Michael Moorcock Books

In this short book Elric gets tangled up with the whole bizarre crew at the End of Time, Lord Jagged, Werther de Goethe, all those guys.

There is another Elric story where the Lords of Chaos give him a task to undertake.

The book also includes a couple of essays about Elric and others, by Moorcock, and also his Sojan stories that were written early on. Sojan being a Carter/Gordon/Kane type of interplanetary swashbuckler.

The only reason I give it 2 stars is because it is Elric. This book was complete garbage, and this from a huge fan of the series. I liked the "Fortress of the Pearl" and "Revenge of the Rose" books that were written after the original series. This was the only book I think I ever read that I actually stopped reading it about halfway through - I simply couldn't take any more. I did try, trust me I tried...

I really expected more from this one. The only good thing about it is the really short story about Elric, not the one with him at the end of time which is just strange and really lacks a plot other than resembling a D&D dungeon crawl. The other stories are not even worth reading. Not worth a lot of money at all. Keep your eyes open in used book stores.

This book seemed to me to be lacking the great rich adventure I have come to expect from Michael Moorcock.. It is not acctually a full book., It contains other stories that are not directly linked to the Elric Saga.. It is a very fine book. But I wouldn't rate it as highly as the first 6 books of the series., I have read them all.

This volume consists of several Elric short stories. The first, eponymous one, took me completely by surprise. It was an all-out spoof of the fantasy genre in general, and of Elric in particular.

Tongue planted oh-so-firmly in cheek, Moorcock spends almost 70 pages skewering his own melancholic albino prince. How can any true Elric fan resist lines like these: [To Elric] "You are very welcome here," said Werther. "I cannot tell you how glad I am to meet one as essentially morbid and self-pitying as myself!" Or Werther's first assessment of Elric: "What a marvellous scowl! What a noble sneer!"

Up until this book, I had been reading the Elric novels because they are often held up as classics of the fantasy genre, and because my brother said they were good books. But, while I (mostly) admired the writing ability displayed by Moorcock in the previous novels, I found them repetitious at times, the main character nearly always unlikable, and the situations often incomprehensible.

After having read this short story, I am ready for an all-out Moorcock assault. I plan to read some of the other "eternal champion" books, but mostly, I am determined to find Moorcock's other comedies, for which he displays an even greater ability than he does for fantasy. In the forward to this book, Moorcock states: " . . . though I do prefer my comedies to my melodramas and personally would put a greater value on books such as Gloriana, The Condition of Muzak, Byzantium Endures or The Brothel in Rosenstrasse." I can't wait for my next experience rolling-on-the-floor laughing with Michael Moorcock.

Dorian Hawkmoon and friends, and his new ally Orland, a relative of his ally the Warrior in Jet and Gold, must strive to gain control of The Runestaff, as the only means to save the world fromt he depradations of the Dark Empire and its nobility and even its mad scientist nobility.

While he would rather be hanging out with Count Brass and his daughter, that is not the Eternal Champion's fate in this multiverse.

Michael Moorcock, The Runestaff (DAW, 1969)

Ah, you may think the adventures of good old Dorian Hawkmoon come to an end with the fourth and final novel of the Runestaff. Likely, so did Moorcock (the fifth book in the series, the start of a new trilogy, wasn't released for another four years, while these four were released over a period of a little more than twelve months). Now, with everything in place, it's time for Hawkmoon and his friend Huillam d'Averc to seek out the Runestaff itself. Problem is, Hawkmoon isn't fond of the idea; he'd rather go back to Castle Brass for a spell and see the rest of his friends. In the course of his erratic journey, we meet a new main character, Orland Fank (the brother of Hawkmoon's longtime advisor The Warrior in Jet and Gold), a few brand-new monstrosities, and the like. The series comes to a conclusion that is surprisingly, in retrospect, satisfying; had Moorcock never taken up the pen and applied it to Hawkmoon again, readers of the series would likely have been satisfied with what's here. Well, perhaps "satisfied" is not the correct word; longtime fans of the Eternal Champion books will understand what I mean. In either case, a good conclusion to the series, and one of the more worthwhile books in Moorcock's vast (and expanding) repertoire. ****

"those who swear by the runestaff must then benefit or suffer from the consequences of the fixed pattern of destiny that they set in motion" - and Baron Meliadus of kroiden had sworn such an oath : vengeance against the castle Brass - that Yisselda count Brass's daughter would be his.Dorian Hawkmoon had of course been invloved in those wild and uncanny adventures nearing their end.

"those who swear by the runestaff must then benefit or suffer from the consequences of the fixed pattern of destiny that they set in motion" - and Baron Meliadus of kroiden had sworn such an oath : vengeance against the castle Brass - that Yisselda count Brass's daughter would be his.Dorian Hawkmoon had of course been invloved in those wild and uncanny adventures nearing their end.

A vast improvement over the previous book in this series, but still only mediocre. There were many imaginative elements, but it never really comes alive. The culminating battle is exciting, however, and the whole story moves very quickly.

Oswald Bastable is an English army officer, sent on a mission to the mountains in the Nepal region. It does not go too well, and sick and delirious he stumbles into a citadel that is rumoured to have existed for all time.

When he wakes up, he is several decades in the future and the natives are not disposed to be too friendly.

The alternate history that Moorcock proposes--one in which the colonial powers maintained and expanded their empires, scientific progress was retarded and great warships dominated the skies--is interesting, but the story he places therein is not very exciting and culminates in a predictable climax. In addition, the first third of the book, which explains how adventurer Oswald Bastable traveled to the future, is really an enormous non-sequitur. There is really no reason for the protagonist of this story to be a visitor from the past and, other than establishing that fact, nothing that happens at the beginning has any bearing at all on what happens in the rest of the story.

This is the first volume relating the adventures of Oswald Bastable, and is continued in The Land Leviathan and concluded in The Steel Tsar.

Synopsis:
Owsald Bastable is a British soldier sent to negotiate with a warlord in the mountanous regions between Nepaul, Tibet, and India. The year is 1902. In a citadel that the locals claim is older than time itself, Bastable realizes he has been poisoned and flees into the dark of tunnels beneath the earth, becoming lost and eventually succumbing to the halucinations of the drug. Bastable awakes with rotted clothes attached to his body, hails a passing zeppelin, and discovers that, impossibly, he is in the year 1973, in a reality quite different from the one you and I know.

Bastable finds a world where imperialism has survived and there is a tenous peace between the great powers. Airships patrol the skies, and efficient steam power has replaced the gas engine. To Bastable's eyes, earth has become a utopia, but he soon finds the cracks beneath the surface. Bastable transisitons from a loyal subject of the British Empire to an accidental revolutionary, fighting against imperialism.

I think:
This is a short, fast paced, and wholly entertaining book. Moorcock manages to balance early steampunkery, political arguments, and pop culture references (Mick Jagger, a revolutionary named Guevarra, and Lenin all appear in this book, while Joseph P. Kennedy, Ghandi, and Herbert Hoover appear in its sequel). Unlike other reviewers, I did not find the book too short. It does, after all, have two sequels.

I wholeheartedly reccomend this book. It is a quick, fun read, and cheap if you get it used on Amazon. Furthermore, anyone who enjoys steampunk would be well advised to read it, as it seems one of the earliest examples of the genre.

This book would probably be considered a forerunner or pioneering-novel in the genre of steampunk, being as it was first published in 1971 [1]. It is the first in a trilogy, of which the other two titles are _The Land Leviathan_ and _The Steel Tsar_. The entire trilogy is collected in a single volume, as well, entitled _The Nomad of the Time Streams_.

The novel is essentially an alternate-history book thinly veiled in a poorly-thought-out time-travel story. (There's never any actual explanation or even a surmise as to what causes the protagonist, Oswald Bastable [2], to become unstuck in time.)

Synopsis w/o spoilers: A man from 1902 is thrown forward to an alternate 1973, in which Imperialism is the dominant politial model for the world's superpowers. Technology has developed, as in Turtledove and Dreyfuss' _The Two Georges_, at a leisurely "British" pace, with zeppelins being the predominant form of airtravel. Bastable becomes embroiled in a revolutionary coup led by a modern asian "Alexander", a half Chinese half-English warlord whose dreams of overthrowing imperial rule are complemented by his cultivation of scientific advancements and artistic freedom. A couple of "real people" characters (a "Michael Jagger" who's an ordinary airshipman, Vladimir Ilyitch Ulianov (i.e., Lenin) as an old doddering "mentor" of sorts to the Warlord, and a character which in my edition bears the surname "Guevara" but is apparently in other editions known as Rudolph von Dutschke), but largely speculative fiction. Twenty-first century readers may find the occasional use of racist slang terms by the Imperialists offensive, though contextually/historically they make "sense," as it were.

Lots of air battles between fleets of blimps and the like, though at 175 pages, Moorcock attempts to cram too much into too short of a novel. There's hardly any character development, and a lot of political agenda, but the tech is interesting and a lot of the cultural speculation is intriguing.

[1] Unless you want to make a case that steampunk goes back as far as, say, HG Wells and/or Jules Verne, which i suppose you could. I digress.

[2] Incidentally, Bastable first appeared in literature as a child in a couple of Victorian novelist E. Nesbit's novels.

An excellent novel, a delightful throwback to late Victorian fiction filled with cameo appearances and pop culture references. Definitely worth the read.

In this book, Michael Moorcock, being of the breed of fantasy author who has tried so desperately to come off as a "real" writer because everyone looks at fantasy writers as juvenille hacks, discusses at length his windbag opinions about the current state of fantasy fiction as well as its past. The essays contained within this book are long-winded, pretentious rubbish that should be avoided by everyone except diehard Michael Moorcock fans. This guy has the gall to bash guys like Tolkien and Robert E.Howard, thinking he's some kind of literary genius because of his teen-fave Elric books that are supposed to be so deep and introspective but in reality are nothing more than over-worded, whiny drivel unpalatable by anyone over the age of 25. Spare us, Mr. Moorcock. The Elric books are the only half-decent thing you've ever written, and you've been riding on the fame you accrued from them ever since. Get over yourself. You're not that great a writer and a little modesty would do you a lot of good.

I am a huge fan of Michael Moorcock's Elric series and because of my high opinion of the author, I decided to purchase this book. I was shocked to find that he was not a big fan of some of my favorite authors. He seems to have no use for H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard who I enjoy reading very much. He also doesn't like Tolkien much either. He does back up his opinion with reasons that are well explained and after reading this book, I at least understood why he disliked certain works.

Michael Moorcock, Wizardry and Wild Romance (Gollancz, 1987)

Michel Moorcock would be, it seems, the obvious choice to produce a critical work on epic fantasy. After all, he's written more of it than jut about any living author, or he had at the time this book was commissioned, ten years before its release, after the publication of his article "Epic Pooh" in 1977. ("Epic Pooh," revised, appears as chapter five here, and is one of the true gems of this book.) Still an excellent choice, as most of the similarly prolific writers who have emerged in the shadow of Moorcock lack the wit and originality he displays in novel after novel.

Interestingly, this is one of his main criticisms of the fantasy genre overall, not just in the moderns but going back to the earliest days of epic fantasy. The book, which is far more a survey than a critical analysis, strikes a Paul DeMan-esque note in its willingness (perhaps too much willingness) to turn many of fantasy's sacred cows into shish kebab. What is refreshing about Moorcock is that, unlike most critics, he is always willing to suggest a good number of alternatives for each piece of overwrought, mindless fluff the public is willing to take to heart. (Moorcock seems to have a special circle in Hell reserved for the Inklings, the chief fantasists of which were J. R. R. Tolkein and C. S. Lewis, both of whom Moorcock roundly despises; he spends more column inches disparaging Narnia and Middle Earth than all the other writers he castigates combined.)

One wonders, idly, why a survey draws as much money as it does these days. I could probably pay a month's rent auctioning off my copy of this, a first edition/first printing. Odd, since the volume barely gets a few lines into page one hundred fifty before it reaches its conclusion. But mine is not to reason why. It's not worth the incredible sums it fetches from booksellers these days, but as a jumping-off point for readers of fantasy who are looking for ways to branch out into wider genre-specific reading, it's a pretty darned fine piece of work.

Most of Moorcock's jaundiced views on epic fantasy could apply to all types of literature, which is at the same time both the book's main strength and its weakness. One expects, when reading a survey, to see the ways that the subject's lineage relates to what has come before and what has come after (see Eliade's wonderful Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy for perhaps the finest extant example of how to write a survey on a particular subject), but Moorcock seems to have the underlying belief that writing in a particular genre should have the same strengths and weaknesses as writing in any other, or in writing that is genreless or transcends its genre. To some extent this is true; the best fantasy writers, like the best writers of most genres, do transcend what the hacks are doing and make their work into literature. Where Moorcock goes slightly wrong, though, is in not delineating the transcendent from the more satisfying genre tales. He gives equal weight to, for example, Terry Pratchett (whose work, while parodic, is still very much genre fiction) and Ursula K. LeGuin (who is the very definition of an author who transcends any genre in which she chooses to apply herself). Perhaps he is expecting the reader to be able to discern which is which. Not an unreasonable expectation, if you assume your audience is as widely read in the genre as you are. I doubt many fantasy readers, or for that matter many academics, are as widely-read in their chosen fields as Moorcock, who tosses out the names and critical overviews of fantasy works going back to the pre-Romantic period that have been out of print for a few hundred years as if he'd assigned them the week before while teaching a class on fantasy literature, and we are all expected to go down to the University bookstore and pick up copies of them. Would that we could.

Still, as an overview of what's out there, where both the aspiring fantasy reader and the aspiring fantasy writer should be looking to find the stuff that really is worth being influenced by, despite its age Wizardry and Wild Romance is still the definitive survey on epic fantasy. It'd be nice to see a second edition. I, for one, would love to see what Moorcock thinks of, say, Philip Pullman, Terry Goodkind, or Neil Gaiman. But the recommendations in here should be enough to keep me hunting down obscure titles for the next decade, and the approach he takes to epic fantasy is a witty and readable one. ****

If Michael Moorcock did not exist we would have to hire a committee of sages to invent him. But because he does exist we must hire the mob to shoot him. He is that necessary, that vital to fantasy literature as it has developed in the last century. His prose fictions suck eggs because they were so shoddily executed but he is a great myth maker - who can escape the great albino with the black sword? Combine that myth making capacity with an arch and angrily self-concious critical voice that does not quit and you have a literary personality that functions sort of like the bad concience of fantasy literature.
"Wizardry and Wild Romance" is a series of shot- gun blasts of thrills. Jeff VanderMeer's piece is school-boyish and dull but China Mieville opens the book with the buzz saw roaring and when Mister Moorcock makes his absurd but grand entrance we are in for a treat - a waspish yet sometimes indolently ecstatic praise and condemnation for some of the more serious works of epic fantasy written in history. Mister Moorcock has the voice of a school master - obnoxious, superior, lazy in its magisterial conciousness as it whacks the world of fantasy into quick form.
There are winners and losers here and the supremely confident Moorcock is not afraid to put laurels on heads (as in the case of Gene Wolfe and M. John Harrison) or cut or bludgeon those heads off (as in the case of the Inklings whom Moorcock despises).
When it comes to Tolkien Mister Moorcock is wrong but he is wrong for all the right reasons. Somehow the pseudo-Tolkien industry spawned out of the ambiguous shadow of Tolkien forces Moorcock to thrust his school masterly charm aside in favor of a left-wing radical standing up to organized oppression (which, in fact, it is) in the tradition of a Percy Bysshe Shelley tinged by a William Blake. Peculiarly fierce is his treatment of C.S. Lewis - a minor writer. Somehow Moorcock is so consumed with his rebel's hatred of sham and inauthenticity he overlooks the few beauties that make Lewis worth reading. Perhaps Mister Moorcock has Oedipal writerly rivalries with Tokien and his clan.
The book's supreme value is its knowledge of literary history pressed through Moorcock's own imaginative and critical fires - the fires of a fierce and wondrous regard for the creative imagination.
I truly hope Mister Moorcock's sharp and swift little tome changes the world. Anybody who wants to write real epic literature needs to read it many times.

Traditional fantasy isn't merely 'dwarves and dragons, magical quests and prophecies and little adorable elfs going off wandering'...and this fine book, in itself, disproves that idea that fantasy is based purely on Tolkien and 'the northern thing'. Wildly opinionated, interesting, extremely well written, this is a necessity for anyone who wants to go beyond the mass media fantasy that's become a formulaic waste of time. Excellent essays by China Mieville and Jeff Vandermeer are included.

Like other reviewers, I am sadly disappointed by this collection of work. I was (mistakenly) expecting science fiction, which this book is NOT. It's more literary reading, something I do not enjoy. This is my own fault perhaps as I believe now that misunderstood the title.

That however is not the extent of my disappointment with the book. While it did have a couple of excellent stories (perhaps 5% of those included), some work was far to esoteric for my enjoyment. Still others, I didn't understand at all.

This was supposed to be a collection of stories that describe 'apocalyptic situations' but, I felt like I was reading a collection bad poetry disguised as short story work.

I can't recommend it, but there are obviously people out there who enjoy this sort of work.

I was initially excited to discover the collection and didn't see how such a broad-based compilation could go wrong. I'm an avid reader of post-apocalyptic fiction, science fiction and futurism, so I'm no slouch, but this turned out to be quite different from what I was hoping for.

While a few of the pieces are good reads, so many of them are abstract, esoteric, or even reminiscent of the scribblings from slightly disturbed angst-ridden teenage diaries. There's no good "meat" here, no concrete scenarios, suspense or drama to drive fear into your heart and make your mind race. The circumstances under which "apocalypse" occurs are rarely even revealed. Even the subject matter is open to interpretation - "apocalypse" is made to mean many things, not simply the end of the world. Which it does, of course, but that's not what I was hungry for when I picked up this book. The book description should have done a better job of managing those expectations.

Perhaps if you are looking for a broad literary "treatment" of the subject, that kind of interpretation will appeal to you (or if you enjoy the just plain bizarre) then this collection is for you. It was not for me.

This is a fun collection of stories from some well known and serious talent (Gaiman, Lovecraft, Poe) and some newly minted authors. I found myself particularly amused by "These Zombies Are Not A Metaphor," the work of one of the new authors named Jeff Goldberg. I'll be keeping an eye peeled for future work from him.

Justin Taylor has put together a wide-ranging, mind-bogglingly excellent anthology about one of my favorite subjects. Every piece inspires. I couldn't recommend it more highly.

"THESE ARE THE WAYS THE WORLD ENDS--THIRTY-FOUR NEW AND SELECTED DOOMSDAY SCENARIOS"

This is a gorgeous book, from presentation to content. The selections are humorous, serious, simple, complex, and much more--thirty-four stories, some short, some long, make for a wide spectrum of apocalypses. Taylor, in the foreword, expounds on his conception of an apocalypse:

"It's worth pointing out that the word Apocalypse comes from the Greek, and literally means "a revelation" or "an unveiling." It can be used to describe cataclysmic changes of any sort. Revolution, for example, or social upheaval. [...] There are micro-Apocalypses that mark moments in our lives: childhood's end, a relationship's sudden implosion, Death."



The selections do span the gamut--some were written so long ago as to be in the public domain, and some were freshly minted in the late 2000's; some focus on religious upheavals, some macro, some micro; there are personal upheavals, student rantings, surreal recountings of madmen; and of course many take the reader through more conventional "end of the world" scenarios. And even with all that diversity, perhaps guided by the introduction, the theme of the anthology runs strong.

If there were a criticism I could make of this volume, that, ironically, would be it. I consider myself a bit of an Apocalypse afficionado--I particularly enjoy reading such stories, along with dystopias--and I would have thought that I could never grow tired of reading well-wrought incarnations of such--and these stories were all well-wrought and well-edited, there is no doubt about that--but this volume overwhelmed me. I was tired, even weary, by the time I had wended my way through the collection (and that in the course of several "sittings")..

The lead story, a piece of flash fiction by H. P. Lovecraft, starts the anthology out elegantly, and slowly. It warns you, implicitly, that you're in for some heavy reading, even if you're a fan of Mr. Lovecraft's writing (and not just his mythos, which more people are familiar with, and is much easier to get into third hand). On that end of the scale, there's also a piece from Edgar Allan Poe that is ponderous but worth an examination, entitled "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion".

Some of my favorites included:

"The Apocalypse Commentery of Bob Paisner" by Rick Moody -- This is an essay detailing the allegorical depths of the Book of Revelation with regard to Bob Paisner's life. The tone is both erudite and a bit delirious, and the piece as a whole is both informative and immersive--I found myself eagerly wondering where Moody was going to take us next, what dark or clinical humor would next be presented.

"Fraise, Menthe, et Poivre 1978" by Jared Hohl -- Another piece of meta-fiction, this follows a group of people through the more traditional trope of being the last survivors in a ruined post-apocalyptic city. What makes this piece stand out is the manic bent of the narrator and the push for the show to go on--the story weaves the primary narrative with a small handful of abbreviated stageplays that emphasize much about human nature, hope, and despair, while retaining a very human humor.

"An Accounting" by Brian Evenson -- An "honest" accounting of how one explorer fell into becoming a reborn Jesus and how he helps his flock survive. I don't want to say too much about this, but the voice is clear, the narrative is well woven and unrolls at a compelling pace, and other than, perhaps, the initial fanaticism he encounters, it is all quite believable.

"Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time" by Ursula K. Le Guin -- This is a clever set of abstracts that are ever timely and consider a novel scenario for the end of the modern-day universe. The shortage of time is pervasive, and this story is brief to give you a maximum pleasure for what it takes.

"Think Warm Thoughts" by Allison Whittenberg -- A bite-sized slice of apocalypse that is poetically poignant; every word counts.

"When We Went to See the End of the World by Dawnie Morningside, age 11 1/4" by Neil Gaiman -- This is the end of the world, everyone and everything together, through the playful, somewhat naiive eyes of an eleven year old. It's told in the vein of "What I did over Summer vacation", and is very evocative, sweet, and strange.

"The Escape--a Tale of 1755" by Grace Aguilar -- This is an elegant tale of a woman's love for her husband, religious persecution, and a prison escape. It is written with a very modern feel despite its age (originally published in 1844).

That's not to say I disliked the other stories; and on another day I would have different favorites, though there were some pieces that didn't work for me. But I hope this selection will help give you a feel for the collection as a whole, beyond my simple regard for it. In all, it's a beautiful collection, and I recommend it strongly, with the caveat that you may want to take it in small doses.

Even though the art in the comic may not please some of Elric's hardcore fans, the stories are classical early Moorcock, where action prevailed over quirkness or philosophical akwardness, the way a comic book sould be.

An essential buy for any true Melnibonean fan

The art here is decent, but that's pretty much where it ends. The story is thin, formulaic, and redundant. I never read Moorcock's books, but I only hope that he delves more deeply into the nature of the characters and world than this adaptation does. Perhaps the target audience here is the pre-teen set, but this is definitely not for adults.

If you're an Elric fan, this is a defenite read. Michael Moorcock creates a nice prequal series of how Elric builds up his skills as a a sorceror and emperor, all while struggling with Yrkoon whose ambitions are also well known. While of course without much deatail (it's a comic book!), the stories are packed with quick adventures that don't stray from Elric's overall themes. What's interesting, without giving any of the stories away, is that Moorcock throws a nice twist of Melnibonean historical twist into the lot too. We know snippets of how Melnibone rose to the great power of 10,000... these stories elaborate on that a good deal.

One negative I found in the book is the artwork. I'm not a fan of graphic novels/comics, so this is more just a personal stance. But specifically what I didn't like was how many of the characters are drawn. Elric is okay... but Tanglebones is short and stocky... Cymoril looks like a punk-rock cyber princess... and Yrkoon is BALD looking like Jean Luke Picard! Ha ha... so if you can get past these aspects, just enjoying the stories for the nice little prequals they are, this is a wonderful purchase.

I am a fan of Michael Moorcock. Specifically his Elric of Melnibone series...
He is a fascinating character - tall, albino, and is one powerful man.
Moorcock's graphic novel shows Elric as he is being trained to become worthy of being the next king. He is given super sleeping draughts and he goes on dangerous journies - and each time he gains power and knowledge.
He finds a great broadsword, which will be his bane and power in later books. Stormbringer. A sword that kills, takes the victim's souls and gives the holder soul's energy too.
In this prequel - Elric is a nice person and has a love - These dreams through time and worlds help us give some insight to the Elric we find in the start of the true Elric series - and if you are a fan of fantasy, especially Elric, you will enjoy this one.

Elric of Melniboné has slashed his way through a number of books and short stories since 1961. Even though Elric has had an interesting series of experiences, his history prior to the events in the novel "Elric of Melniboné" has yet to be the focus of a story. This graphic novel, which collects a four-issue release by DC comics, explains how Elric gained his powers.

At the beginning of this story, we see Sadric the Emperor concerned that his son is too weak to lead the empire. The dream couch tests will either kill Elric, or they will prove that he is capable of leadership. Sadric is not the only one who thinks Elric is too weak to lead. Elric's cousin Yyrkoon believes himself to have the ruthlessness it takes to lead the empire into the future, and he tries to influence events by following Elric on his dream quests.

Elric travels through space and time on four dream quests. The first quest helps explain how Melniboné came to be and how King Grome, the King of the Earth Elementals, came to be in Elric's debt. The second quest shows White Crow, the person Elric became on his second dream quest, inviting Arioch, a Lord of Chaos, into the world. The third dream explains how the Spirits of the Air came into Elric's debt. The final dream shows how Elric came to be chosen the King of Melniboné.

The Good: I enjoyed this story a lot. I enjoyed the story so much that I read it twice in a row. Though there is a lot of similarity between the dream quests, there are significant differences between the stories that provide explanations for Elric's abilities and behavior. I liked the artwork as well, though it did seem a bit too much like the style of DC Comic's artists rather than the kind of art that I think would match Elric's stories.

The Bad: I liked the art, but some details in the artwork seemed glossed over. How many teeth are solid bars of white? Other details that would have taken minimal time to include were also left out, enhancing the comic book appearance of the artwork.

I can recommend this book to fans of Elric. Though you do not need to have read any of Moorcock's books about Elric, it does help to understand what is going on if you have read several of the books. If you are a big fan of sword & sorcery you may also find this graphic novel to be interesting. I have read a number of Elric's stories and this book is a nice book to have and to read after having read the first books in the series.

Enjoy!

This not-quite-sequel to Moorcock's brilliant award-winning Behold the Man is actually a collection of tales told as remembrances of past lives, held together by a framework of identity-destroying depravity. In all, this book's literary quality is not quite worth the dreary mood it creates in the reader, as it drags you into the heart of hopelessness and insignificance. An effectively disturbing work, much like its loose predecessor, yet it does not have the thought-provoking plot nor the social message of Behold the Man to make the trip worthwhile. Unless you enjoy being depressed, avoid this one.

Well, not really a sequel to "Behold the Man," but using similar thematics and characters with the same name, Moorcock continues to explore the Glogauer archetype in a series of vignettes that don't build to one culminating picture, but stand well on their own. The other reviews here are misleading. They seem to think that Moorcock was going for a single character or something, and anyone who's read deep into Moorcock's multiverse (especially the Cornelius books) knows that these are a single facet that's been mirrored through a nearly infinite set of universes, and there's no reason to rely on consistency in the character.

I dislike a lot of Moorcock's writing, specifically the sword and sorcery stuff (which he claims is different from the rest of the genre, but looks the same to me) which he's tried to cut and paste into the rest of his schema--but the Glogauer books (Behold the Man and this) are two of his best. I recommend Behold the Man and The Black Corridor if you've never tried him, and if you like that, then go on to The Dancers at the End of Time books. Avoid books with rune, sword, or wolf in their title.

Strange but true: I got this book as a birthday present from my AUNT when I was 12. Had she read it, I'm sure her heart would have skipped a beat and she would have headed for a confessional fast. This is a dark, disjointed novel which should supposedly please fans of time travel but it doesn't. The main character ages year by year in each chapter, traveling from one depressing historical setting to another. Particularly unsettling is the chapter where he slaughters a whole Vietnamese village. Interspersed are passages on his growing sexual awakening--growing homosexual awakening, I might add: here I was reading this stuff at 12! By the way, doesn't the guy on the paperback cover look like Sting?

This not-quite-sequel to Moorcock's brilliant award-winning Behold the Man is actually a collection of tales told as remembrances of past lives, held together by a framework of identity-destroying depravity. In all, this book's literary quality is not quite worth the dreary mood it creates in the reader, as it drags you into the heart of hopelessness and insignificance. An effectively disturbing work, much like its loose predecessor, yet it does not have the thought-provoking plot nor the social message of Behold the Man to make the trip worthwhile. Unless you enjoy being depressed, avoid this one.

Despite Dorian Hawkmoon's best efforts, the Dark Empire is still expanding. It is growing so much he has to take extraodinary efforts to protect his own turf. Doing so, however, doesn't solve the greater problem at hand. Heroes are made to do heroic things, and Hawkmoon is the Eternal Champion, and the Sword of the Dawn calls.

A bit slow at the start, but the second half is very entertaining, and Moorcock's imaginative descriptions of strange worlds and peoples is always worth the price of admission.

At least it has the saving grace of being short. Our two heroes wander aimlessly from adventure to adventure in a series of dull vignettes.

Michael Moorcock, The Sword of the Dawn (DAW, 1968)

First, to get it out of the way: the worst, absolutely unforgivably worst, thing about the 1968 DAW edition of The Sword of the Dawn is its unforgivably bad cover. It's so bad I actually knocked half a point off the book's final rating. DAW, who usually came up with top-notch artists to do Moorcock covers, really dropped the ball in the Runestaff series, and this is the nadir. Cover it, school-textbook style, before reading.

That said, the book itself is top-notch, one of the better novels in the whole Eternal Champion cycle. Dorian Hawkmoon, reluctant servant of the Runestaff and another incarnation of the Eternal Champion, is off on the quest to find the last piece of the puzzle he needs to strike back at the Granbretanian army, an artifact called the Sword of the Dawn. Needless to say, getting his hands on it will not be easy...

The same cast of characters from the first two novels returns, along with some throwaway characters, a new villain or two, and all the adventure one could possibly want. As well, The Sword of the Dawn is set on a new continent in the purview of the Eternal Champion, Amarehk (yes, it is what you think it is), and Moorcock's descriptions of the city of Nawlin (yes, it's at the delta of the big river) are perhaps the most detailed urban descriptions in the whole series.

The novel could probably stand on its own without too much of the ongoing plot being lost, but aspiring Moorcock readers are encouraged to read the whole series (preferably after those of Elric, Corum, and Erekose, at least). ****

In an ironic twist, Jherek Carnelian and Amelia Underwood are now stuck at the beginning of time, rather than the end, or at least the beginning as far as the Earth is concerned.

Miraculous rescue happens, and they are again at the End of Time, but the very dangerous pointy end, and what has Lord Jagged got to do with all of this?

never in a million years could this book/series be made into a film!!!! the scenes where the characters change the scenery with their magic just to suit their fashion is simply amazing and Moorcock writes so imaginatively, you can shut your eyes and almost see the skies changing to pink and the mountains swirling about in patterns. The best thing about this book (as with any moorcock book) is that it is directly linked to all the other series (corum, elric, erekose etc etc) and reveals extra background information that explains a lot from the other books. The little latvians will make you laugh! To describe this book in one word.........colourful!!!

never in a million years could this book/series be made into a film!!!! the scenes where the characters change the scenery with their magic just to suit their fashion is simply amazing and Moorcock writes so imaginatively, you can shut your eyes and almost see the skies changing to pink and the mountains swirling about in patterns. The best thing about this book (as with any moorcock book) is that it is directly linked to all the other series (corum, elric, erekose etc etc) and reveals extra background information that explains a lot from the other books. To describe this book in one word.........colourful!!!

I have been a fan of Mr Howard for nearly 12 years now, which in my opinion, makes me a bit of a connoisseur, and frankly this book was a bit of a disappointment. Undoubtedly the contributing writers are well-respected and immensely able but their writing lacked the Howardian flavour I have come to love. Ghor's sudden personality shifts are hard to follow and the various ideas in the story lack sufficient depth. This book is not the way Mr Howard would have written it. Nevertheless, this should be read because the original idea belonged to the great REH.

Ghor is a nice blend of Conan and the Cthulhu Mythos together. Abandoned as a child because of a deformity, Ghor is adopted by a pack of wolves. Raised by them, he adopts the ways of the wolf, yet when he meets up with humanity joins them. Constantly struggling with his wolf upbringing and his human surroundings, Ghor becomes a mighty war hero wherever he goes.

This is an excellent adventure book that takes a Conan like hero and plots him against all sorts of evil (and good), including some Cthulhu creations as well.

Originally Ghor was an unfinished story by Conan creator Robert Howard. Upon finding this unfinished story, a magazine decided to finish it. What they did was have a different chapter every month written by a different top fantasy writer. It made the reading interesting.

While most of the chapters were great. Some were excellent. Unfortunately there were a couple chapters that I just wanted to get through to reach the next writers' chapter. Overall a really good read.

I WAS VERY SUPRISED ABOUT HOW WELL THIS STORY CAME OFF. THE VARIUOS WRITERS DID AN EXCELLENT JOB IN WRITING AN EXCITING BOOK THAT FLOWED SMOOTHLY. IT DID NOT COME OFF AS A SERIES OF SHORT STORIES. THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK FOR ROBERT E. HOWARD FANS, AND FANS OF FANTASY IN GENERAL.