Elric: In the Dream Realms (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melnibone #5)

Horrible waste of an evening.

Horrible waste of an evening, in retrospect I should have taken my wife out to dinner, vacuumed the carpets, went to sleep a couple hours earlier, anything else.

It should have been mandatory that they put in big letters on the back that none of the stories are remotely related except for the characters.
A thing I found truly irritating was that most of the stories are inconsistent about Elric and feel like there was two or three ghost writers filling in for the author.

Every time one of the stories started getting interesting, it either ended abruptly with little closure or ending, and then jumped to a different story, or went on a completely different path unrelated. There were a couple times I was flipping back and forth, trying to figure out what happened, only to then realize that the last chapter was the end of the story, that the author abandoned the story again and went on to something else without finishing anything.

Instead of being an epic tale or series of tales, it reminds me more of my grandfather's old rambling stories that have no point, reason, or entertaining value.

This is NOT an epic tale, and if this is the greatest writer of British fantasy after Tolkien the book reviewers need to at least put an ad up at a high school, I've seen better writing come out of an Architecture class.

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The novel above is half of Elric In the Dream Realms and it is one of his greatest early tales

"Fortress Of The Pearl". Lord Gho Fhaazi wants a position on the Council of Seven that rules over the city of Quarzhasaat, but he knows he needs help to overcome his rivals. He chooses Prince Elric of Melnibone as his tool to obtain the Pearl at the Heart of the World that will insure his spot on the council. To insure Elric cooperates, he poisons him using a slow acting agent in which he has the serum. Elric begins his escapades as the affluent class' minion the Sorcerer Adventurers try to prevent his success and eventually trap his mind inside that of a comatose teenage female, but with the Dreamthief to guide him through the Dream Realm, Elric continues his quest.

The novel above is half of Elric In the Dream Realms and it is one of his greatest early tales and makes the book worth reading. The short story "A Portrait in Ivory" is terrific also as the albino hero is confronted by his worst enemy, the mirror reminding him he should be known as Elric Kinslayer filled with remorse for Cymoril more so than Imrryr. The other entries like "Elric: The Making of a Graphic Novel", the essay "Aspects of Fantasy", and the background material of "Earl Aubec of Malodor", etc. target die hard fans of Michael Moorcock only. Overall the fifth Chronicles of the last Emperor of Melnibone is an engaging look at Elric In The Dream realms.

Harriet Klausner

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Michael Moorcocks's Eternal Champion.

Elric the Stealer of Souls starts a series of books collecting Moorcock's Eternal Champion cycle. The Eternal Champion is a character that is reincarnated in differant times and places to fight for balance between the forces of extreme Order and Chaos.

The first few books are about Elric last emperor of Melnibonie who carries the soul stealing blade Stormbringer.

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Elric

Elric: The Stealer of Souls is the story of Elric, the last of his noble line, and his travels. Elric has left his kingdom behind and is exploring the outlying lands with Stormbringer, his sentient sword. Being a dark fantasy, Elric's adventures are filled with horrendous creatures, evil beings and violent encounters. Moorcock does a fabulous job developing the characters and setting his scenes. The world he creates is well thought out and planned. There were occasional scenes that didn't quite ring true to me, but not so much that they seemed off. Enjoyable read and recommended to those who enjoy the genre, but those who don't should probably pass.

ELRIC: More complete than ever...

Del Rey's current release of Michael Moorcock's Elric was conceived as an authoritative edition of the Albino king, who is a a central incarnation of Moorcock's Eternal Champion. I've been picking these up as they come out to the tune of what is currently five volumes, of which DUKE ELRIC is volume 4. Leaving my starred-rating breakdown as a commentary on the quality of the work, I'll leave additional explanation here to qualify and elucidate my feeling on DUKE ELRIC, in particular. Some of these comments may be extended in general to my feeling toward the series as a whole, that being favorable. So, DUKE ELRIC. This book contains the text of a segment of ELRIC titled THE SAILOR ON THE SEAS OF FATE, which had appeared in earlier editions as a familiar episode in the ELRIC saga often represented as part 2 of the cycle. That it appears as late in the current edition as volume 4 illustrates a point: Moorcock, like Gaiman and others after him, allows reinterpretation of his ideas with ELRIC being a prime example. I've compared this text of SAILOR with that in the Science Fiction Book Club edition and found differences as significant as the addition and deletion of full paragraphs in the early pages, and British versus American usage differences in some word choices. That the current edition is to be considered authoritative may, I suppose, be accepted given the author is alive, has allowed this, and has provided essays and other material, some new. Further comparison of early pages shows this edition to match more closely the text included in the White Wolf collectible hardcover ELRIC: SONG OF THE BLACK SWORD for those who desire to know, although neither comparison is comprehensive. Further inclusions in this volume are text of an ELRIC graphic novel titled DUKE ELRIC, and part 2 of Moorcock's essay ASPECTS OF FANTASY, as well as other related material. I very much like this series as it contains a longer view of the ELRIC cycle than we've had in a uniform edition, with material as diverse as essays, graphic novels, early, rare art, and good, authoritative editions of the familiar text.

Sailor on the Seas of Fate

This particular volume contains "The Sailor on the Seas of Fate" novel in Michael Moorcock's Elric cycle. When I first read this novel as a kid I never really rated it (I wasn't keen on the Eternal Champion team-up stories) but reading it again recently it really impressed me. The story begins with our anti-hero on a stony shore, alone and on the run. Here's a slightly edited sample of the first chapter right from the top:

"It was as if the man stood in a vast cavern whose walls and roof were comprised of gloomy, unstable colours which would occasionally break and admit rays of light from the moon. That these walls were mere clouds massed above mountains and ocean was hard to believe, for all that the moonlight pierced them, stained them and revealed the black and turbulent sea washing the shore on which the man now stood.

"Distant thunder rolled; distant lightning flickered. A thin rain fell. And the clouds were never still. From dusky jet to deadly white they swirled slowly...

"The sea seemed weary. Great waves heaved themselves together with difficulty and collapsed as in relief, gasping as they struck sharp rocks."

Those last two sentences are quite possibly the best I've read all year.

The writing is crisp and assured and the pacing and structure are tight. Like many of his fantasy novels, however, it's perhaps a little too brisk at times for my tastes when the action and plot overtake atmosphere and texture. But when it is atmospheric, as per the quote above, it is suitably fantastic - in some places even disorienting, such as the distant far future in the first part of the novel which was reminiscent of those of Jack Vance and William Hope Hodgson.

If you like fantasy with a lot of flavour and have never read any Elric before then I highly suggest you push this series to the top of your list. It's a surprisingly light read too for all the detail and action. Although it's often violent and sometimes gruesome, the series is never as gothic as some of its fans make it out to be - and if that's what you're after you're probably better off checking out Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast" series. This is more along the lines of swash-buckling dark fantasy with a modern sensibility.

It's worth noting that it doesn't really matter what order you read the books because Moorcock wrote the end of Elric's saga about a decade before he published its beginning. Which brings me to another small criticism I have with this novel, and perhaps my only real one: while the beginning of Sailors blew me away, the foreshadowing at the very end of the novel (the last sentence or two) felt a little heavy-handed and slightly bathetic, especially as we all know how the saga ends. But this is a small quibble in a novel and and writer well worth your time.

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Kinda boring.

Kinda boring.

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