The Complete Amber Sourcebook

Library Journal

This spring, two useful reference/sourcebooks are appearing that should delight sf and fantasy aficionados. New York teacher Krulik has compiled a wonderfully detailed encyclopedic guide to Roger Zelazny's Amber universe, a ten-volume fantasy series. Prepared with the cooperation of the author, who died in 1995, this sourcebook covers characters, themes, settings, and situations in an A-to-Z format that will help readers new to the series navigate through any volume. Essential for libraries with the Amber books. St. James offers an A-to-Z compendium of major fantasy writers. Each entry consists of a brief biography, a complete list of published works, a signed critical essay, and comments from some living authors on their work. The work is comprehensive, with decent two- to three-paragraph treatments and useful title and nationality indexes. A second volume covering horror, ghost, and Gothic writers is due out soon. An essential reference purchase for libraries with fantasy collections.-Susan Hamburger, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., University Park