Chronicles of Amber books in order

Reading order

Roger Zelazny began the Chronicles of Amber with Nine Princes in Amber in 1970, introducing Corwin as protagonist. The novel opens with Corwin waking in a hospital with amnesia, discovering he’s a prince of Amber, able to walk between worlds simply by intending to be somewhere else. He learns about Amber as the true world at the center of all shadows, with his father Oberon absent and his nine siblings scheming for the throne.

The Corwin Cycle follows Corwin through five books as he claims the throne, fights against his brother Eric and later against Chaos itself, discovers the nature of his family’s power, and confronts the reality of what it means to be immortal beings in a universe where shadows are illusions that can become real for long enough. Zelazny wrote these quickly, with all five books appearing 1970-1978.

Then Zelazny stepped away. When he returned in 1985 with Trumps of Doom, the protagonist had shifted to Merlin, Corwin’s son. The Merlin Cycle explores what it means to grow up as the child of gods who live forever: aging, mortality, responsibility, and the weight of expectations. Merlin faces assassins, magical threats from Chaos, and the legacy of his father’s choices.

Together, the ten novels form a complete story about family, power, and consequence across the divide between Amber and Chaos. Zelazny’s prose is sharp, mythic, and often funny. The structure of the narrative—first-person perspective, unreliable narrator, rapid worldbuilding established through memory and revelation—creates a sense of being dropped into a story already in progress and trusted to catch up.