chroniclingamber

9 Princes in Amber: Ch. 8

Sun, 18 May 2025 02:37:37 GMT

There’s only 10 chapters in this novel and we’re already on chapter 8.

There are ten books total, 5 per “chronicle.” One’s told from the point of view of Corwin, the second is from the point of view of his son, Merlin.

Each five book cycle is about the size of a modern fantasy doorstopper. We need shorter books, quite frankly. Am I just old? Maybe I’m just old. We were lucky enough to be able to watch “Vampire Hunter D” in theaters recently and that movie is a slim 80 minutes long and that’s a good length for a film. Efficient. No padding, no filler.

Can we get back to that?

Can we get more books the length of “The Hobbit”?

Anyway.

Corwin’s in jail. More than that, he’s in a dungeon. It’s dark, it’s cold, it stinks, he gets some bread and water and a little meat and no cigarettes but has no idea how much time has passed. Underfeeding someone is a great way to control them. A regiment of guards comes and takes Corwin someplace to get cleaned up and dressed in clothing befitting his rank, his colors and his sigil, and he goes along with it because there’s so many of them and he’s not FULLY a fool. Just mostly. He’s taken to a smith and he’s manacled and chained and lead through the great castle. He mentions passing “through rooms where we had played as children.”

Obviously he and at least SOME of his siblings were kids at overlapping time (probably) and they played, possibly with each other. How do you get from kids playing with each other to adults who hate each other and are willing to hurt and kill each other? Not just some reddit low contact/no contact golden child narcissist who’s the asshole/who’s right and why is it me stuff. These are people who hate and despise each other, are fine with killing each other as long as it won’t piss dad off too much. It’s sad! It’s really sad. It’s depressing. I hate thinking about it.

Corwin’s brought into a big dining hall and is seated at the foot of the table, right near Julian… Julian who stood against him! Julian who fought him! Julian, who Eric still hates! Corwin sets about insulting Julian and being obnoxious; when Eric enters he switches his insults to Eric including getting off a zinger about Eric being at the foot of the table (because he, Corwin, is at the head of the table, take that! the table has turned!).

The whole point of having Corwin at Eric’s coronation is to have Corwin debase himself by crowning Eric. It’s pretty humiliating, and also one of the most human things is Corwin just… thinking about their dad wearing that crown. Ultimately Eric is crowned (he crowns himself) and gets his final dig in.

“Your eyes have looked upon the fairest sight they will ever hold… Guards! Take Corwin away to the smithy, and let his eyes be burnt from out his head! Let him remember the sights of this day as the last he might ever see! Then cast him into the darkness of the deepest dungeon beneath Amber, and let his name be forgotten!”

To my immense fury, this line was lifted for some dragon movie decades later.

Corwin’s dragged off and his eyes are burnt out, every bit of them including the tear ducts.

At some point he pronounces a curse on Eric and it’s a really… it’s a slippery thing that Zelazny defines and redefines over the course of the books.

Perhaps it was then that I pronounced the curse, or perhaps it had been at the time that the whitehot irons had descended. I don’t remember. But I knew that Eric would never rest easy upon the throne, for the curse of a prince of Amber, pronounced in a fullness of fury, is always potent.

At one point it’s treated as a thing that happens at death, like a death bed confession but a curse. But here it’s just something you can make happen when you’re angry enough, when you’re furious enough. It’s one of the ways that Zelazny depowered his god-like characters.

Corwin is trapped in the darkness, the filth, the cold. He has no way to clean any part of himself, his toilet is a hole in the ground. He has no way to judge the passing of time, which is extremely disorienting. He isn’t getting enough calories, he’s weak and has reduced stamina. This would affect his ability to escape. But even if he did escape without his vision he can’t walk in Shadow. He’s trapped in several different ways. He’s powerless on multiple levels.

At one point while trapped in darkness someone comes to his door – his old friend Rein pops up to give him food, clean clothing, and cigarettes. He was present at the coronation and avoided Corwin then, but now he’s risking his neck to try to make things a little more comfortable for him. He lets us know how much time has passed, gives a quick update as to what’s going on in Amber, and drops the little bomb that Random is also in a cell.

That little fink walked the Pattern in Rebma (which is physically and mentally difficult) to teleport himself and a crossbow to Eric to try and murder him. That’s my boy. It’s no piranha in a chamber pot but it’ll do.

His Rebman wife, Vialle, requests to join him. This says a lot about Random and the effect he’s had on Vialle. Remember, they were not a love match. Marriage to Vialle was meant to be a temporary thing, a punishment. It’s been something like half a year since he got married.

Corwin muses on Rein and their relationship. It’s a nice little but where Corwin is humanized. He liked to sing and carouse and he fought in defense of Amber. He had friends. He admits that Rein’s better at poetry and lyrics than he is, a pretty big admission. He eats and drinks and smokes and thinks and although he admits that he may have gone a bit mad he also has something to keep him going – a thin strand of hope.

See, he survived bubonic plague. He was temporarily blinded by cannon flashback. Later on he runs down a list of various small body parts he’d lost and regrown. And while he’s imprisoned? He regains the ability to weep.

Two men instead of a regiment of guards come and get him out of his cell. He’s bathed, groomed, deloused, and dressed in clothing that is too large for him. It’s the first anniversary of Eric’s coronation. It’s already been a year; it’s only been a year. Caine is still in favor.

Corwin is there at the coronation and not there. He is a reminder of what happens to those who stand against Eric. He’s defanged, declawed, helpless. This is where he is, and this is what’s become of him. Watch out.

He’s so subdued, so powerless, that they don’t even manacle or chain him. They just shove him in a corner while the festivities range around him. There’s nothing he can do.

He gets drunk and wakes up back in his cell, no doubt brutally hungover.

References:

Ermine, aka stoat, is a weasel-like animal that turns white in the winter. European royalty used to wear white ermine robes because 1) the color white was linked to purity and 2) since ermine are small it takes a lot of them to make a cloak, it’s expensive.

Greensleeves is a song dating from the 1500s and falsely accredited to King Henry VIII. It was kind of standard courtly old-timey music in period films for a while. The song “what child is this” is set to the same tune. It’s a Romantic song, played on a lute.

“A head of cheese” is hard cheese, not to be confused with “head cheese” (which isn’t cheese). I want to say that it’s a specific shape or size but it’s hard to find information about “head of cheese” as opposed to “head cheese” with the current search engines we have. Which, for you young people, is still way better than the search engines we used to have.

A carton of cigarettes typically contains 10 packs of cigarettes for a total, generally, of 200 cigarettes. Some larger cartons contain 20 packs. Corwin’s apparently contains 12 packs, and he somehow knows they are Salems specifically. Salems are filtered and menthol, and perhaps that combination gives it away? They weren’t the only menthol filtered cigarettes at the time, though. Anyway, he’s putting away half a pack of smokes a day while getting inadequate calories and god, the withdrawal he must go through when he runs out… !

Rein, as a name, means advice or counsel. It’s also, you know, the straps used to guide a horse.
“Thee” is used in some versions of the Bible so modern readers assume it’s a formal way of saying “you.” It’s actually a very personal, affectionate, intimate way of saying it. That was the point of using it originally! “You” was more formal. Anyway, Corwin says “thee” because Rein is his buddy. He’s not just lapsing randomly into pseudo-historic Fantasy Speak out of nowhere. Rein risked his life to bring Corwin food, sympathy, and comfort. That’s a big thing.

CARE packages are now just little packages of nice things that you send to someone. Some fluffy socks, cookies, a few bags of a regional potato chip, a book, a nice card, whatever. During WWII, however, it was a program to send food to Europe. That’s where the term comes from and it’s why CARE is all capitalized.

“Voices Together Raised” is a reference to something and I can’t place it, which sucks. There’s a scholarly article which touches on it, I think, but I can’t access it.

“Weirmonken” are… I don’t know… werewolves but monkeys? Weremonkeys? He refers to werewolves as “weir” previously in the novel.

“Durance” means “confinement” or “imprisonment.”

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9 Princes in Amber: Ch. 5 Pt. 2

Thu, 15 May 2025 03:35:48 GMT

Corwin has set one foot then another upon the lightning traceries of the Pattern and his memories are returning to him. To start:

I saw the paper skins and the knobby, stick-like bones of the dead of Auschwitz. I had been present at Nuremberg, I knew. I heard the voice of Stephen Spender reciting “Vienna,” and I saw Mother Courage cross the stage on the night of a Brecht premiere. I saw the rockets leap up from the stained hard places, Peenemunde, Vandenberg, Kennedy, Kyzyl Kum in Kazakhstan, and I touched with my hands the Wall of China. We were drinking beer and wine, and Shaxpur said he was drunk and went off to puke. I entered the green forests of the Western Reserve and took three scalps one day. I hummed a tune as we marched along and it caught on. It become “Auprès de ma blonde.” I remembered, I remembered … my life within the Shadow place its inhabitants had called the Earth. Three more steps, and I held a bloody blade and saw three dead men and my horse, on which I had fled the revolution in France. And more, so much more, back to—

Auschwitz was a large complex of concentration, labor, and extermination camps that the Nazis built in Poland. While it originally housed Polish prisoners of war and political detainees, Jews, Romani, queer people, and Soviet prisoners of war were soon brought there as well. This is where Josef Mengele tortured people to death under the guise of medical research. Corwin mentions General MacArthur, indicating he was fighting for the Allies.

Nuremberg was a center of Nazi power and influence. Nazi Party conventions/rallies were held there, the Reichstag convened there to pass the Nuremberg Laws which revoked German citizenship for specifically Jews and generally everyone not Aryan. It was the headquarters of Military District XIII, where tank engines, aircraft, and submarines were built. Later, the Nuremberg Trials were held there – Corwin mentions this jokingly in the first few pages of the book. Maybe he was there as witness, maybe he was there to give testimony.

Stephen Spender was an English essayist, poet, and novelist. “Vienna” is a lengthy poem praising the 1934 uprising of Austrian Socialists.

Bertolt Brecht was German poet, playwright, and later screenwriter. “Mother Courage and her Children” is one of his plays. It premiered in Germany in 1941, meaning that Corwin was in Germany in 1941.

The Germans worked on V1 and V2 rockets with, among others, Wernher von Braun at Peenemünde. It’s possible that Corwin was there as a spy for the Allies.

Vandenberg is the Vandenberg Space Force Base in the USA, started in 1941, meant to be a space-launch base.

Kennedy is the Kennedy Space Center, formed in 1962 – just a few years before the book was published.

“Kyzyl Kum in Kazakhstan” is known for its deposits of various precious things including gold, copper, and… uranium. It was once held by the Soviet Union.

The Wall of China is… The Wall of China.

“Shaxpur” is William Shakespeare. Corwin has an affinity for poets and playwrights.

Corwin was in The Western Reserve murdering and mutilating Native Americans. He “took three scalps in one day.” Is it possible he was on the side of the Iroquois and killing white settlers? I don’t know, I guess? But probably not?

Corwin apparently wrote the song Auprès de ma blonde, a French song written in the 1670s.

Roughly 100 years later he was apparently on the wrong side of The French Revolution.

Corwin then goes on to remember how he arrived on Earth.

After Eric beat Corwin up he dropped him off in a Plague-stricken London to die of the plague instead of, like, directly murdering him, which doesn’t really make sense in a rational way but these guys are just… over the top, in every way. They can’t just kill a guy, they have to torture them and let nature take its course to kill them slowly.

Even dying of bubonic plague Corwin manages to splinter peoples’ bones.

He realizes, as he keeps walking, that he was stuck on Earth without a memory since the 1500s… and Flora was there keeping track of him the entire time.

(In a later book, Flora states that it was HER Shadow, she loved it, and that’s part of why nobody questioned why she spent so much time there. Which begs the question of why Eric dropped Corwin there and if it was by design or not.)

We had spent much of our time in wandering in Shadow, or in our own universes. It is an academic, though valid philosophical question, as to whether one with power over Shadow could create his own universe. Whatever the ultimate answer, from a practical point we could.

One question is whether they walk toward worlds of their own creation, or whether they find worlds in their travels that contain what they want. This is never really resolved!

Random bad made it through the Pattern. Even Deirdre had made it. Therefore, I, Corwin, would make it, no matter what the resistance.

Ah, come ON. EVEN Deidre? So gross. He goes on to condescend toward her a bit more as he makes his plans. And what does he plan? Why, he plans to go home, of course!

So he can murder his brother.

Obviously.

He slips into a D&D campaign, lurking in secret passageways so he can break into a library and steal an arcane item. Because this is a non-stop sword and sorcery novel of COURSE someone comes in and Corwin ducks behind cover.

Then he realizes it would be embarrassing to be discovered so he pops back up.

References:

“Black Davy” very possibly refers to one of the Child Ballads, namely “The Raggle-Taggle Gypsy,” “The Black Eyed Gypsy,” and “Black Jack Davy.”

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9 Princes in Amber: Ch. 5 Pt. 1

Thu, 15 May 2025 03:21:57 GMT

Corwin, Deidre, and Random spend two nights skulking through the forest ducking patrols. On the third morning, running on berries and rainwater, they come to the beach – the “pink and sable sands of the great sea.” They need to find the marker on the beach that indicates where the Stairway to Rebma – Faiella-bionin – is located. “Faiella” is an Italian surname that stems from a Sicilian town (Failla) or maybe means “little Fairy.”

I’d assumed it was an Irish name, since so many of the names Zelazny uses in this book are Irish.

It’s apparently named after Oberon’s former one time wife, Faiella, who is the mother of Eric, Corwin and Deidre. She died tragically in childbirth with Deidre. I couldn’t find what “bionin” might be a reference to.

Our ~~heroes~~ protagonists find the marker they need on the beach and start toward it, leaving them very exposed. A hawk, probably Julian’s, circles overhead and hoofbeats pound the earth. They’ve been spotted, they are pursued. They make a run for the ocean and Corwin finds that they’re basically walking down a big staircase into the sea, and then under the sea.

“How are you managing to breathe?” I tried saying, and I heard my own words distantly.

“Relax,” he said quickly. “If you’re holding your breath, let it out and don’t worry. You’ll be able to breathe so long as you don’t venture off the stairway.”

“How can that be?” I asked.

“If we make it, you’ll know,” he said. and his voice had a ringing quality to it, through the cold and passing green.

It, uh, Corwin might know but we don’t.

Zelazny just handwaves big chunks of stuff. How do they breathe underwater? They just do. It’s magic. It’s elegant. Efficient. No wasted words. No turning a slim novel into a weighty tome with explanations of magic systems and the history of magic. Just accept it, the way we accept gravity and magnets. They’re fuckin’ magic. It just is. I love it. I love a complicated in depth detailed magic system too but this? This just IS. You have to take it on faith that it makes sense. You have to trust the story. You have to invest in things other than background details like how the magic works. It just does.

They get down the stairs, there’s a big cinematic fight with murky green light and blooms of drifting blood and maniacal laughter, and then they cross through the gate to Rebma and are safe among people who don’t wear much clothing, and have green nipples. Deidre greets Queen Moire and asks for help against Eric. Moire says she won’t send troops because that will fuck up her city, but also says she hates Eric almost as much as she hates Random.

If he was going to pay-whatever the price-for whatever he had done, I could see that he would pay it like a true prince of Amber-as our three dead brothers had done ages ago, I suddenly recalled. He would pay it, mocking them the while, laughing though his mouth was filled with the blood of his body, and as he died he would pronounce an irrevocable curse which would come to pass.

I just… I just need to point out… that the price he’s paying is to marry a hot chick. I just… seriously. That’s his big sentence. To be married for a year, to a VERY nice lady. Spoiler: they fall in love. Dang, what a horrific punishment. Poor guy.

Deidre does the talking because Corwin doesn’t know what to ask for or why, and Random will be straight up executed if he pushes even the smallest boundary. What does Deidre ask for? Access to power.

“In a place in this building,” she said, “there is a room where few would go. In that room,” she continued, “upon the floor, traced in fiery outline, there lies a duplicate of the thing we call the Pattern. Only a son or daughter of Amber’s late liege may walk this Pattern and live; and it gives to such a person a power over Shadow.” Here Moire blinked several times, and I speculated as to the number of her subjects she had sent upon that path, to gain some control of this power for Rebma. Of course, she had fai!ed. “To walk the Pattern,” Deirdre went on, “should, we feel, restore to Corwin his memory of himself as a prince of Amber. He cannot go to Amber to do it, and this is the only place I know where it is duplicated, other than Tir-na Nog’th, where of course we may not go at this time.”

This is a great introduction to The Pattern, one of the most important things in the series. Among other things it provides power to the people able to navigate it, the power to traverse Shadow, and in this case can heal Corwin’s fractured memory. Moire apparently didn’t know the genetic requirements for the trial, and has sent many of her people to their deaths.

We also discover what Random did to piss off Moire so much: he ran off with her daughter, who returned pregnant and heart broken. She killed herself after giving birth, leaving her son to grow up without any parents. Random didn’t know he had a kid, or else didn’t care. He certainly wasn’t involved in the kid’s life. At all. Because Random is… say it with me… the worst. His poor future wife.

Corwin, meanwhile, has a tête-à-tête with Moire where he mentions he lived in a place that he loved, and a few sentences later mentions that he loves Random as a brother. Moire is pretty shocked to hear this! A lord of Amber capable of LOVE? This is one of the big themes of the series, and something Corwin later touches on explicitly – the idea that he and his siblings are kind of emotionally developmentally arrested and take a long time to mature into adulthood. In this way it makes sense that Random is such an incredible asshole – if he were a human he’d be 15 and listening to Linkin Park and browsing incel forums.

Corwin and Moire fuck, and in addition to having green nipples she also has green pubes. It is VERY important that we know this about her. They go to dinner then and Zelazny continues the whole “Yeah, this is magic, deal with it,” as Corwin continues narrating to his unseen audience including discussing some of the practicalities of living underwave.

After we had eaten-and I had learned the trick of eating under water, which I might detail later on if circumstances really warrant-

“So what was it like visiting this strange and magical realm?”

“Oh, you know, stuff.”

Deidre's no better, though.

“Why is this part of the ocean, within the double of Amber, so different from waters elsewhere?” I asked.

“Because that is the way it is,” said Deirdre, which irritated me.

Like my dude, as you sow so shall you reap. But again, there’s magic! The world is magic! It just is! There’s no long explanations or history!

They start descending a long spiral staircase, but it’s such a long distance that they just… jump off and swim down which is such a great bit of real-world common sense levity.

It’s a nice moment before the Real Shit starts. Corwin sees The Pattern for the first time (in his memory) and it’s impressive. It’s also something that’s never solidly, cohesively described or depicted as Zelazny wanted to leave it up to the reader’s imagination as to what it looks like. Corwin begins walking it after a little instructional pep talk from Random and… the memories start coming.

It’s… a lot.

Corwin’s seen a lot of history.

Corwin’s taken part in a lot of history.

I’m going to go over some of his history in the next entry.

References:

Tir-na Nog’th is “Tír na nÓg” with a “‘th” appended to it. Tír na nÓg is the land of youth or the land of the young, a Celtic other world populated by gods.

Lir is the Irish God of the Sea, and also IS The Sea. God (the ocean) only knows where Benedict is.

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9 Princes in Amber: Ch. 4 Pt. 2

Thu, 15 May 2025 02:51:35 GMT

“What a surprise!” said Julian, in his slow, almost impeded way of speaking and a great hawk that was black and green circled and settled upon his left shoulder.

I always wonder what Zelazny/Corwin means by “impeded.” Gerard isn’t a smart guy and folks just come out and say that, and it’s ok that he isn’t smart. Is Julian just like… intellectually impaired? Trying to hide a stutter? Being made fun of? Does it really matter, in the end? He is, after all, another sociopath.

“I enjoy slaughtering beasts,” he said, “and I think of my relatives constantly.”

This quote is a badass quote. Like, he’s terrifying. This is dark. Brilliant. It also leads directly to Julian letting them go solely so he can chase them again.

Julian, of course, goes down like a punk when Corwin goes after him. He’s all ballsy menace… until he’s flat on his back in the dirt. Corwin takes him prisoner to pump him for information and Julian reveals that he’s siding with Eric just like… as the path of least resistance. Eric’s there? Fine. Might as well support him. Meanwhile Benedict might be dead because… nobody’s heard from him in a few years? Julian really doesn’t seem to care about his family, or his alliances.

He also doesn’t seem surprised to see Corwin. This is a man who takes things as they come.

Now, it’s possible that he’s playing it cool and he has Secret Info as part of a cabal he’s later revealed to be in, that he’s known for a while now that Corwin was still alive. But did Zelazny have that as part of his plan from the start? I don’t think so. The first five books of the series really feel like he was flying by the seat of his pants and making stuff up as he went along without keeping the most careful track of it. He apparently didn’t leave many notes, it just rattled around in his skull. This has lead to a lot of inconsistencies, some of them frustrating.

Corwin declines to kill Julian, showing him mercy. Random refers to it as guile, confessing that he’d have killed Julian himself but that they stood to gain with him being alive. In truth, it’s a demonstration of how living in Shadow for so long, not being Corwin of Amber but rather being Some Guy, has changed him. This is one of the themes of the series, by the way, the story of a man finally growing into adulthood.

“Staring downward through the smoke, I caught my first glimpse of that sea. Beneath the deep blue, almost night-time sky, with that golden sun hanging up there in it, the sea was so rich-thick as paint, textured like a piece of cloth, of royal blue, almost purple-that it troubled me to look upon it.”

One of the big reasons many fans are hype for a tv version of the series is to see the fight scenes play out. Me? I want to see the hell rides and different Shadows and Amber itself. I want to see the monstrous horse constructs and the stippled sky of Chaos.

We learn a bit more about Corwin – information about him dribbles out slowly, unfolds. He’s a poet, a singer, a bard maybe in addition to being a warrior. And we also see that Random has again altered things as they travel – in this case totally changing up their clothing. He even gives himself a hat! Corwin gets a cloak! One with a silver rose-shaped clasp, no less! Just casually magicking up some clothing. And, of course, he managed to summon up Corwin’s magic sword as well as one for himself.

The car finally craps out and they strike out on foot. They eventually leave the road, pride be damned, and night falls. They come across a bunch of men around a fire with a woman tied to a stake and when they realize it’s their sister Random… calls her a bitch. He doesn’t really like her – I assume he doesn’t like anyone. They wade in and kill all the guys and release Deidre and Corwin hugs her a little too much and she catches them up to speed on what’s happening. Eric, she says, is crazy. He wants to keep her a prisoner, or maybe kill her, for some reason. It doesn’t really make sense. And, again, is this Corwin being an unreliable narrator or is this just Zelazny dialing things back later on?

Either way, this is when Corwin realizes that the prize he’s “trying” for is the throne of Amber.

That’s a pretty big thing.

As they crouch in the bushes hiding from various pursuers and dangers Corwin decides it’s a good idea to drop his little “I don’t actually know who I am” bombshell. He seizes the moment to insult Flora a little more. Random goes all in on supporting his attempt at the throne, though.

Enter, at this point, some werewolves.

Raymond Chandler’s big advice to keep a plot moving was to have a guy with a gun come into the room. Zelazny follows a similar strategy in this book, only instead of a guy with a gun we’ve got some werewolves here. It’s another fight scene, and then our trio runs into the bushes again and plan their next big move. This move involves traveling to Rebma, which is the reflection of Amber (“Rebma” is “Amber” spelled backward) including a reflection of The Pattern… and a quick introduction to what that is and what it lets people in their family do. We also get the revelation that Random got up to something in Rebma and isn’t welcome there. He tosses out the phrase “your sister’s sister” and this dude is such a weaselly scumbag.

They travel two more days until they get to “the pink and sable sands of the great sea,” which sounds lovely.

References:

Roman Candles are a type of firework. They’re pretty showy.

“Thari” is the name of two different actual languages – one spoken among Irish Travelers (sometimes referred to as a mystic secret ancient Druidic language) and one spoken in Pakistan. In later books it’s revealed that Thari sounds a little like German to people on Earth.

“The Ballad of the Water-Crossers” isn’t a real thing, as far as I can tell, except for nerds who’ve written their own versions. And there don’t even seem to be that many versions. Where are all the filkers at?

“Dreck” means garbage, or dirt, or poop.

“Ill Met By Moonlight” is a Shakespearean quote – Oberon says “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania” in act II scene 1 of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“Weir” is a reference to “werewolf;” these guys are werewolves or something similar

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9 Princes in Amber: Ch. 4 Pt. 1

Thu, 15 May 2025 02:44:47 GMT

Corwin throws the door open dramatically and Random staggers in, tired and dirty but fashionable. He reveals that he’s being pursued. He talks about “moving the plane around” as he flew, “trying to subtract them.” Again, he has a power over Shadow that we don’t see in later books. He reveals that there’s four to six people, and that he’d feel comfortable taking on two to three of them but six is too many. He’s just a little guy, 5’6″ and 135 pounds. Corwin’s surprised that a wiry short dude like Random would feel so comfortable getting physical with multiple people, and it opens the suggestion that he’s stronger than he thinks. Again, it’s a pretty good way of sharing information about how inhuman Corwin and his family are. He’s not just narrating thinky thoughts, he’s reacting to what’s around him and learning.

There comes a knock at the door, Random’s pursuers, and Random laughs, pulls off his tie, and grabs the previously mentioned saber from the wall. It’s not just decorative – Flora had a fully functional if slightly rusty sharp saber chilling on her wall within easy access. Random’s actions are pretty action-hero, got to say.

As they studiously ignore the knocking, debating what to do, Corwin asks if the maid Carmella might open the door. Flora states that she has “decided that is improbable.” In other words, she’s worked her will upon the likelihood, in that shadow, of a person doing something. Again, this is a remarkable power that doesn’t show up in later books – or else Flora is far more skilled in Shadow Work than she lets on. Random objects, stating “you don’t know what you’re up against.” The creatures following him are able to work their own influence on that Shadow – influence that allegedly was the sole domain of Corwin and his family.

Corwin does the utterly classic thing of opening the door, taking stock, and then closing it again. It’s both dramatic and darkly humorous. Again, this is cinematic stuff. The fight takes place and it’s an exciting one with huge dogs, gunfire, swordplay, and a little light strangling. Corwin and Random both show off how strong they are.

And then there’s the reveal about their assailants: they aren’t human.

They aren’t human at all.

Random, like Corwin, hates Eric – or else he does in the story that Corwin is relating to his as-yet unrevealed audience. He has the devastating line “of all my relations I like sex the best and Eric the least,” which I’ve seen attributed to Corwin more than once.

“You’re thinking,” he said while I thought, “’How far can I trust Random this time? He is sneaky and mean and just like his name, and he will doubtless sell me out If someone offers him a better deal. ‘ True?”

I nodded.

Zelazny REALLY wants to hammer it home that Random is terrible, and also the best ally that Corwin can scrape together.

And again, we see an Amberite- Random this time – directly control a Shadow that they are in and remain in. The dead bodies are gone, the blood stains are cleaned up, the window is fixed. They don’t travel to a different Shadow where this is the case. He just… does it.

The next day the brothers take Flora’s car for a drive and have the same cagey conversation Corwin keeps having, where he repeats lines he’s heard people say with a bit of conviction to his voice. Random’s a gambler, a card shark, but Corwin apparently has the better poker face. Corwin agrees that he wants to Do The Thing even though he still doesn’t know what The Thing is. He just knows that he hates Eric and something inside him wants The Thing It’s instinct – as strong an instinct as not trusting either of the siblings he’s recently met. Corwin makes small talk and mentions that Flora had tried to walk to Amber but had problems. Random is, uh, not… his response isn’t great.

“She’s a dumb bitch. She doesn’t really deserve to live, but that’s not for me to say, yet.”

Like that’s just… that’s just nasty.

And we come to find out that Corwin is a really unreliable narrator. So did Random really say this? Is Corwin portraying him poorly? Is Random trying to act tough and impress him? It’s out of character for future depictions of him but also there’s quite a bit of authorial retconning of the first book. And then there’s also the fact that Zelazny’s attitude toward women in his stories changed quite a bit over his writing career. It never became GREAT but it improved.

Corwin tricks Random into starting to move them through Shadow, revealing that one person can be physically propelling a group forward while another member of the group is focused on changing the Shadow. We also see that the person Shaping Shadow can alter the vehicle they’re in. This, again, doesn’t come up later in the series. Corwin knows something’s up, and it quickly gets WEIRD, but he pretty much takes it in stride. He’s still figuring out how things work, what things are, and he’s still afraid to say anything or ask any questions.

“Well, I’d heard him speak of “adding” and “subtracting,” as though the universe in which he moved were a big equation.

“I decided-with a sudden certainty– that he was somehow adding and subtracting items to and from the world that was visible about us to bring us into closer and closer alignment with that strange place, Amber, for which he was solving.”

Seeing this kind of magic as an equation, as adding and subtracting things to create reality, really does pave the way for Merlin and his computer magic down the line.

It’s interesting that Corwin looks to see if Random is doing something with his hands, as thought hang gestures or movement or whatever would somehow explain what’s going on. “He must be USING HIS MIND.”

They encounter some problems, of course, because they’re on the literal journey part of The Hero’s Journey, and that includes encountering some horrific stuff and also being run off the road. Random continues to be a fucking sociopath as he tries to murder the guy they nearly vehicularly manslaughtered. But it’s ok, because Corwin is a weirdo sociopath comfortable with murdering people over points of honor too. They lapse into a formal-ish High Fantasy way of speaking and cap it off with “well, whatever,” which I love.

We also once again see just how strong Corwin is. He’s not just strong enough to throw men around, he’s strong enough to pick up (half of) a car and carry it across the road. So is skinny little Random.

They stop to get gas and we once again see that Random is able to alter items that they have in their possession. Specifically, he changes their Earth money for whatever the Shadow currency is. Later, we see Merlin actively using the Logrus to make this sort of change. Random’s doing the bulk of the work here and Corwin acknowledges his efforts, praises him… which really throws Random for a loop. He’s very much The Youngest Kid, eager for attention, unused to praise. He’s quick to ask for payment, though: “A Regency.”

A regency can have one very specific meaning – the person who holds the throne until the person with the actual rights to the throne can rule. The position often involves an adult governing the country until the ruler comes of age, or a trusted advisor/family member holding the position while the ruler is away at war. However, a Regent can also be someone who governs a specific area of a larger kingdom. In those cases you’ll have several Regents who gather together to rule the larger area. It’s interesting that Random asks for a Regency and not, like, a duchy or something.

“Our parents had tried to discipline him in the past, I knew, never very successfully. And I realized. with that, that we had shared common parents, which I suddenly knew was not the case with me and Eric, me and Flora, me and Caine and Bleys and Fiona. And probably others, but these I’d recalled, I knew for sure.”

Either Corwin is remembering wrong or else Zelazny just… straight up changed this later. Or both! Random does not have any full-blooded sibling in canon (a sister is mentioned in “The Visual Guide to Castle Amber,” but that wasn’t written by Zelazny), while Eric and Corwin are actually full siblings – as is Deidre.

Again, we get a little more information about Shadow – We find out that The Forest of Arden is closer to Earth than it is to Amber, which doesn’t feel quite right to me. We also find out that an Amberite can track another Amberite through Shadow, so they can’t just run from the brother Julian because he’d be hot on their heels… or maybe an echo of him, a Shadow of him, would pursue them.

Let’s talk about Julian’s amazing horse-creature Morgenstern! “Morgenstern” is a German, generally Jewish, surname that means “Morning Star.” “Morningstar” is sometimes used to refer to angels, and sometimes specifically to Lucifer/Satan. Morgenstern is basically a horse version of a hellhound.

Horse height is measured in “hands,” where each hand is four inches. If Morgenstern is “six hands higher than any other horse” that means it’s TWO FEET TALLER than other horses. The average horse size is about 15 hands, so Morgenstern is… really big. That’s a big horse.

I don’t understand “his eyes were the dead color of a Weimaraner dog’s” because from photos I’ve seen they tend to just have… dog eyes. Very light colored eyes generally but… they’re eyes.

“He did create Morgenstern, out of Shadows, fusing into the beast the strength and speed of a hurricane and a pile driver.”

is lovely. This is lovely.

It’s also FASCINATING that Julian was able to create a creature, a living creature, a magical creature. And he’s created others! Morgenstern is “the fastest horse he has ever created,” implying that he’s created other less-fast horses. That’s just so cool! And also not brought up again!

Julian smiling and waving jauntily is just so perfect.

References:

Gabardine is a tightly knit, waterproof wool used to make outerwear.

Mercedes, or Mercedes-Benz, is a luxury automobile. Flora isn’t rich, she’s wealthy.

“All Roads Lead to Amber” is a play on “All Roads Lead to Rome.” Per https://italianstudies.nd.edu/news-events/news/all-roads-lead-to-rome-new-acquisitions-relating-to-the-eternal-city/ The proverb “All roads lead to Rome” derives from medieval Latin. It was first recorded in writing in 1175 by Alain de Lille, a French theologian and poet, whose Liber Parabolarum renders it as ‘mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam’ (a thousand roads lead men forever to Rome). The first documented English use of the proverb occurs more than two hundred years later, in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Astrolabe of 1391, where it appears as ‘right as diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome.’

The proverb’s origins may relate to the Roman monument known as the Milliarium Aureum, or golden milestone, erected by Emperor Caesar Augustus in the central forum of ancient Rome. All distances in the Roman Empire were measured from this point and it was regarded as the site from which all principle roads diverged. As such, artists such as Giacomo Lauro, whose rendition of the Milliarium Aureum appears in this exhibit, often used it as a metaphor for the intensely cosmopolitan culture that has long been present in Rome.

Zunoco is possibly a reference to Sunoco. This is kind of just… a vibes/gut check thing though.

“Wee covir the werld” is possibly a reference to an old Sherwin-Williams ad, a globe with red paint dropping down it and the slogan “cover the Earth.” Again, this is just a hunch.

Charles Fort wrote about Weird Shit like rains of frogs, poltergeists, UFOs, etc.

Esso bubble headed gas pumps were produced in the 1940s and 1950s. They were last manufactured in 1956.

The Forest of Arden is referenced a lot in folk lore and fantasy and Shakespeare set plays in it.

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9 Princes in Amber: Ch. 3

Thu, 15 May 2025 01:35:32 GMT

It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.

Corwin wakes up alone, again, but this time he knows where he is for all that he’s still working on who he is. He knows he’s in danger and he’s back to investigating. He heads into the library to take stock of the situation and luckily for him his sister has a big library full of interesting and memory-jogging things. He knows so much about himself without knowing himself, like the fact that he thinks better when occupied with other stuff. Zelazny again delivers information in a sparse, economical way. Corwin knows medical stuff, he knows sword stuff, he knows how to toss a drawer, he knows how to pick a lock.

What he finds in that drawer is a deck of Tarot cards.

Tarot cards are special cards that are sometimes used for playing card games but are also used as a tool of divination. Corwin et al are featured as the Major Arcana, or “Trumps.” Trump is also a card game specific term, where a card that usually has a lower rank is elevated to a higher rank. It’s why we have the expression “to trump something” – to defeat someone/thing or outrank, to win in some way, usually publicly. It’s interesting that Zelazny uses the term “trumps” instead of “major arcana.”

What’s unfortunate is that although Corwin uses the cards as a divination tool, and later we see a few examples of scenes directly referencing Tarot cards (a woman blindfolded and tied to a pole a la the eight of Swords, a youth suspended upside down from his ankle as The Hanged Man) we don’t see the tarot cards actually used as tarot cards much.

The cards give us the first hint that unicorns are important, as there’s one on the backs of the cards and not recognizing the import of it bothers Corwin. He knows that it’s a unicorn, sure, but he doesn’t know what it means… only that it does mean something, mean something incredibly important. They’re COLD which is fascinating, a detail that elevates them. They obviously aren’t just cards. It’s not simply that they were hidden, have a unicorn on them, and have weird super realistic and compelling art. They are cold to the touch. They are unearthly.

This brings us to another bit of info-dumping. There’s a pretty big cast of characters and someone like George R. R. Martin might just include a family tree in the back of his door stopper novels. Instead we get some family photos shuffled in front of us, impressions and observations.

It’s noteworthy that all the women are lumped together in one paragraph. Interestingly, moist and sad Llewella has green hair.

So cocky little Random was in trouble! I had a feeling it shouldn’t have bothered me especially. But now, he was one of the keys to my past, and quite possibly my future also. So I would try to help him, in any way I could, until I’d learned all I wanted from him. I knew that there wasn’t much brotherly love lost between the two of us. But I knew that on the one hand he was nobody’s fool; he was resourceful, shrewd, strangely sentimental over the damnedest things; and on the other hand, his word wasn’t worth the spit behind it, and he’d probably sell my corpse to the medical school of his choice if he could get much for it. I remembered the little fink all right, with only a touch of affection, perhaps for a few pleasant times it seemed we had spent together. But trust him? Never. I decided I wouldn’t tell Flora he was coming until the last possible moment. He might be made to serve as an ace, or at least a knave, in the hole.

Random here sounds like a REAL piece of shit, but don’t worry, he absolutely is. He doesn’t quite live up to his sneaky betrayer nature, but wow does he hate women. He goes through a pretty significant alteration through the books and in many ways it mirrors Corwin’s journey – he matures quite a bit, he grows and changes. But damn he’s a real piece of shit until then. He’s one of the better fleshed-out siblings, maybe because it can be fun to write terrible people.

One thing to note is that Random apparently can take shortcuts through the Shadow. He talks about taking a circuitous route, and avoiding “the wrong shadows.” They can not only travel from one world to another, but take shortcuts from one place to a different place within that world.

Corwin falls asleep (again) and wakes up when Flora gets back home. She’s tried to walk into Amber instead of Trumping there – which narratively allows Corwin to find the cards and also establishes that it’s possible to walk to Amber and that another Amberite can alter the path, throw up obstacles. It doesn’t really make sense. She has Trumps for Amber proper, for Eric, and for several other siblings. Why hoof it, unless she believes nobody would answer her call? She’d still be able to Trump into Amber, though. Zelazny digs into this a bit in a later book, but still.

Amberites being able to affect other peoples’ journey through Shadow, along with a few other things, pops up in the first two books and then not to often after that. In some ways, Zelazny powered-down his Pattern users. A character in a later book refers to Corwin as a sorcerer but he doesn’t really do much magic at all… especially compared to certain of his siblings.

Flora also refers to Corwin as “being in exile TOO.” This infers that she’s in exile, but she’s also keeping watch over Corwin which isn’t an exile-ish thing to do.

Another noteworthy Shadow-Magic thing that pops up like ONCE and never again is when Corwin muses about his age. He looks “thirty-ish” but senses he’s older than that… and that “Shadows would lie for me,” as in he could look a specific wage or what-not. Again, it’s a bit of magic that gets dropped quickly although later we get full-on shapeshifters and Corwin himself is directly descended from shapeshifters.

Corwin also mentions that at one point he and his siblings hung out together, all chill, with “no tension, no friction among them.”

Then Random walks in.

References:

Donner and Blitzen are the names of two of Santa’s reindeer. “Donner” means “thunder” and “blitzen” means “lightning,” as well.

Unicorns are mythical creatures. Now depicted as horses with single long spiral horns emerging from their foreheads, older depictions were more goat-like and the horn often curved or was like a single antler. Unicorns are attracted to purity, able to be tamed by a virginal maiden. Their horns can be used to purify poison and heal infection. While associated with (young, virginal) women they're associated with the masculine.

“Rampant” and “dexter” are heraldric terms. The unicorn is rearing up, hooves raised (“rampant”) and facing to the left (“dexter”).

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” a short story published in 1820 by Washington Irving, is a spooky story set in the Hudson Valley, near Westchester County. The locals have a legend about the ghost of a long-dead cavalryman who lost his head to a cannonball and rides at night searching for revenge. Ichabod Crane, the tall skinny arrogant outsider school teacher, sweeps into town and tries to woo a young woman from a wealthy family. The local who’s taken with her pranks the guy unceasingly. Crane finally screws his courage to the sticking place and asks the girl out. When she refuses, he takes off and heads home. While headed home a horseman with no head comes galloping up behind him and hurls his head at Crane. The next day, Crane’s gone from the town. It’s inferred that this was another prank, the “head” was a pumpkin, and Crane ran off like a coward. There’s been a lot of films and tv shows based on and about the story, which is especially popular at Halloween.

A lance is a very specific thing, and that thing is not a spear. If you’ve seen a knight on horseback jousting, that’s what a lance is. They’re about eleven feet long so frankly I don’t know how easy it would be to “lean on” one. Most of the art I’ve seen of this Trump involves a spear or a staff, not a lance.

“… the faint ringing and the ghost voices that indicate long distance.” is a poetic way to describe a real phenomena that once existed and does no longer. It’s something I experienced as a kid, up until the mid-00s with transatlantic phone calls especially. Just the very slight lag, a second or maybe two, and the pressure of a sound that both is and isn’t there behind and between the words of the conversation. It’s eerie and as far as I know it’s gone forever.

A fink is someone who’s unpleasant, someone who betrays people. A fink is also an informant, and “to fink” means “to reveal information.”

Ace and Knave refer to playing cards that have different values. Aces are either the most valuable or least valuable card. “An ace in the hole” is a hidden advantage kept secret until needed. It’s a poker term. A knave as a playing card is also known as the Jack; a “knave” is someone who’s deceitful, dishonest, a trickster.

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