Sign of the Unicorn, chapter 11

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. I recommend reading the book first. It's short, I promise.

---

To rest and to recover from the stab wound he has kept secret from his family, accompanied by Random and Ganelon, Corwin ascended Kolvir to visit the floating city of Tir-na Nog'th, which appears above the mountain only by the light of the full moon. In Tir-na Nog'th, he experienced several visions. The last of these, seemingly of the future, was of Dara on the throne of Amber with Benedict at her side. He has a mechanical arm, replacing the one he lost fighting hellmaidens in Avalon. She proclaimed herself the rightful queen of Amber and said Corwin had been dead for centuries. When Corwin challenged her, Benedict drew on him with his own sword, and they fought. But as day broke, Tir-na Nog'th began to fade, and Random reached out to him via Trump to draw him back.

In Tir-na Nog'th, the apparitions and Corwin were immaterial to each other. However, safely back on solid ground, Corwin learns that Benedict's metal arm is nonetheless solid enough to have grabbed him by the shoulder and be drawn back to Amber. Corwin, Ganelon, and Random have a meal, and they discuss the Amberites' complicated family tree and the line of succession to the throne.

As they return down the mountain, they realize the environment has subtly changed, like someone has been manipulating Shadow around them—except there is no Shadow in Amber to manipulate. Neither Corwin nor Random can alter it themselves. Also, the Trumps don't work. They are lost and unable to call for help.

Then, they spot the unicorn that Corwin had seen earlier. As it leads them to a place resembling the Grove of the Unicorn, it appears as though reality itself winks out for a moment. As it reappears, they come back to Kolvir, but instead of the mountain, they see a flat-topped hill with the Pattern embedded in it, as though the top of Kolvir and everything above the Pattern had been lifted away. They realize they are looking at the real Amber.

The ending of this chapter and novel comes out of left field. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Roughly halfway through this novel, I realized it was essentially a fantasy murder mystery. So I had an expectation that the perpetrator of the deed would be revealed. That doesn't happen. Instead we get a twist cliffhanger in which, once again, the plot thickens. Is this indeed the real Amber? What, then, is the place that Corwin took to be Amber?

That's cool and all, but a better payoff would have been the resolution of the mystery of the murder of Caine.

Ganelon, I think, probably has best unraveled the mystery. With Eric dead and Benedict uninterested (and his legitimacy also suspect, in a Henry VIII sort of way), Corwin has the clearest claim on the throne. Caine was next in line. After him come Brand and Bleys. Brand is an admitted traitor, but Bleys may still be alive, and, along with Fiona, they were conspiring to share power. Is that the motivation, then—to consolidate their own claim to the throne by ridding Amber of everyone higher up the order of succession?

Moreover, Brand and Fiona know more about the nature of Shadow than the others. Are they, perhaps, able to manipulate Shadow in ways that Corwin and Random cannot? Are they indeed looking at the real Amber?

On the final page, Ganelon makes reference to a poem he heard on the Shadow Earth. It is, of course, "The Road Not Taken," by Robert Frost. This 1915 poem may be the best known of all American verse.¹ Its final three lines are:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Frost means to say that taking the "road less traveled" makes a difference in the traveller. The Amberites, by contrast, travel by changing Shadow around them; taking the "road less traveled" makes the difference in reality. "All roads lead to Amber," Corwin has said, but this particular road less travelled has brought them to this Amber. Is it another Shadow, albeit one not easily escaped from? Or is this Amber the ultimate reality, and the other one the Shadow, as Corwin is just understanding now?

Final thoughts on Sign of the Unicorn

Nine Princes in Amber set the scene. The Guns of Avalon raised the action, ending on a huge cliffhanger. Instead of following through, however, Sign of the Unicorn is heavy on exposition and character development.

To its credit, Unicorn starts with a hook of its own: Corwin's brother Caine has been murdered, and it looks like the murderer wants to frame Corwin for the killing. This dialogue-heavy novel is really a fantasy whodunit: Corwin is the detective, Caine is the victim, and their brothers and sisters are the suspects.

By the end, however, the murder-mystery aspect of Unicorn doesn't really pay off. Brand reveals who was responsible for imprisoning and stabbing him—but was the murder of Caine properly solved, or just left up in the air? I realize this novel is but one of a series, and was planned that way from the start. But I feel like a novel ought to be more or less self-contained.

What is the eponymous "sign of the unicorn"? Oberon once saw a unicorn near Mt. Kolvir, and it impressed him enough to make it the symbol of Amber. A sign is a symbol. Is that it? Or is it Corwin's own sighting of the creature, which leads him to a significant revelation?

Again, to its credit, this novel ends on a whammy cliffhanger that keeps me intrigued enough to look forward to the next installment. It's just too bad it didn't tie up its own loose ends first.

And that was Sign of the Unicorn, the third of the original five novels of The Chronicles of Amber. That means we're over the hump. Once again, I'm going to go on hiatus for a few weeks. Sometime around the middle of June, I'll continue this readthrough with The Hand of Oberon.

Footnote

¹ Quoth the raven, Footnote: On the other hand, does anyone want to make an argument for Edgar Allan Poe?