Merlin's Journey Through Shadow

(Roger Zelazny, Trumps of Doom, © 1985)


This passage from the first book of the second Amber series exemplifies why Greg likes Roger Zelazny's work so much. The series chronicles the adventures of Merle Corey, a.k.a. Merlin son of Corwin, who among other things must deal with some of the mess left by his father in the first series. At the moment he's travelling through the back country of Shadow, of which our Earth is but a single slice...

I shook out my cloak and brushed myself off. I traveled for perhaps half an hour then, leaving the place far behind me, before I halted and took my breakfast in a hot, bleak valley smelling faintly of sulfur.

As I was finishing, I heard a crashing noise. A horned and tusked purple thing went racing along the ridge to my right pursued by a hairless orange-skinned creature with long claws and a forked tail. Both were wailing in different keys.

I nodded. It was just one damned thing after another.


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Last modified 23 July 2006 by Greg Roelofs, you betcha.