A review by julius_light
The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny

4.0

And so ends the first half of the narrative. I'm low-key anticipating Corwin to address the reader more explicitly than a goodbye and hello, perhaps along the filmy of "Reader, I married him", to shatter the even truer wall beyond the nothingness that lies beyond the dark citadel. The emotions he felt after completing the etching of the chestnut blossom-inspired Pattern... those are the selfsame feelings the writer, or otherwise creator of fiction, has. I'm highly intrigued by the presence of Merlin, the son of Corwin, and wondering if he'll take the reins at the conclusion of Book Ten. With each successive novel I'm more and more convinced that Zelazny believes that he is writing the title of fantasy (I'm not sure I'd laud that position, but I do have five more to go and the fixations of Fate are steadily growing stronger in the burnished distance of geography). I was greatly saddened by Deirdre's (apparent) death, and I use parentheses because if we don't see a body, she's not 100% confirmed dead right? and the Unicorn came from the abyss, and it went back in! She can't be dead! Please! Sure, if I felt sad that means that Zelazny conveyed Corwin's love for her well; but there just wasn't enough. We only got like, what, two solid instances of interaction between the two? "I was always a sucker for that."