After reading the awesome book series of The Corwin Cycle, I just had to move on to this follow up chronicling the adventures of Corwin’s son – Merlin. Several aspects of Roger Zelazny’s writing style that I loved so much in the previous book were the same here. Like the first person narration, the casual use of language complete with real life swear words and good humor. I particularly liked a sentient machine that Merlin built called Ghostwheel who calls him “Dad” – very cute.
But this is a different book from Corwin’s. It’s not as tight. The first one had very limited magic and focused more on character building. This is much closer to a traditional fantasy novel and has many more magical themes. This could have worked, but the story becomes too rambling for my taste. There’s no direction really and I got a sense that stuff was just happening without any good reason.
We get a deeper insight into entities we’d met earlier like the Pattern and Logrus and how they both oppose each other at a fundamental philosophical level. Amber itself isn’t the “ultimate reality”. We noticed that in the very first book itself. I liked the fact that Brand’s son was here too and while it initially looked as if he might follow in the footsteps of his father, it becomes apparent later that he’s not really a bad guy and was just reacting to circumstances.
I don’t feel sad that this book is over the way I felt depressed after reaching the end of the first one. That’s because I never really connected with Merlin. I wasn’t rooting for him like I was for Corwin who went through some really bad shit. I sympathized with his struggles and wanted to see how his adventures would turn out. There was a clear goal in mind and a specific mystery to be solved. With Merlin…I don’t know. Like I said, the story’s too loose without direction, he doesn’t truly suffer any setbacks and he’s not a sympathetic character in spite of being quite a nice chap.
Still, if you like the world of Amber you should get a hold of the Merlin cycle and read it too. It’s quite enjoyable on the whole and brings us back to some of our favorite characters. We also see more of Dara who was a big mystery in the old book. Along with that, some interesting characters like Frakir make it a fun read.