The Chronicles of Amber, chapter 14: The conclusion

This is it. The final chapter of The Courts of Chaos and of the Chronicles of Amber. It's been a fun trip.

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. You may well have a lot of reading ahead of you.

---

This last chapter is more of an epilogue. Random, appointed the king of Amber by the Unicorn and attuned to the Jewel of Judgment by Corwin, successfully turns away the Chaos storm. He, too, is now gone, and only Corwin and his son Merlin remain on the field of battle where Amber conquered Chaos.

Earlier, Dara accused Corwin of taking away the "two most important persons in my life." One, obviously, was Borel, her swordmaster, whom Corwin slew during the battle. I wasn't sure who the second was, but after a few chapters, it's clear she meant Merlin, who, after everyone else has retreated to the citadel of the Courts of Chaos, has elected to stay with his father rather than continue on with his mother.

As Corwin sits there, he reflects on the changes in himself and his attitudes toward his family. He gives a brief farewell to Oberon and each of his brothers and sisters. Only to Brand, the source of all their troubles, does he say nothing positive, wishing only that he would "be dead and trouble my thinking no more." To Caine, his remaining antagonist amongst his brothers, he makes a peace offer; for his sister Flora, who kept him prisoner in the hospital at the beginning of Nine Princes in Amber, he simply forgives her past wrongs.

Of himself—"the man clad in black and silver with a silver rose upon him"—he acknowledges the changes in his own character: "that he has learned something of trust, that he has washed his eyes in some clear spring, that he has polished an ideal or two." On the other hand, he also acknowledges his remaining faults: "He may still be a smart-mouthed meddler, skilled mainly in the minor art of survival, blind as ever the dungeons knew him to the finer shades of irony." And Corwin is comfortable with that. He can't measure up to his own standards. Who can?

Corwin's valedictory to Dara is curious: "Carmen, voulez-vous venir avec moi? No? Then good-bye to you too, Princess of Chaos. It might have been fun." At first glance, I thought this might have been another editorial oops: perhaps Carmen was the name Zelazny originally gave Dara. Pondering the similarities between Dara and the femme fatale of the Bizet opera that bears her name—both women are fiercely independent, seductive, and manipulative—I started doing a little Web research on Carmen. In doing so, I discovered that "Carmen, voulez-vous venir avec moi?" is a quotation from the Prosper Mérimée novella on which the opera is based. The same line is spoken by Humbert Humbert in Lolita. My guess is Zelazny was alluding to the latter rather than the former. Corwin had had a fling with Dara, and while he seemed unconcerned with their degree of consanguinity, he (like Humbert) was trying to transfer her trust to himself from Benedict (or so he supposed); and (unlike Humbert) he was not entirely comfortable with their difference in age: "I did not want to be in love with her. Not now. Later, perhaps. Better yet, not at all. She was all wrong for me. She was a child." (Is this why Zelazny first paired Corwin with the adult Lorraine?) And in the end, she wants nothing to do with him in any case. Kudos to Roger Zelazny for finishing off the Chronicles of Amber with a multilayered intertextual shout-out.

In the end, the Trumps have regained their function, and Random is able to contact Gérard. "Amber stands"—although years have passed there in the few days Corwin experiences from his point of view. And Corwin may have a whole new universe (multiverse?) to explore, if his own new Pattern has survived. Thus the Chronicles of Amber end on a positive note, if perhaps an unnecessarily open-ended one.

Final thoughts on The Courts of Chaos and the Chronicles of Amber

When The Courts of Chaos begins, there's little ambiguity anymore about where the battle lines are drawn. The action in this novel leads up to the inevitable, climactic battle for Amber. I could only wish the conclusion lived up to the build-up. Zelazny started well, but at the very end, I think he ran out of gas.

The majority of this book focuses on Corwin's journey from Amber to the Courts of Chaos. If the previous volumes of this series have given us plenty of examples of conflict between man and man or man and nature, here we get conflict between man and self, as Corwin contemplates his doubts about the nature of reality and his place in it. There was some discussion before about solipsism—do the Amberites create the realities they travel to, or do they discover them?—but here it takes up multiple chapters and brings additional characters into the debate.

In the earlier books of this series, I had fun chasing down Zelazny's sometimes obscure literary allusions. In the middle volumes, he either cut down on them or made them so esoteric that I passed them by without noticing. In that respect, then, The Courts of Chaos was more like Nine Princes in Amber or The Guns of Avalon. (Were the little people in their underground lair a shout-out to leprechaun lore, Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," or something else?)

On the other hand, I note that while The Courts of Chaos tied up the numerous loose ends remaining at the end of The Hand of Oberon, nonetheless, as the final book of this series, its ending was a bit too open and vague, and left me somewhat cold. I don't think we ever did get a firm grasp on the conflict between Amber and Chaos. What was that apocalyptic battle at the end fought over, again? Sure, the villains get their comeuppance and things are set to rights, but it also feels like there was wasted potential for a sixth book in which Corwin et al have to deal with the aftermath of all the crap they put the multiverse through.

Maybe that's why Zelazny started a second Amber series seven years later. I haven't read it yet, but I will. I first read these novels around 1990, and my very general recollection was that I enjoyed them at the time but they made little impression on me. These two volumes have languished in a Rubbermaid bin in the basement ever since. One English B.A. and three decades later, I find I come away with a much more favourable impression. I'm looking forward to tackling the second cycle someday—when I can find copies.

On readthroughs

This series was a bit of an experiment. As I said way back in January, I was inspired by a readthrough of The Lord of the Rings on a book blog,¹ and was inspired to try my hand at it myself (though of course with a different book). Nine months later, was it worth it? Very much so. I reacquainted myself with some fantasy that I originally read around 1990, came away with a better impression of it now than what I recall from the first time, and wrote 57 articles on schedule (though occasionally forgetting to publish them).

Will I do it again? Again, yes! Though instead of tackling a huge book that takes most of the year, instead I want to do maybe two or three shorter works in a variety of genres: fiction, philosophy, theology. And I may ease up on the posting schedule, too. Semi-weekly wasn't too bad, but it was demanding. And unless I feel really, really strongly about something I just read, it won't be until the new year.

In other words, I'll be solidifying my this-is-not-a-book-blog credentials by posting more than ever about books.

Footnote

¹ Ceci n'est pas un footnote: I insist this is not a book blog. It's just mostly about books.