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Author Peter Darbyshire joins the lads to champion the classic Roger Zelazny fantasy series, The Chronicles of Amber.

A writer of fantasy and literary fiction himself, Peter encountered the series when he was in elementary school.

For the podcast, he chose to wear a new t-shirt that says: “Emotionally attached to fictional characters.” And he can definitely apply that to the characters in Zelazny’s series, which began with the 1970 book, Nine Princes in Amber.

Both Joe and Mark had also read the books, Mark when he was a kid and Joe when he was at university.

This is the second time that Zelazny has come up on the podcast.

“For me, Roger Zelazny is one of the reasons I wanted to become a writer,” says Peter. “It was coming across The Chronicles of Amber that changed everything that a book could be.”

When the books came out they were often categorized as science fiction, but they are now considered to be fantasy.

“They’re the best noir-fantasy-scifi-horror-political-thriller-family-drama-literary-fiction-metaphysical-inquiry that I’ve read,” Peter quips.

The books are complicated across so many genres. The first five follow the character, Corwin, who is a prince of Amber — the only real world in the multiverse. All the other worlds are “shadows” of Amber. The other family represent the Courts of Chaos. And it’s only the members of these two families that can traverse the multiverse.

“The book starts with Corwin waking up in hospital with amnesia,” says Peter. “It actually starts as a noir with a real existential angle to it.”

All three agree on the excellence of Zelazny’s prose and they have a great conversation discussing this literary classic!