9 Princes in Amber: Ch. 2
Apr. 2nd, 2025 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chroniclingamberChapter two continues with the curt noir vibe. “Carl Corey” briskly summarizes his trip to town. He’s got a lot of time to kill and needs to replace… everything. He’s got nothing but the shirt on his back and it’s not even HIS shirt. It’s interesting what he feels the need to note – the bacon’s greasy, he enumerates every item he purchases. He doesn’t note anyone around him, or any conversation he might over hear. we don’t know what the diner’s like or how the sales people treat him. He’s very self contained.
He does note that nobody’s looking for him or following him.
Amidst the mundanity of greasy bacon and new shirts we get to see something a little alarming: our guy here has a horrific temper and he’s acted on it before. He doesn’t know much about himself but he knows that; that anger is a foundational aspect of who and what he is. We know he’s quick to protect himself and here he reveals what lengths he’d go to in order to do so – he’s willing to kill, to destroy, and has felt this urge before and possibly given in to it.
He’s not exactly a knight in shining armor.
He gets his mind together as he walks toward his sister’s mansion. It doesn’t look familiar, although SHE does. Zelazny describes her as
This is “Evelyn Flaumel” although we later learn her name is actually Flora (short for Florimel). Her hair sounds red in this description, which fits with “the color of her compressed smile,” but she isn’t grouped in with “the redheads” later in the books and while sunset clouds can be red the outer edge of candle flames isn’t generally so. If nothing else she’s bright, she shines, she’s beautiful.
More bits of memory come back to “Carl” as he talks to her, and we get the first glimpse of Fantasy as she mentions “Shadows” and the horrors they contain. And it’s been long enough since I first read this book, I was so young when I first read this book, that I no longer remember what it was like to learn that “Shadows” doesn’t mean “darkness caused by an object blocking a light source,” but instead means something else entirely.
Bits of memory start coming faster as they talk. He speaks French, he knows why there’s no wolves left in Ireland, he remembers his brother Eric and that he hates Eric, he remembers that Evelyn’s name isn’t “Evelyn.” And he manages to hide these revelations.
Zelazny pulls a neat trick here, where one character info-dumps but indirectly. We learn more about the family, although indirectly, and learn more about Corwin. His family doesn’t like him and he’s glad of it. He also is an utterly terrible judge of character, as we later see with Bleys (and Brand). He’s an unreliable narrator in general.
He also dismisses Flora through the book as being unintelligent but… she’s not.
References:
He does note that nobody’s looking for him or following him.
Amidst the mundanity of greasy bacon and new shirts we get to see something a little alarming: our guy here has a horrific temper and he’s acted on it before. He doesn’t know much about himself but he knows that; that anger is a foundational aspect of who and what he is. We know he’s quick to protect himself and here he reveals what lengths he’d go to in order to do so – he’s willing to kill, to destroy, and has felt this urge before and possibly given in to it.
He’s not exactly a knight in shining armor.
He gets his mind together as he walks toward his sister’s mansion. It doesn’t look familiar, although SHE does. Zelazny describes her as
“The woman behind the desk wore a wide-collared, V-necked dress of blue-green, had long hair and low bangs, all of a cross between sunset clouds and the outer edge of a candle flame in an otherwise dark room, and natural I somehow knew, and her eyes behind glasses I didn’t think she needed were as blue as Lake Erie at three o’clock on a cloudless summer afternoon; and the color of her compressed smile matched her hair.”
This is “Evelyn Flaumel” although we later learn her name is actually Flora (short for Florimel). Her hair sounds red in this description, which fits with “the color of her compressed smile,” but she isn’t grouped in with “the redheads” later in the books and while sunset clouds can be red the outer edge of candle flames isn’t generally so. If nothing else she’s bright, she shines, she’s beautiful.
More bits of memory come back to “Carl” as he talks to her, and we get the first glimpse of Fantasy as she mentions “Shadows” and the horrors they contain. And it’s been long enough since I first read this book, I was so young when I first read this book, that I no longer remember what it was like to learn that “Shadows” doesn’t mean “darkness caused by an object blocking a light source,” but instead means something else entirely.
Bits of memory start coming faster as they talk. He speaks French, he knows why there’s no wolves left in Ireland, he remembers his brother Eric and that he hates Eric, he remembers that Evelyn’s name isn’t “Evelyn.” And he manages to hide these revelations.
Zelazny pulls a neat trick here, where one character info-dumps but indirectly. We learn more about the family, although indirectly, and learn more about Corwin. His family doesn’t like him and he’s glad of it. He also is an utterly terrible judge of character, as we later see with Bleys (and Brand). He’s an unreliable narrator in general.
He also dismisses Flora through the book as being unintelligent but… she’s not.
References:
- “Sport shirts” were an informal style of shirt, often collared and button-down, with a square hem meaning you didn’t generally tuck them into your trousers. You’d wear them while playing golf or entertaining friends in your back yard, but probably not to an office job or religious service. One branch of sport shirt evolution is the polo shirt.
- “A Sullivan Violation” refers to the 1911 “Sullivan Act” which required permits to carry a concealed weapon.
- “Westchester” is most well known to nerds as the setting for Professor Charles Xavier’s mansion. However, it’s also the stomping grounds of Washington Irving and the setting for detectives Nero Wolfe and Trixie Belden.
- “Irish Mist” is an Irish whisky blended with honey and aromatic herbs/spices.
- Irish Wolfhounds are utterly massive slightly shaggy dogs. I mean, huge. They’re huge dogs. They also died out in the 1700s but were recreated about a hundred years later in a breeding program that used Deerhounds and Great Danes, which were believed to be descended from the original wolfdogs.
