Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. If you don't want me ruining the experience for you, put this post down and go read Nine Princes in Amber now. I promise I won't be offended.
After being blinded and imprisoned by his brother Eric in the dungeons of the castle of Amber, Corwin regains his sight, thanks to his quick healing power. His opportunity to escape comes from a chance meeting with Dworkin, creator of the Trumps that allow the Royal family of Amber to communicate with, and teleport to, each other. Dworkin draws a Trump of the Lighthouse of Cabra on Corwin's cell wall, and Corwin uses it to escape.
At the lighthouse, Corwin poses as a castaway named Corey and gets aid from Jopin the lighthouse keeper. He stays with Jopin for several months. When he announces his intention to leave, Jopin reveals that he had recognized Corwin and tells him, before he goes, to look at the Vale of Garnath through the spyglass. Doing so, he realizes that the valley has turned into a new opening into Amber that evil things are using, and it is a result of a curse he had placed on Eric while imprisoned. Sailing away from the lighthouse, he sends a message to Eric via a black bird that he is coming for him.
Did Jopin know all along who Corwin was, or did he recognize him later? Corwin describes him as apolitical, not caring who is on the throne, so perhaps it simply doesn't matter one way or the other. Will this the last we see of him?
In chapter 5, Corwin first mentions his power to pronounce an irrevocable curse, which he would like to place on Eric just as he was dying. In chapter, when he has been blinded and thrown into the dungeon, he pronounces the curse, and "knew that Eric would never rest easy upon the throne." In my previous posts, I overlooked the death curse, not realizing its significance at the time. Now, the Vale of Garnath has become corrupted into a portal into some dark dimension. Curse you, unintended consequences! (Also, it was the Vale of Garnath that Eric burned during Corwin and Belys's advance on Amber, not Arden Forest as I wrote mistakenly.)
When Corwin's friend Rein visited him in his cell, he said that Julian was again guarding Arden because "things" had come from Shadow. Arden is adjacent to Garnath, so presumably they appear there and wander into non-corrupted territory. Corwin is glad that they will be a thorn in Eric's side. But if he is successful in taking the throne, might they also become something he has to deal with, as well?
And so Nine Princes in Amber ends on a cliffhanger—perhaps not so resounding, after all—with Corwin vowing revenge on his brother Eric, and resolving to gather his armies and assail Amber anew—only this time with guns. The next volume is titled The Guns of Avalon, not surprisingly.
Final thoughts
Nine Princes in Amber was a good read. As I said at the beginning of this series, the last time I read it was 1989 or 1990, so it is practically fresh to me. It's short for a modern fantasy novel, but as a pulp paperback and part of a series from the 1970s, the length seems pretty typical. It starts out as urban fantasy and fairly quickly transforms into high fantasy. Other than that, Nine Princes isn't as genre-bending as some of Roger Zelazny's other books, such as …And Call Me Conrad and Lord of Light, which blurred the distinction between fantasy and science fiction. Zelazny was a fan of intertextuality, and so, especially at the beginning, I had fun trying to figure out where he got various personal and place names, and whether they had any significance to the story. (That still remains to be seen.)
Zelazny's style has one quirk that I find mildly irritating.
He likes short, single-sentence paragraphs.
Otherwise, though, he does a very good job of plotting the novel to keep the reader curious how it will unfold. This is true at the chapter and the book level. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next, in The Guns of Avalon. I'm going to take a short break, and then start on the second part of The Chronicles of Amber in about two weeks.
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