusion: Coral is kidnapped by agents

of Chaos (who want her because the Jewel of Judgement is her eye), and pursued b y Merlin and Jurt, who call on the assistance of Luke, Dalt and Nayda: they find themselv es having to fight agents of the Pattern as well as the Logrus to rescue her, and finally confront the Pattern itself and threaten to damage it by spilling their Amberite blood on it, if it does not back off from their conflict (the four others are sent safely away w hile Luke remains: contact is lost just after he says "Shit, I spilled it!") Merlin rescue s his father, Corwin, and hides him in Jurt's quarters, and also discovers that the Sp ikard Ring he found in Brand's quarters was a trap, meant to bring him under Mandor an d Dara's influence - except the plan was anticipated by Bleys (who was thought to be in h iding, recovering from his injury four books ago), who replaced it with another identic al spikard which Dara and Mandor did not control (previously held by an estranged A mberite, a son of Oberon called Delwin). In the Courts of Chaos, Merlin uses Ghostwheel ( which has by now traversed the Logrus as well as the Pattern), his own Spikard, and al l his magical powers in the final fight for survival: finally declaring - and forcing Dara and Mandor to accept - that although he did not want to rule, if forced to do so, it will not be as anyone's puppet. Thus both the Pattern and Logrus are forestalled for a time, in their attempts to escalate their conflict: while Corwin begins the journey ba ck to Amber, Merlin - who wants peace with Amber - returns to Chaos to await his coron ation. ====================================================== Effloresce ~TPB. ======================================================