ckovacs
Christopher Kovacs
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2007
- Messages
- 88
I've discovered that a new Santa Fe company is releasing the unabridged recordings of Zelazny reading the Amber series, plus A Night in the Lonesome October, and Eye of Cat. These will all be on CDs. They've already released Nine Princes in Amber and A Night in the Lonesome October and plan to release the rest of the Amber books one-by-one approximately every two months. I emailed them and learned that they have the unabridged recordings by Zelazny of Amber books 1-9, so if this is true it will be the first time that Zelazny's unabridged readings of Blood of Amber and Knight of Shadows are released. Zelazny did not record Prince of Chaos and so that one will be the unabridged recording by Bruce Watson. Until now all of these unabridged recordings have been available only on tape, and long out of print except for Eye of Cat.
Their website shows the cover images for the first nine Amber books as well as Eye of Cat and A Night in the Lonesome October.
This is the link to the page showing Zelazny's audiobooks: Speaking Volumes, LLC / Quality Audio Books :: Browse Audio :: Books by Author
The history of the recordings is this: The first nine Amber books were recorded unabridged by Zelazny and he died before book 10 could be recorded. The original company Sunset Productions first released them on tape as abridged to half the length and with added sound effects. They later released books 1-6 and 8 as unabridged recordings on tape and without sound effects. For some strange reason they skipped over book 7 (Blood of Amber) and also never released book 9 (Knight of Shadows) or 10 (Prince of Chaos) in unabridged format. A second company (Americana) bought them out and reissued all 10 abridged books with sound effects on CD, but declined to release the unabridged books.
You can find unabridged recordings on the internet of books 7, 9 and 10 read by other people; these were made for the visually impaired and not for retail sale. The quality of those particular readings and recordings is not the best.
I've listened to Zelazny's unabridged recordings before and quite enjoyed them, but the audio quality was not always good after transferring the sound from tapes to mp3 format. I'm hoping the sound quality on these new CDs will be as good as the original tapes. I'm also very much looking forward to listening to the unabridged Blood of Amber and Knight of Shadows in Zelazny's own voice.
Chris
Their website shows the cover images for the first nine Amber books as well as Eye of Cat and A Night in the Lonesome October.
This is the link to the page showing Zelazny's audiobooks: Speaking Volumes, LLC / Quality Audio Books :: Browse Audio :: Books by Author
The history of the recordings is this: The first nine Amber books were recorded unabridged by Zelazny and he died before book 10 could be recorded. The original company Sunset Productions first released them on tape as abridged to half the length and with added sound effects. They later released books 1-6 and 8 as unabridged recordings on tape and without sound effects. For some strange reason they skipped over book 7 (Blood of Amber) and also never released book 9 (Knight of Shadows) or 10 (Prince of Chaos) in unabridged format. A second company (Americana) bought them out and reissued all 10 abridged books with sound effects on CD, but declined to release the unabridged books.
You can find unabridged recordings on the internet of books 7, 9 and 10 read by other people; these were made for the visually impaired and not for retail sale. The quality of those particular readings and recordings is not the best.
I've listened to Zelazny's unabridged recordings before and quite enjoyed them, but the audio quality was not always good after transferring the sound from tapes to mp3 format. I'm hoping the sound quality on these new CDs will be as good as the original tapes. I'm also very much looking forward to listening to the unabridged Blood of Amber and Knight of Shadows in Zelazny's own voice.
Chris
