Oh, yes, Merlin/Luke = OTP! I just didn't think you'd gotten to them yet :) The "baby" line totally made me do a double-take, too, and there's a little Merlin/Luke moment towards the end that's a lot less blatant but appealed to me for personal reasons ('cos I'm a Berkeley alumna myself) I love Luke! He is by far my favorite (new) character in the second chronicles. And I'm generally a fan of Foe Yay (which is why I think Corwin/Eric would be kind of hot, too, if anybody actually wrote fic for the series...)
I'm so glad you like these books! The series definitely picked up for me during Guns of Avalon, and I loved all the twists from there. I was also kind of ambivalent towards Corwin at first, but he is such an unapologetic Gary-Stu, and yet he is capable of being an idiot, and he has a sense of humour about himself (I loved his conversation with "Ganelon" at his tomb), that it's really, really hard not to like him. I do like that Julian is an ass, but everyone's aware that he's an ass and treats him accordingly. And I thought Random became even more awesome when he became King, which was great. And Brand! You're so totally right about him being half Aerys/half Rhaegar XD (Also, I remember a friend of mine was talking about ships in the Amber-verse, and hit on the true OTP of the series -- Brand/rug). I have no idea what Llewella is even there for, and nobody else seems to either. I suspect it's some kind of cosmic joke on Zelazny's part, putting in a character who has no discernible personality or role in the plot.
Oh, and now you can do the polls that started my pimping of Amber to ASOIAF fans: here (if you want to, of course, or unless you'd rather wait until you're done with the whole thing. I only included Luke and Merlin from the second chronicle because otherwise the poll would've been too long. I do kind of like Mandor, from among the Chaosites.)
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I'm so glad you like these books! The series definitely picked up for me during Guns of Avalon, and I loved all the twists from there. I was also kind of ambivalent towards Corwin at first, but he is such an unapologetic Gary-Stu, and yet he is capable of being an idiot, and he has a sense of humour about himself (I
loved his conversation with "Ganelon" at his tomb), that it's really, really hard not to like him. I do like that Julian is an ass, but everyone's aware that he's an ass and treats him accordingly. And I thought Random became even more awesome when he became King, which was great. And Brand! You're so totally right about him being half Aerys/half Rhaegar XD (Also, I remember a friend of mine was talking about ships in the Amber-verse, and hit on the true OTP of the series -- Brand/rug). I have no idea what Llewella is even there for, and nobody else seems to either. I suspect it's some kind of cosmic joke on Zelazny's part, putting in a character who has no discernible personality or role in the plot.
Oh, and now you can do the polls that started my pimping of Amber to ASOIAF fans:
here
(if you want to, of course, or unless you'd rather wait until you're done with the whole thing. I only included Luke and Merlin from the second chronicle because otherwise the poll would've been too long. I do kind of like Mandor, from among the Chaosites.)