book review: Sign of the Unicorn

by: Roger Zelazny

Let’s get a couple things out of the way that have no good reason to be gotten out of the way:

I liked this book slightly better than the last one, so I’m going to give it the same rating but (on Goodreads anyway), round it up instead of down.

Second, this book ends on an actual cliffhanger.  The first two ended in ways that made sequels very clear but this one… this one leaves our MC and some friends in the middle of something kind of important.

Now that those are out of the way, let’s get on with it!  So.  The conspiracy is revealed!  Dun dun dun!  And it wasn’t anything I would have really predicted – but nor is it anything surprising, given the nature of Amberites and family ties.  I think Zelazny had a nice way here of throwing you off – especially with respect to who attempted to kill Corwin.  I’m going to have to try and distill it down for my notes so I can maybe re-use the pattern in some manner.  <.<

Oh, and [SPOILER ALERT] not much actually happens in this book.  [/END FAKE SPOILER ALERT].  There are two actual “things” (or Events of Importance maybe) that actually happen, so to say.  There’s a really fast rescue and someone gets stabbed, maybe not in that order.  In between all that there’s some talking and some movement and various pieces of information are acquired.  And none of this is bad!  I respect that not much actually happened here and yet I was still engrossed.  I’m really curious how these would read as like one or two bound volumes.

There’s also a very bit of weird fortune telling that provides some crucial (and vaguely foreshadowed) information that, in any other book, would probably have resulted in me making a pretty serious WTF face.  But, you know what they say – forget about it Jake, all roads lead to Amber – except when they don’t.  Maybe they don’t actually say that.  Maybe that’s too wordy and if they did run around saying things like that they wouldn’t get quoted nearly as much.  Then again, I’m not sister and your mother.

THREE AND A HALF STARS

Because it was lots of fun, and the plot continues to thicken in intriguing ways.