Review: The Hand of Oberon

The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In Zelazny’s marriage of generic forms, the first two of this series mix fantasy with noir and the third mixes it with the closed-door-mystery premise of the cozy. I’m far enough along with the final one (and have some memories of 20 years ago) to get the impression that it’s a picaresque or quest: Corwin has to go on a trek to save the world.

So that leaves this one, the fourth. While Zelazny writes with much of the same strange mania as before, this particular volume is really a sort of grab-bag. Within the scope of the whole five-volume sequence, it’s crucial. As a book by itself, though, it’s sloppily plotted. We get more repetitions than elsewhere – more asides that catch us up on things that took place in the earlier books – and we have a series of short quests. The first part, for instance, has Corwin and Random discovering the depths of the true pattern; then they’re back. We have other quick jaunts, too. There’s the rediscovery of Dworkin. There’s the battle with Benedict. There are rotating suspects in Bleys and Fiona that depend on our caring more about some of these minor characters than we have reason to.

As a bottom line, then, I think this is easily the weakest of the original five volumes…until the end.

SPOILER: When Oberon reveals himself at the end as having masqueraded as Ganelon for the course of the books that have come before, it accomplishes two key things. First, it removes a growing complaint I’d had which was that Ganelon seemed too good to be true. He figured things out too quickly, and he’d even beaten someone up (Gerard?) which no mortal creature should have been able to do.

Second, it’s the kind of reveal that reminds us that Zelazny really does know what he’s doing. It’s clear he’s had this in mind the whole time, that he isn’t simply making things up on the fly. It’s not just that Ganelon has shown up and helped out; it’s that Oberon has always been backing Corwin, has chosen him early in the conflict and sought to test him to be sure. There’s a subtler coherence to the series than it had begun to seem. There is, I say in pointed fashion, a pattern, one that, within the books, Oberon has drawn.

So, I like all that, and I am renewed in my hurry to finish this. The series as a whole may not quite be as excellent as memory had it, but it’s still got some surprises.


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