Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have tried to be open-minded about the content of this novel itself and judge it on its own merits. That said, I have read it and found it wanting: wanting for a plot, wanting for interesting characters, wanting for something that indicates the author actually understood the original novels and short stories, and wanting, frankly, for a narrative style that isn't both pretentious and inept. I have rarely found a book with worse first-person narration. The narration is appallingly bad. Only in the worst of Amber fan fiction does one usually see first-person narration handled this poorly. Certainly nothing published in Amberzine has ever had such poor narrative style. In fairness, first-person narratives are hard to write. Zelazny was a master of the style. So is Brust. Betancourt clearly is not. One wonders then why he made the attempt as he was not up to the task. Betancourt's narrator is Oberon. This is one of the great tragedies of the novel. Much as the Star Wars prequels have taken Vader from being interesting to a simpering young man, so too has Betancourt reduced Oberon. Perhaps to emulate Zelazny's style in the Corwin novels, Betancourt gives us an Oberon unaware of his true origins and unaware of the true nature of his universe. While allowing the reader to discover things as Oberon does, this is a bad idea. The audience of this book is already going to be well-versed in Zelazny's cosmology. They have already seen this trick. This is the problem with much of the novel: we've seen it before and better elsewhere. Betancourt's setting, too, lacks appeal. Instead of the Courts of Chaos, Betancourt gives the run of the mill fantasy kingdom of Ilerium and an Amber substitute with the painfully bad name of Juniper. The sense of wonder found in Zelazny's novels is sorely needed here. There are no wondrous new settings, just stock locations from bad fantasy books. Interesting fantasy elements found in other Betancourt novels that gave me some small hope that he might do something interesting here. Alas, this is not the case. I can think of not one single scene that I thought was fresh or interesting or original or inspired. The character names, also, are uninspired. From the extremely unoriginal Uthor and Valeria to the incredibly boring Freda and Helda. The fantasy names are even worse: I find names such King Elnar and Lord Zon painful to read. Betancourt displays only the briefest hint that he read Zelazny's novels. He claims to be a fan, but certainly, it doesn't show in his work. The material he uses is derivative at best and you never see a love of the material shining through the work. The information he uses could actually have been gleaned from the RPG, rather than the novels. And as the Merlin series seems to contradict the Corwin series, so too does this series seem to contradict Zelazny's novels. Frankly, the much reviled VISUAL GUIDE and the even more despised COMPLETE AMBER SOURCEBOOK both felt closer to the spirit and intent of Zelazny's novels. Most Amber fan fiction is far better than this novel. Most fan fiction has a better understanding of Zelazny's universe. Most of it has better interpretations of the events leading to the creation of Amber. I know Zelazny didn't want other authors writing Amber novels. If only they had honored his wishes.