Daughter of Dreams: Book One of Elric: The Moonbeam Roads

Elric Chronological Order #10

by Michael Moorcock

'My name is Ulric, Graf von Bek, and I am the last of my earthly line.'

As Nazism engulfs the Fatherland, the albino Ulric von Bek battles to keep the occult blade Ravenbrand from being taken by Adolf Hitler.
As an inhuman army engulfs the eternal city of Tanelorn, the legendary albino Elric, last of the sorcerer-kings of Melniboné, fights to keep his black sword Stormbringer from the grasp of Gaynor the Damned.
Failure for both puts the entire multiverse at risk, and the separate heroes of two worlds must now become the single champion of all worlds. Elric and Ulric mustmerge their lives and souls and become one, trusting their destinies to each other - and to Oona, the mysterious Daughter of Dreams . . .

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Dark Fantasy, Science Fiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2013

About the author

Michael John Moorcock is an English writer primarily of science fiction and fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels.

Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.

During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.

Reviews

[✘✘ Sarah ✘✘ (former Nefarious Breeder of Murderous Crustaceans)]

· Book 1: Elric of Melnilboné ★★★★★
· Book 2: The Fortress of the Pearl ★★★★★
· Book 3: The Sailor on the Seas of Fate ★★★★★
· Book 4: The Weird of the White Wolf ★★★
· Book 5: The Vanishing Tower (aka “The Sleeping Sorceress”) - to be read.
· Book 6: The Revenge of the Black Rose - to be read.
· Book 7: The Bane of the Black Sword - to be read.
· Book 8: Stormbringer - to be read.
· Book 9: Elric at the End of Time - to be read.
· Book 10: Daughter of Dreams - to be read.
· Book 11: Destiny’s Brother - to be read.
· Book 12: Son of the Wolf - to be read.

(Following the Tor reading order)

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best book by Moorcock in my opinion. The first half of the book is very slow, convoluted, and talky. This is one of those books where he is trying to tie together all his other work, and retrofit some elements, and while there are interesting ideas all the way through, it lacks the narrative power of many of his earlier novels. This book meanders a good deal, and takes its time to get to its main story. The last half of the book is very good, and the last quarter of it rises to the level of some of his other work. I like Moorcock's work but the constant rewrites and re-editing of everything has become confusing, and I do not know if it really adds to the oevre. Let the small contradictions stand, and keep moving forward creating new work.

[Simon Yoong · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather passable Elric / von Bek novel. My only gripe is that large portions of the first half seemed like a pointed barb at the evils of Nazism, so its somewhat preaching to the choir. The last third with the appearance of our favourite Melnibonean does wonders to pick up the narrative. Still a rather good read combining popular folklore and mythology into the Elric lore.

[Henry Szabranski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elric! Nazis! Gaynor! Hitler! Tanelorn! Battle of Britain! Bek! Holy Grail! Things Happening!

At times verging and sometimes crossing into self-parody, this is basically Gaynor's origin story. It is at its best when clearly beyond the bounds of our Earth. Yet a single chapter of this contains more imagination than whole epic fantasy doorstoppers.

[Luana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here’s a sorta-kinda Indiana Jones take on the Eternal Champion, with one of our latest incarnations being the most recent USELESS Von Bek who is very worried about the rise of fascism in his beloved Germany. Moorcock’s socio-political musings as well as his wry disgust for right-wingers make for some compelling reading, but once the epic fantasy bits start intruding on the “real” world, things kinda come off the rails. Maybe it’s Von Bek’s first person narration that rightly feels the nazis are an apocalyptic threat that doesn’t quite gel with Moorcock’s usual “just throw what the fuck ever at the wall and see what sticks” approach to storytelling.

ACTUALLY, the Lords of the Higher Worlds are way more scary than the nazis! Okay, I get that, the nazis are just human scum, but I don’t really *feel* that, you know? Von Bek gets tortured in a concentration camp! A real thing that happened! The battles he fights once he goes to fantasy land seem like small potatoes in comparison. I think a lot of this might have been averted (or at least somewhat softened) by having a dispassionate third person narrator. WW2 + fantasy is a thing that’s been done many times, so it’s not like the two don’t go together at all.

The Dreamthief’s Daughter by the way is kind of a supporting character, however cool she is. Maybe having an interdimensional traveler as the POV character might have helped too, just kind of dryly noting that “oh yeah, seems like the Lords have their human acolytes on this plane too”.
(The Battle of Britain being supported by dragon riders was pretty cool, I will admit.)

[Ted Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you read Elric: The Fortress of the Pearl? If not, read that before this book. Neither that story nor this one were in the DAW book editions.

I have a hard time calling this an Elric book. He is in it and is the Elric readers will recognize from all the other Elric books, but only in roughly half of the story.

The book introduces the reader to Ulric von Bek, who is strikingly similar to Elric. His story is in the 1930s of our Earth in the Germany of Hitler.

We see Elric through Ulric von Bek’s eyes and are taken on a wild ride through the Multiverse. Personally, I liked the second person narration and Bek as the readers proxy.

This book is better written than the earlier Elric stories from the 1960s & 1970s. Much more thoughtful and complex than the fun adventure stories he originally wrote.

[Mark Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nazis and dragons and Elric and the multiverse. Screaming blood hungry swords, the Grail and quite a bit of bloodletting. Creative, bold and entirely off the wall. An enjoyable Elric adventure that pulls different strands of the Moorcock universe together for a satisfyingly imaginative and fantastical adventure. Recommended.

[JamesPigden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Von Bek makes a good protagonist, and the book can match the stronger elements of Michael Moorcocks fast-paced fantasy, even when positioned against Nazis. The contract with Elric, and seeing him from a modern outsider view, is interesting. The book lingers somewhat though, feeling a little overlong.

[Winston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the parts that were set in Germany with Count von Bek, but the story because to loose and chaotic once the multiverse traversal was abundant. Glad to have read it and see more of what happened to the Dreamthief and her children, but I do think this would have benefited from a more focused and brief narrative.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnificent tale from Michael Moorcock, the fantasy master, although he did not enjoy his writing being classed as fantasy. This is a superb tale combining Elric of Melniboné with Ulrik von Bek. Moorcock at his brilliant, beguiling, majesterial best.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a 2013 revision of Moorcock's 'The Dreamthief's Daughter'. The original title was far more evocative so it's not clear why it has been changed.
Ulric von Bek, an aspect of The Eternal Champion and Elric of Melnibone, is an albino aristocrat in wartime Germany and heir to the von Bek estate and the black sword Ravenbrand.
His cousin Gaynor, now an officer in the SS, visits him one day and after a period of obfuscation, tells von Bek that the nazis want to take the sword into safekeeping.
Meanwhile von Bek is having dreams of dragons and his other self, Elric of Melnibone.
It takes a while to get into its stride, but Moorcock takes us, once more, into his baroque multiverse, with its Lords and Ladies of Chaos and Law.
Moorcock, like Asimov, seems keen to revise his work (at least his later pieces) in order that his canon can be seen as a homogeneous whole. By the very nature of Moorcock's multiverse it is an easier task than that of Asimov, whose attempts to combine the internal realities of his Foundation and Robot universes were on the whole unsuccessful and demeaning to the original stories and novels.
Having said that, it is heartening to see writers tackling social and political issues, and there is a chilling topicality given the recent rise in extreme right wing parties across Europe.
This is late Moorcock, and despite the fact that the quality of writing is superior to his frenetic output of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, there is some essential element of excitement missing.
Part of the problem is that the Science Fantasy of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies with its hybrid of Fantasy and SF, was a thing of its time. The genre has moved on, and although it still exists, is a very different beast. Readers familiar with Moorcock's early work will therefore get far more out of this than new readers. He is, at least here, preaching to the converted.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book brings to mind just how difficult it is to rate things on a single scale. It is imaginative and interesting, but it is unpolished. Problems were introduced and then quickly resolved through use of convenient magic, not usually by the narrator. Frequently either the protagonists or the villains would leave the scene at a point where they could or should have done something else to stop their enemies. But the whole thing moved at a good pace and was full of big enough ideas that the reader, or me at least, is sufficiently distracted that they don't much care about these shortfalls.

So how to rate this? Well I'm definitely feeling that I'll pick up the next in the series, and I did certainly find myself very keen to pick up the book again each time I set it down to sleep. But ultimately I don't think I'm likely to read this volume itself again, so on that basis I'm going to stick with three rather than four.

[Susanne]

Nggghhhhh. No. No, I can't finish this. I really tried, but oh, how the narrator gets on my nerves. And I must've missed the memo which said that this is alternative history, set during Hitler's rise to power. I'd never have started reading it, had I known. (Mind you, the action moves away from our own world relatively quickly. To an underworld peopled by the Off-Moo. THE OFF-MOO.)

No. Enough.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great set pieces that are to a degree underplayed, an effective repositioning of Elric, better than average prose from MM, and yet the whole thing felt slightly forced, and Von Bek Jr is neither a convincing German nor a convincing hero. I suspect if the author had written this 15 years earlier it would have been far rougher and have rocked.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most challenging books to read. However, after finishing it I am happy because of it.
I would like to read the whole series.