Part of Series
Merlin finds himself in a marvelous bar drinking with Luke, the Cheshire Cat, and the Mad Hatter. He can’t help but feel that perhaps this isn’t . . . Normal. When the Jabberwock appears Merlin’s head clears just enough to realize that he’s caught in Luke’s LSD-inspired hallucination. When a Fire Angel, one of the most powerful, magical killing beasts in existence, arrives to kill him he realizes that he has to do something quick or both he and Luke are finished. The Jabberwock becomes an unlikely ally in his battle with the Fire Angel. And this is only the beginning of Merlin’s magical adventures in Sign of Chaos. **** Following the cliffhanger ending of Blood of Amber, Merlin is stranded in surrealistic Alice in Wonderland-esque bar where the Mad Hatter serves cocktails. Managing to escape, Merlin meets new family members - one of whom is intent on killing him. As events escalates, Merlin finds himself surrounded by his worst enemies including his ex-girlfriend - back from the dead. **** Method in their madness... Merle Corey, son of the great Prince Corwin of Amber, has been pursued through Shadow by unknown enemies and left trapped in an Alice in Wonderland world - a bar with the Mad Hatter serving and the Cheshire Cat grinning malevolently. In a dramatic escape from a monstrous Jabberwock, Merle embarks upon a fantastic adventure, leading him back to the court of Amber and finally to a confrontation at the Keep of Four Worlds. And here he learns the strange secrets of the Courts of Chaos and their role in his destiny... “A storyteller without peer. He created worlds as colorful and exotic and memorable as any our genre has ever seen.” —George R.R. Martin “. . . his performance was never anything other than dazzling.” —Robert Silverberg “Roger Zelazny’s work excited me. It was intoxicating and delightful and unique. And it was smart.” —Neil Gaiman Roger Zelazny was a science fiction and fantasy writer, a six-time Hugo Award winner, and a three-time Nebula Award Winner. He published more than forty novels in his lifetime. His first novel This Immortal, serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under the title ...And Call Me Conrad, won the Hugo Award for best novel. Lord of Light, his third novel, also won the Hugo award and was nominated for the Nebula award. He died at age 58 from colon cancer. Zelazny was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010.
Author
Roger Zelazny made his name with a group of novellas which demonstrated just how intense an emotional charge could be generated by the stock imagery of sf; the most famous of these is A Rose for Ecclesiastes in which a poet struggles to convince dying and sterile Martians that life is worth continuing. Zelazny continued to write excellent short stories throughout his career. Most of his novels deal, one way or another, with tricksters and mythology, often with rogues who become gods, like Sam in Lord of Light, who reinvents Buddhism as a vehicle for political subversion on a colony planet. The fantasy sequence The Amber Chronicles, which started with Nine Princes in Amber, deals with the ruling family of a Platonic realm at the metaphysical heart of things, who can slide, trickster-like through realities, and their wars with each other and the related ruling house of Chaos. Zelazny never entirely fulfilled his early promise—who could?—but he and his work were much loved, and a potent influence on such younger writers as George R. R. Martin and Neil Gaiman. He won the Nebula award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo award six times (out of 14 nominations). His papers are housed at the Albin O. Khun Library of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger\_Ze...
