Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Pattern: Merlin starts this volume by breaking out of a locked cave, challenging a cave demon, and spending his rest period watching a battle at the Keep of the Four Worlds while chitchatting with a deserter. So much for idle relaxation - Merlin keeps frantically jumping from one death threat to another always avoiding the falling horde or slashing claws by a hairs breadth.

Blood of Amber reveals a layered series of plots all of which want Merlin either dead or under close control. Relatives, friends, and potential mates all are suspect while the fate of Amber hangs in the balance - and perhaps the fate of all that lies in shadow as well. For the alternate Pattern created by Corwin to stave off the advance of Chaos has begin to create reverberations of its own and shadow storms are beginning to wreak havoc.

At some point, the reader will realize that all the intricate moves that comprise the action in Blood of Amber are getting too rapid to keep good track of. At this point one must simply go along for the ride from wasteland to wonderland. It is the nature of Zelazny's writing that this remains fun, rather than dissolving in the same chaos that threatens Amber.

See Trumps of Doom. ( )

http://www.fascinationplace.org/2006/... ( )

From Publishers Weekly
Some fans of Zelazny's dense, brilliant writings from the '60s have been dismayed at the time and effort he has invested in his Amber series during the past 16 years. If these fantasy adventures are simple and formulaic compared with his best work, they have earned him a whole new audience by virtue of their elegance, humor, literacy, vivid action and lightly applied but complex background of tarot, alternate worlds, Olympian gods, and a magic so neat and clear that computers can learn it. In this seventh installment, the sorcerer Merlin of Amberaka Merle Corey of San Franciscolearns the identities of two would-be assassins but makes a truce with one to pursue the greater, more dangerous power beyond them. Once again, the limited plot is enlivened by Zelazny's irony, his bravura sequences (particularly a harbor visit that turns nasty in Death Alley) and his laconic sense of the incongruous (are magicians the ultimate surrealist artists?). Paperback rights to Avon; Science Fiction Book Club main selection.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc ( )

Merlin has been imprisoned by Luke, but he escapes. He tries a different tack by do something nice for Luke, and ends in a crazy situation due to a weird Trump.

Those Trump things are just a lot of trouble, too many frequently encountered variant edition and different versions. Bad enough using them, imagine trying to collect them!

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2006/11... ( )