Corwin has a solid team with him now: In section four of the Amber series, Brand emerges as a major character and villain. Brand is the brother who had been imprisoned for so many years, and finally in this book we learn why, and Corwin regrets ever releasing him from his prison.

Which raises a question for me. Why didn't Fiona tell her brothers and sisters about the danger that Brand brought with him? Why didn't Fiona explain why Brand was imprisoned? It really isn't enough to just say that Fiona didn't trust her siblings.

Zelazny is a master of storytelling in certain ways. He can keep us very interested. He can tell us a story from various perspectives. He can mislead us by telling the story from a villain's devious point of view, and then re-tell it from someone else's. He is the one to determine what we know and what we don't know.

This reminds me of what he does in the first book of the series, when he tells his story through Corwin, and Corwin has amnesia. It is Zelazny's way of controlling what Corwin knows, and what we know. Zelazny does it again here, telling us a story as narrated by Brand to Corwin, and then telling us the same story, only "the truth" this time, by a more honest sibling than Brand.

Throughout this book and previous books I found myself wondering about Ganelon. He's stronger and smarter than Corwin. He protects Corwin from a stronger brother. And here I thought that the sons and daughters of Oberon were so much more powerful than mere humans like Ganelon. Not so. Ganelon kicks some serious butt, against a sibling of Corwin. And it is Ganelon, all along, who is coming up with all the ideas and analysis. At the end of The Hand Of Oberon, this seeming flaw in the story is more than explained, and it is no flaw. When something doesn't seem to make sense, there is a reason.

I don't like the way Zelazny resolves his conflicts. One minute there's a whole heck of a lot of trouble, and the next minute it's over, something magical has intervened, problem is solved, thank you very much. The magic arm does WHAT? Oh come on.

It reminds me of something in the Lord of the Rings movies. One moment the good guys would be surrounded by bad guys, and it would be looking very bad for them, and the next moment the victory has been attained, the bad guys routed, and the good guys none the worse for wear. Remember when King Theoden was surrounded by wargs? Poof, battle over, no more wargs, we win, break out the champagne. Zelazny does that too. Hey, poof, we win, don't worry about it guys.

Another of Zelazny's tricks is to switch good guy - bad guy on us. This fellow is a good guy. No he's not, he's a bad guy. This other bad guy is a good guy now. Son of a gun.

Anyway, this series has finally graduated from three stars to four, as Zelazny's storytelling outweighs the things about his writing style that I don't like. What I dislike most is when he goes on and on telling us about shifting worlds as we travel "through shadow" or the incomprehensible style he uses when describing the ghost world. All the incomprehensible stuff leaves me cold.

Not sure what to think about the fourth Amber book, apart from that I enjoyed it quite thoroughly. Like the third book this one focuses less on the action and more on the intrigue, and contains twist after twist from the beginning to end, making it a real page turner.

At the beginning of the food we are taken into the "real" city of Amber, where the origins of the black road are discovered to be damage done to the pattern itself, and investigations are immediately underway to ascertain both who did it and how it was done.

During the course of the proceedings we get a deeper look into the character of the mad Dworken, and hints to his origins. Visits to the "Courts of Chaos" and the sky city "Tir-na-nogth" are also present in this volume, as well as further insights into the 'triumvirate'.

The fourth volume gives us a lot of character detail and seems to set up events for the final volume quite nicely, I'm anticipating a satisfying conclusion in "Courts of Chaos". ( )

See Nine Princes in Amber. ( )

http://home.comcast.net/~ktoonen/summ... ( )

Link to a review on my personal website (might be in Swedish). ( )