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Count Brass
'War, albeit with the Dark Empire, was clean compared to this ...' Everything that Dorian Hawkmoon ever loved will be torn away from him, its very existence and memory wiped out for ever ... The Eternal Champion must test the limits of reality in a desperate bid to regain a lost love. But first Hawkmoon, Elric, Corum and others must pool their strength - and their swords - to bring about the most mighty change in the order of the multiverse. Contains Count Brass, The Champion of Garathorn and The Quest for Tanelorn
- GenresFantasyCollections
416 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2013
2 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Michael Moorcock
1,204 books3,733 followersMichael 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 17, 2015
I'll be honest, the first two stories in this volume are a little uninspiring (though it's nice to have a female aspect of the Eternal Champion) but it warrants a 4 star rating for the final story alone. I often feel like I read Moorcock less for the individual stories and more because I love the epic, almost mythic quality of the saga of the Eternal Champion, and those stories where this is the focus, and where the different aspects are able to meet and interact with each other are usually the best.
September 7, 2023
Hawkmoon rides again - and this time across multiple dimensions and timelines as avatars of The Eternal Champion combine and fight together to save the Multiverse. Far less formulaic than many of Moorcock's earlier adventures, the three books herein get truly bizarre at points. Moorcock is daring enough to have Hawkmoon spend most of the second book as Queen Ilian of Garathorm, while in The Quest For Tanelorn Hawkmoon, Corum, Erekose and Elric lead an army of red-shirted companions (more than one named after Hawkwind musicians) against two great fleshy fortresses before Tanelorn is ultimately reached and musings are made on the culpability of man in creating gods.
A very fun read.
A very fun read.
March 22, 2020
Hawkmoon, champion of the Runestaff and the most bland incarnation of the Eternal Champion vanquished the Beast Lords of the Dark Empire and rules along with the daughter of Count Brass in Castle Brass, watching over the idyllic land of Kamarg. He mourns the friends lost in the final battle of Londra as he raises his children and tries to be a good ruler.
But no idyll can last in a world spawned from the imagination of Michael Moorcock. And so an apparition of Count Brass appears in the Kamarg Moors, accusing Hawkmoon of being his murderer. When Hawkmoon rides out to investigate, he is enmeshed in the manipulations of the Dark Empire's greatest scientists who seek to upset the timeline and bring about Hawkmoon's demise.
And thus starts the last chapter of the Eternal Champion sequence. Hawkmoon skips across timelines, but in trying to undo his friends' deaths, he causes further disruptions. So then further travel across the Multiverse is in order to try to undo the further damage; and so on.
The reason this volume fares better than " Hawkmoon" is, of course, the fact that there's a lot less of the titular bland protagonist here. In the second story, he is replaced by a different incarnation of the Eternal Champion, and the last part of the cycle, "The Quest for Tanelorn" is a rehash of the massive Eternal Champions' cross-over featured in "The Sailor on the Seas of Fate" as well as from the PoV from Corum--followed by the ultimate resolution of Erekose's story.
Although hawkmoon himself remains too bland and one-dimensional to be likeable, there's a far better plot framework there to support him. Because of this, he detracts from the book's quality far less. Of the 3 supposed conclusions to the Eternal Champion cycle, this is still the weakest. But it does add some important background to the story of the Black Sword and everything else that's part of this fascinating cosmology.
But no idyll can last in a world spawned from the imagination of Michael Moorcock. And so an apparition of Count Brass appears in the Kamarg Moors, accusing Hawkmoon of being his murderer. When Hawkmoon rides out to investigate, he is enmeshed in the manipulations of the Dark Empire's greatest scientists who seek to upset the timeline and bring about Hawkmoon's demise.
And thus starts the last chapter of the Eternal Champion sequence. Hawkmoon skips across timelines, but in trying to undo his friends' deaths, he causes further disruptions. So then further travel across the Multiverse is in order to try to undo the further damage; and so on.
The reason this volume fares better than " Hawkmoon" is, of course, the fact that there's a lot less of the titular bland protagonist here. In the second story, he is replaced by a different incarnation of the Eternal Champion, and the last part of the cycle, "The Quest for Tanelorn" is a rehash of the massive Eternal Champions' cross-over featured in "The Sailor on the Seas of Fate" as well as from the PoV from Corum--followed by the ultimate resolution of Erekose's story.
Although hawkmoon himself remains too bland and one-dimensional to be likeable, there's a far better plot framework there to support him. Because of this, he detracts from the book's quality far less. Of the 3 supposed conclusions to the Eternal Champion cycle, this is still the weakest. But it does add some important background to the story of the Black Sword and everything else that's part of this fascinating cosmology.
July 22, 2023
Count Brass is a great addition to the adventures of Dorian Hawkmoon and Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion mythos. This novel is separated into 3 books: Count Brass, The Champion of Garathorm, and The Quest for Tanelorn. The characters and over-arching plot are interesting throughout the 3 stories, The Quest for Tanelorn is an alternative perspective of the Moorcock's Sailors on The Seas of Fate, which has deep implications to the multiverse setting. Hawkmoon: Count Brass engrossing and deep in a simple way.
July 12, 2024
Of the three short novels in this collection, only the third one is of any interest as it is the self-proclaimed last novel in the Eternal Champion cycle. However, even that isn't enough to keep this collection interesting. Hawkmoon is the foe of Granbretan, the Dark Empire, and without that foe, he is uninteresting. The first novel has some leftover story bits from the Dark Empire, but it doesn't rise to the level of the earlier stories. In the final two novels, Hawkmoon is used in more of an Elric fashion... without hitting the highmarks Elric gets.
August 29, 2015
A Quick Review of Count Brass I enjoyed the writing but I suspect three stories are a little dated now - but I see why I enjoyed them when I was just getting into sff!
June 29, 2020
I don’t know, maybe no one needs to read this kind of thing. Go Dancers at the End of Time or go home
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews