The Hand of Oberon

Roger Zelazny

Completed 9/10/2020, Reviewed 9/11/2020

4 stars

The fourth book of the Chronicles of Amber was better than Sign of the Unicorn, the third.  It combined the action of the first two with the introspectiveness of the third.  It’s prosy but fast-paced.  A lot happens in this book, and the intrigue is fairly intense.  Many of things we learned in book three are corrected as more of Corwin’s brothers and sisters finally begin to talk to him.  And the intrigue surrounds the possible apocalyptic end of Amber.  I really liked this book and am looking forward to the conclusion of the Corwin Cycle of the series. 

Warning:  Spoilers from the previous books follow!

In the last book, Corwin, Random, and Ganelon find the primal Pattern on which all of Amber and the Shadows are derived.  They discover that it has been damaged and this is what has created the Black Road that allows the creatures of Chaos to come through.  The damage has been caused by spilt blood.  They conclude that it was the blood of Martin, Random’s son, because they find a tarot card with Martin’s picture on it with a dagger through it.  They also realize by the style of the card that it was Brand’s card.  Random and Ganelon go searching for Martin to see if he’s still alive and Corwin tries to find out how to mend the Pattern.  He goes back to the dungeon where he was once held captive, finds the design drawn on the dungeon wall and used by the sorcerer Dworkin to teleport.  Corwin goes through the design and finds Dworkin who is in a moment of lucidity.  He presses Dworkin to explain how to fix the Pattern.  It requires the Jewel of Judgement.  Corwin goes after the Jewel, hoping to get it before Brand who seems bent on destroying Amber and recreating it so he can rule reality. 

This book is definitely intense and very complex.  I’m grateful there was a detailed summary on Wikipedia to refresh my memory on some of the details.  The book’s strength is its prose, which is still very tight, even with all the exposition.  And despite being the fourth book in the Cycle, there’s still more character development of the secondary characters.  We finally begin to get a better feel of Julian and Fiona as they explain their roles in the intrigue surrounding Brand and Eric’s battle for the throne of Amber.  There’s also a big exposition by Martin who gives us the backstory on how he grew up away from the family and then stabbed by Brand. 

One thing I missed until I read the Wikipedia article is that Zelazny makes a cameo appearance in the book.  Corwin comes upon a guard smoking a pipe and writing a book.  As the guard describes the book, it sounds a lot like a general description of the Amber books.  I had gotten that part, but missed that the guard’s name was Roger.  I guess I was reading too fast.  In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious. 

I don’t have much else to add, as is common for me when I read a series, especially one as long as this one.  I’ll just say that I give this book four stars out of five and that I look forward to reading the last book today.  Then I think I’ll take a long break before I read the Merlin Cycle, which is the last five books of the series.