Started: April 11, 2020
Finished: June 4, 2020
This is the second book in The Chronicles of Amber series. If you want background information on what this series is or why I'm reading it, check out my review of the first book in this series: Nine Princes in Amber. But because there's no point in re-hashing all that here. Let's just jump into the review.
The Review
I'll be honest, I don't have a lot of new things to say about this book that I didn't already say about the previous book.
That's the problem with reviewing separately each book in the same series. The setting, characters, prose style, and flavor of the series doesn't change much, even if the story is new.
That being admitted, having committed myself to reviewing each of these books separately, let me see what I can come up with in the way of some commentary. I'm probably going to have to resort to making comments about individual plot points so ***SPOILERS AHEAD***
This book picks up exactly where the last one left off. Our protagonist, Corwin, is wandering through the "shadow worlds". ("Shadow worlds" in this book series essentially means one of many parallel universes.)
As you can notice from the title, this book is toying around with the Arthurian legend imagery, especially in the beginning. Lancelot is a supporting character, and King Uther and Avalon are referenced. But this isn't exactly the Lancelot or King Uther or Avalon we know from our legends. The exact relation between these characters and places and the canonical King Arthur legends is never spelled out exactly, but we know that in the infinite parallel universes of the "shadow worlds," many things are replicated imperfectly. Presumably this is a parallel universe version of the Lancelot and Avalon and Uther from the legend.
The many shadow worlds and strange lands continue to allow author Roger Zelazny to give his imagination free reign, and as in the first book there are some wonderfully bizarre places that the reader gets glimpses of. Usually they are brief glimpses, but just enough to excite the imagination.
There's also elements of horror genre in here, as Corwin fights the creatures of the dark circle. The creatures are described with Zelazny's usual minimalist descriptions, but there's just enough description to evoke horrifying images. Much of this is borrowed from traditional depictions of hell and demons-- evil Siamese cats, creatures with the body of men but the head of goats and red eyes, etc. It's enough to send a chill down your spine in all the right ways as you read through this book.
And yes, Zelazny's minimalist style (something I commented on in the first book) is again on full display here. Some of the creatures of the dark circle are simple described as: "They also had weird flying, hopping, crawling things that made noises in the night." (Chapter 2). That's all the description we're ever given. Your imagination has to fill in the rest.
I complained in my first review that the prose style could sometimes be difficult to understand. And this could be true of the second book as well. It's not the whole book or even the majority of the book. (For the most part, this book presents no readability problems) But there are passages...
It's obviously a stylistic choice, because Roger Zelazny can obvious write readable prose when he wants to.
There was a long passage in chapter 6--about 3 whole pages--during which (I think) the main character is journeying across the African continent on a shadow world--which is composed entirely out of images. To quote from a part of it:
Trees thickening then thinning ......et cetera. Imagine reading 3 straight pages of that!
Long, steady, slow...
A faint light in the east ...
Sloping downward now and fewer trees ... Rockier, and the darkness made whole once again...
The first, dim hint of the sea, lost an odor lately ... Clicking, on, in the nightsend chill . . . Again, an instant's salt ...
Rock, and an absence of trees... Hard, steep,bleak, down... Ever-increasing precipitousness...
I wrote in the margins on my copy, "I'm having a really hard time with this section!" I really had to fight to keep my attention from wandering as I read through it.
So, you do have to put up with some of this more experimental writing from time to time. But it's not the majority of the book, so I don't want to scare anyone off.
I also complained in my first review that I had a hard time sympathizing with the Machiavellian character of Corwin, but he actually comes off as much more noble in this book, which make it a lot easier to become invested in his story--particularly as he shepherds his new protege Dara. The reader can identify with Corwin's desire to protect Dara, and thus becomes more involved in the story.
...and speaking of Dara, let's talk about that plot twist!
All the elements of that plot twist took me completely off-guard at the end.
I had been expecting the conflict between Corwin and Eric to be the central story for the whole series, and was completely caught off-guard when Eric died at the end, and that conflict suddenly came to an end. I did not see that coming!
I was equally caught off-guard when it turned out that Dara was not actually who she was pretending to be. So much of the dramatic tension in the book had been about protecting Dara from the rest of the family, and I had gotten completely invested in it, and did not see the twist coming at the end.
Other Notes
Steve Donoghue, the person who got me reading these books in the first place, mentions in one of his videos (can't know find the link) that the Chronicles of Amber series starts out great, but then gradually deteriorates in quality with each subsequent book. He also says that despite the books forming one long story, it's very obvious (in his opinion) that Zelazny hadn't planned them out beforehand, and was making it up as he went along.
...which makes me think about Eric's death. The first book was setting up the conflict between Corwin and Eric to be the major arc of the series. Was this a plot twist Zelazny had in mind all along, or is this an example of how the story evolved as he wrote?
Perhaps I'll get a clearer perspective on this once I've read more of the series?
Video Review (Playlist HERE)
Video Review HERE and embedded below:
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky speaks about Universal Linguistics: Origins of Language
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