TORG and Amber

Moving on, at last, we leave the Planetary and take a turn in the direction of the cosmic. Our destination is Amber, legendary centre of all existence, and the only true reality. At least, that’s what it says in their press releases.

At the end of the First Chronicles of Amber, Brand, the mad prince who had nearly destroyed all of Amber with his schemes, tumbles over the lip of the Abyss, dragging Dierdre with him as he falls. He is grievously wounded, but that’s never stopped him before. And no one knows what lurks in the Abyss. It could be anything.

What it is, in this interpretation at least, is a Darkness Device. It finds Brand – or he finds it, or perhaps they find each other – and very soon, Brand has an entirely new understanding of the nature of Reality and Shadow. He now understands how to harvest the energies – the possibilities – of each and every Shadow. And fortunately for him, the generally unstable nature of Shadow in the wake of Oberon’s redrawing of the original Pattern and Corwin’s drawing of his entirely new one creates a pretty fair amount of background noise to hide in.

Even so, Brand has adopted a new alias to help hide from his family – especially the more vengeful members of it (Dierdre was rather well-loved, after all). And so the Gaunt Man, terror of a thousand cosms, is born.

But this cannot go unanswered. Someone will notice – perhaps Dworkin, Fiona, or Suhuy. And they will investigate.

Or perhaps the threat will catch Amber unawares – until Bill Roth manages to get a message to Corwin or Merlin regarding what has become of his Shadow.

The threat of a reborn and even more powerful Brand – and one with powerful allies such as the other High Lords – each of whom seems to be the equal of a Prince of Amber or a Lord of Chaos – cannot be ignored. It will dealt with decisively by Amber, and quite possibly by Chaos as well. There’s nothing like a common enemy to bring people together, after all.

But what will Luke, son of Brand, do in all this?