Prince of Chaos

Roger Zelazny’s 1991 novel ”

Chronicles of Amber, Book 10: Prince of Chaos

” is the 5th (and last) book in the Merlin sub-series of the Chronicles of Amber. Unfortunately, I’ve got issues with it. First and foremost, the book ties almost nothing up. Merlin’s “status” gets upgraded, but almost none of the questions left hanging throughout the series (or posed in this very book) get answered. Second, the ending feels rushed. And finally, an awful lot of the writing consists of fairly trite conversations instead of actions and discovery. My official integer rating is an OK 3 stars out of 5. But, since I’m not that happy with the book and how it ends the series, I’d really like to drop it half a star to 2-1/2 stars.

At last, Amazon has delivered the final volume in the great Chronicles of Amber. This is a wonderful and long-overdue volume. It is a bittersweet journey with its clever/naive main character. Join him as he completes the saga. Good-bye and hello, as always.

The first give books of the Amber series focused on Corwin, while the second five books focused on his son Merlin. Each arc was different but good in their own way. I think my biggest issue with this final book is that it leaves so much unresolved. I think this is not the authors fault, but due to his untimely death that we never saw more books in the seties.

What I love the most about the ten books of Amber is even though the various stories are disparate and they are told from the perspective of two different people, they still have the same feel and tone throughout. And while the ending of books five and ten left more questions than they answered, I still feel like I’ve experienced something magical by having read the two connected series.

It was like he had hit his quota for words and needed to wrap up the story quickly. Not very satisfying of an ending and a lot of loose ends. He should have just wrote another book and gave a better ending, but it was like he felt compelled to stop at a certain word count and a certain number of books.