Sign of the Unicorn (1975)

With Eric dead and Corwin acting as regent of Amber, Caine's death and Brand's continued absense put additional weight on the crown. Corwin is suspected of engineering the murder and while he can proclaim his innocence, he agrees that he's a prime suspect. That is, until an attempt is made on his own life and only the fact that he was wearing the mysterious Jewel of Judgement spared him from death. He needs help and he needs answers - but perhaps even more than that, he needs to be able to trust someone... It's not easy. ( )

Boring, boring, boring, boring... Oh, cool surprise ending!

That's not enough, though.

Here, I'll save you the trouble of reading the book but I'll put the spoiler in ROT-13 so you won't accidentally see it. To convert, copy and paste the following gibberish into the foregoing web site:
Vg gheaf bhg gung "Nzore" vfa'g npghnyyl gur erny Nzore! Gung vf, gur ynaq gung gurl'ir nyjnlf gubhtug jnf gur Bar Gehr Jbeyq vf npghnyyl whfg n funqbj bs gur ERNY Nzore! ( )

Corwin finally learns the story of what happened to him in Nine Princess of Amber before he lost his memory, although each of his siblings has a different version of the story. Political and family intrigues continue as the children of Oberon jostle for the throne. This excellent volume ties up some plot threads while making you anxious to continue new threads.

https://sites.google.com/a/toonen.org/www/readers-advisory/3-Sign of the Unicorn.doc ( )

Sign of the Unicorn is the the third installment in Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber The hero of the first five books finds himself thrust suddenly into familial intrigue when a royal brother of the first family of Amber is murdered and another is stabbed. The book reads like an Agatha Christie novel, as we spend lots of time locked in a room, with several murder suspects, each a sibling, and each with the motive to destroy the Royal family, capture the throne, and possibly destroy Amber itself.
Corwin suddenly finds himself in his cabin, on old Shadow Earth, wounded, and is offered a healthy dose of information from an old friend.
I've noticed that Zelazny, at least in this series, relies heavily on visual input, and makes very slight use of any other of the senses in his descriptive passages. We often know what Corwin sees, but seldom what he smells, tastes, or hears. Thus, when the cast is moving through the Shadow worlds, it becomes vaguely sight-heavy, like reading a description of a late-era Monet. This happens especially when Zelazny describes the uglier passages among the shadows, called hellrides. Passages like the following paragraph:

"Silence and silver... Walking away from the rail, leaning on my stick, passing through the fog-spun,mist-woven, moonlight-brushed fabric of vision within the troubling city... ghosts... Shadows of shadows... Images of probability... Might-bes and might-have-beens... Probability lost... Probability regained."

Huh?

I found his use of ellipses tiresome, and the passages visually ugly and thus difficult to focus on his words.

Lots of this writing occurs in the last 40 pages of the novel, when Zelazny wraps up this installment of the tale with a three-man horseback ride through Tir-na Nog'th, the world of ghosts, might-bes, and might-have beens. Corwin is experiencing the deepening mystery of Amber's gradual crumbling.

The story is compelling, though; probably the best of the three novels so far. Three of the hero's brothers--Random, Brand, and Gérard--are fleshed out during the telling of the story, as well as a few of the sisters we'd yet to encounter. This was the first novel of the series I have liked. Zelazny is a gifted storyteller; so far into the series, he hasn't adequately proven himself as a gifted character-builder. Maybe the lead character is too single-faceted for my mind. I'll let you know what I think when I've read the fourth book in the series. ( )

As far as The Chronicles of Amber as a series goes, I think I have enjoyed The Sign of the Unicorn the most so far. Maybe it is just because, after three books, I am getting attached to the characters, have figured out the familial connections, and am accustomed to Zelazny's sprawling, surrealist world-building.

Sign opens with Corwin still new to the throne of Amber, and his brothers and sisters extremely suspicious of him. This isn't helped when another brother is murdered and Corwin is obviously framed. Trying to prove his innocence and uncover the real murderer, Corwin gets his siblings to join their power and has them rescue Brand, a brother who has been captured and held in captivity for many years. But when Brand is rescued, one of the siblings tries to assassinate Corwin.

Corwin finds himself back on the shadow (our Earth) where he spent his amnesiac centuries as a human named Corey. The reader finally learns exactly what happened to "Corey" to lead to the dramatic opening of the series, when he was trapped in the hospital with amnesia. Many other questions are also answered, such as why was Random being chased by those monsters in Nine Princes? The story finally begins to feel much more cohesive.

We learn which sides of the succession argument each of the siblings is on, even though Zelazny completely irritated me with his "of course the princesses don't count, they're too stupid to rule Amber!" Which seems especially inane considering some of the revelations in this volume, so much so that I'm left wondering if it may be a prejudice of Corwin's that will come back and bite him (we can only hope.)

Oh yes, and there is indeed a unicorn. ( )