Blood of Amber by Roger Zelazny

It’s at this point in Roger Zelazny’s AMBER CHRONICLES that things start going downhill. Don’t even try to pick this up if you haven’t read the previous six books. It will make no sense. Expect spoilers for those earlier books in this review.

Blood of Amber (1986), the seventh book, begins right where Trumps of Doom left off. Merlin, like his namesake, is trapped in a crystal cave. Then he escapes. During the rest of this short story, he finds out more about his frenemy Luke, who now needs his help after deceiving and even trying to kill Merlin for many years, not to mention imprisoning him in the cave. Merlin, who I’m starting to realize isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, or who at least has some pathological need to trust people who don’t deserve it, or who maybe is simply at the mercy of an author who needs to... Read More

Lone Wolf and Cub (Vol. 7): Cloud Dragon, Wind Tiger by Kazuo Koike

The Lone Wolf & Cub series by Kazuo Koike is well-known for the amount of research that went into allowing a lifelike picture of the Japanese historical era to be faithfully presented. This definitely adds to my enjoyment of the series, but added to this is the fact that while each individual story is generally self-contained, there is a wider story arc that informs each of them both within and across volumes. Best of all is when specific details from previous tales make their way into later installments and not only add to the full picture we see, but show how Ogami Itto and Daigoro are growing and changing as they follow their bloody quest.

“Dragnet:” Despairing due to the fact that even his greatest warriors cannot overcome the seemingly undefeatable... Read More

King Kelson’s Bride by Katherine Kurtz

Katherine Kurtz published Deryni Rising, her first novel about young King Kelson, in 1970 and published The Quest for Saint Camber, which seemed to be the final story in the HISTORIES OF KING KELSON in 1986. Then, eleven years later, she published King Kelson’s Bride, a story that ties up many loose ends and answers a few questions about how life turned out for Kelson Haldane. There will be spoilers for the previous books here, so you may want to skip this review until you’ve read up to this point.

King Kelson’s Bride begins about three years after the events of The Quest for Saint Camber. There are two major events going on in Kelson’s life right now and they will become intricately intertwined in this story.

The first is ... Read More