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The Elric Saga #3-7
Elric
Elric of Melniboné is the haunted, treacherous and doomed albino sorcerer-prince. An introspective weakling in thrall to his black-bladed, soul-eating sword, Stormbringer, he is yet a hero whose bloody adventures and wanderings through brooding, desolate lands leads inexorably to his decisive intervention in the war between the forces of Law and Chaos. This volume brings together The Stealer of Souls and Stormbringer, the first two published books of Elric's adventures, and confirms Michael Moorcock's place as one of the most important fantasy writers of our time.
Omnibus of Stealer of Souls (collection, 1963) and Stormbringer (novel, 1977 revised version)
Contents:
•1 • The Dreaming City • [The Elric Saga] • (1961) • novelette by Michael Moorcock
•35 • While the Gods Laugh • [The Elric Saga] • (1961) • novelette by Michael Moorcock
•73 • The Stealer of Souls • [The Elric Saga] • (1962) • novelette by Michael Moorcock
•119 • Kings in Darkness • [The Elric Saga] • (1962) • novelette by Michael Moorcock and James Cawthorn [as by Michael Moorcock ]
•155 • The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams • [The Elric Saga] • (1962) • novelette by Michael Moorcock (aka The Flame Bringers)
•191 • Stormbringer • [The Elric Saga • 6] • (1965) • novel by Michael Moorcock
Omnibus of Stealer of Souls (collection, 1963) and Stormbringer (novel, 1977 revised version)
Contents:
•1 • The Dreaming City • [The Elric Saga] • (1961) • novelette by Michael Moorcock
•35 • While the Gods Laugh • [The Elric Saga] • (1961) • novelette by Michael Moorcock
•73 • The Stealer of Souls • [The Elric Saga] • (1962) • novelette by Michael Moorcock
•119 • Kings in Darkness • [The Elric Saga] • (1962) • novelette by Michael Moorcock and James Cawthorn [as by Michael Moorcock ]
•155 • The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams • [The Elric Saga] • (1962) • novelette by Michael Moorcock (aka The Flame Bringers)
•191 • Stormbringer • [The Elric Saga • 6] • (1965) • novel by Michael Moorcock
416 pages, Paperback
First published May 10, 2001
21 people are currently reading
1268 people want to read
About the author
Michael Moorcock
1,205 books3,743 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 - 30 of 56 reviews
February 9, 2008
Hate to say it, but this bored me.
I know, I know, the Elric series is supposed to be one of those classics of modern fantasy, but I got about twenty pages in and all I could think was, "Jesus, this guy is emo." If he were living in the real world right now he'd be cutting himself and listening to Modest Mouse. He'd be wearing black eyeliner and getting beat up by the football team. He'd have a fantastically horrible MySpace page.
You get the idea.
I mean, I understand that the character was a major break from the norm - a warrior who was physically weak, a hero who was unabashedly on the side of evil and chaos, a character whose introduction to the world involved destroying his own homeland and murdering the woman he loved, the damsel in distress.
Still, I just wasn't interested in him, or his existential dilemmas or his evil sword. Well, the evil sword was kind of interesting and brought back good memories of the evil steel whip I used in my D&D days back in college. Ah, those were the days.
Honestly, I'm not sure why Elric didn't grab my imagination. Maybe because by now a lot of what was innovative in Moorcock's work has become cliche. Hell, I met the Elric parody character of Elrod of Melvinbone (in Dave Sim's Cerebus comic, back when it was brilliant and not insane) and knew what the joke was without having ever read an Elric story.
So, for whatever reason, Elric didn't do it for me. Go figure.
Moving on....
I know, I know, the Elric series is supposed to be one of those classics of modern fantasy, but I got about twenty pages in and all I could think was, "Jesus, this guy is emo." If he were living in the real world right now he'd be cutting himself and listening to Modest Mouse. He'd be wearing black eyeliner and getting beat up by the football team. He'd have a fantastically horrible MySpace page.
You get the idea.
I mean, I understand that the character was a major break from the norm - a warrior who was physically weak, a hero who was unabashedly on the side of evil and chaos, a character whose introduction to the world involved destroying his own homeland and murdering the woman he loved, the damsel in distress.
Still, I just wasn't interested in him, or his existential dilemmas or his evil sword. Well, the evil sword was kind of interesting and brought back good memories of the evil steel whip I used in my D&D days back in college. Ah, those were the days.
Honestly, I'm not sure why Elric didn't grab my imagination. Maybe because by now a lot of what was innovative in Moorcock's work has become cliche. Hell, I met the Elric parody character of Elrod of Melvinbone (in Dave Sim's Cerebus comic, back when it was brilliant and not insane) and knew what the joke was without having ever read an Elric story.
So, for whatever reason, Elric didn't do it for me. Go figure.
Moving on....
November 6, 2016
Don't start sledging me.
I wanted to like this book.
Michael Moorcock is a legend in the SF&F community, and his influence is enormous. One does not simply get commendations from both J.G. Ballard and Tad Williams. Ballard's quote promised greatness, but that greatness was not evident to me.
Elric is a throwback to those days when it was cool for heroes to be emo. He's a physically inaccurate albino who has the choice of either being hated and frail, a hated junkie who isn't frail, or a hated hardcore badass for whom women fall for the way ants flock to spilled honey, but has to carry around a soul-eating sword named Stormbringer. that's easily the biggest troll in the book.
Actually, women flock to him whether he's carrying Stormbringer or not. Go figure.
The best character in the book is Moonglum, because he's handy with a sword, good with banter and has a sense of joie de vivre that his emo mate doesn't.
Y'know, I wonder if Moorcock's famous dislike for Tolkien's work stems partially from jealousy. Reading this book, there's no doubt to who was the more talented of the two--Professor T.
In ElricMoorcock suffers from bad prose that reads like a poor imitation of Robert E Howard with none of the Texan's muscularity; underdeveloped characters (his women, in particular, seem clichéd, false and flat), and a failure to live up to what could have been great. Yes, I get the antithesis of Conan vibes about Elric, but they just aren't enough.
It's not all bad, though - Moorcock is ambitious and one story (Kings in Darkness) lives up to this ambition, remaining etched into my memory. It's not the worst example of '60s fantasy pulp, but you could do better.
I wanted to like this book.
Michael Moorcock is a legend in the SF&F community, and his influence is enormous. One does not simply get commendations from both J.G. Ballard and Tad Williams. Ballard's quote promised greatness, but that greatness was not evident to me.
Elric is a throwback to those days when it was cool for heroes to be emo. He's a physically inaccurate albino who has the choice of either being hated and frail, a hated junkie who isn't frail, or a hated hardcore badass for whom women fall for the way ants flock to spilled honey, but has to carry around a soul-eating sword named Stormbringer. that's easily the biggest troll in the book.
Actually, women flock to him whether he's carrying Stormbringer or not. Go figure.
The best character in the book is Moonglum, because he's handy with a sword, good with banter and has a sense of joie de vivre that his emo mate doesn't.
Y'know, I wonder if Moorcock's famous dislike for Tolkien's work stems partially from jealousy. Reading this book, there's no doubt to who was the more talented of the two--Professor T.
In ElricMoorcock suffers from bad prose that reads like a poor imitation of Robert E Howard with none of the Texan's muscularity; underdeveloped characters (his women, in particular, seem clichéd, false and flat), and a failure to live up to what could have been great. Yes, I get the antithesis of Conan vibes about Elric, but they just aren't enough.
It's not all bad, though - Moorcock is ambitious and one story (Kings in Darkness) lives up to this ambition, remaining etched into my memory. It's not the worst example of '60s fantasy pulp, but you could do better.
May 31, 2021
Man... There's just such a lot of Elric, and it's just so hard to know where to start - or end. This collection is a great place to do both. Moorcock's iconic, troubled hero left an indelible mark on all of the Fantasy that came after it. Psychedelic, weird, and quite melodramatic; the sword and the sorcery is strong. This manages to avoid some cliches, while almost certainly creating a few new ones. A must if you're a fan of the S&S genre, Dungeons and Dragons, or just general geek-dom. I did get a bit bored with Elric- as a character, he manages to be simultaneously likeable and unlikeable. He's haughty, and a sook. But you can't not love him. Put on a Hawkwind record, draw deep of your ornate water-pipe, and transport yourself to the doomed Multiverse of the Eternal Champion.
December 3, 2010
Elric, the collected first stories of Michael Moorcock’s titular protagonist, is the powerful cycle of a dark hero confronting both unfathomable terrors and his own cruelty. Once you get familiarized with the deceptively simplistic writing, this challenge to Tolkein’s formula takes on mythic force and serves as a foundational text for contemporary fantasy.
Elric is composed of stories about the titular hero, an albino with a semi-sentient soul-drinking sword named Stormbringer and a mastery of black magic. He is the last king of the cruel race of Melnibone and from them inherited both the sentient sword and a malicious streak to go with it. While Elric has rejected his place as the king of the cruel and decaying Bright Empire, Elric is never “good” despite his sometimes noble aims. This dark edge makes the character refreshing to read even 40 years after its initial publication.
Elric combines the first two volumes of Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga, The Stealer of Souls and Stormbringer. The Stealer of Souls is a collection of short stories while Stormbringer is a novel that feels like a collection of short stories. Because of the format, a lot happens in a few pages: continents are traversed in a sentence, gods defeated in a paragraph, and years pass with the start of a new chapter. The short stories of The Stealer of Souls are very loosely connected, and while entertaining they do not quite strike the epic chord that they strive for. There is simply too much happening to give any particular event dramatic clout. Elric must face a variety of supernatural difficulties, but overcomes them and moves on to the next so quickly that there is little sense of tension to his conflict. However, Stormbringer does a fantastic job of transforming these stories into an epic cycle that feels like a dark myth reclaimed from humanity’s subconscious. What seemed relatively brainless adventuring when first encountered takes on new significance after the metaphysical dimensions explored in Stormbringer, and when read in sequence Elric’s adventures build into a heroic journey that Joseph Campbell would feel right at home analyzing. During The Stealer of Souls I tended to put the book down after finishing a story without feeling terribly compelled to pick it back up again; after reaching the second book of Stormbringer, I finished the story in one sitting.
While the setting of Elric does not reach the depth of Tolkein’s or Erikson’s, or the plausibility of Patrick Rothfuss’s in his recent novel The Name of the Wind, it does feature wildly creative monsters and civilizations. The highlight is Elric’s own doomed Melnibone, the Bright Empire and rulers of the Dreaming City of Imrryr. Melnibone is a mixture of cruel magic and brightly colored decadence, of nobility and evil, of power and decay. In a way it recalls the British Empire - flamboyance on top of subjugation.
Moorcock has a flair for writing the grotesquely beautiful. For example, the following scene, while unimportant to the plot, stuck with me:
"At one time they saw in the distance a frightful sight, a wild and hellish mob destroying a village built around a castle. The castle itself was in flames and on the horizon a mountain gouted smoke and fire. Though the looters had human shape, they were degenerate creatures, spilling blood and drinking it with equal abandon. And directing them without joining their orgy Elric and Moonglum saw what seemed to be a corpse astride the living skeleton of a horse, bedecked in bright trappings, a flaming sword in its hand and a golden helm on its head." (pg 276)
The imagery recalls artwork from the Great Plague, but given color and vibrancy by the castle-turned-pyre, the volcanic eruption, and the dead king’s courtly regalia. Evil and death are not dour and dark things but wildly, insanely colorful and disturbingly picturesque. Likewise the supernatural entities in Moorcock’s world have a Lovecraftian sense of dread and madness, and the servants of Chaos which Elric frequently encounters are some of the most convincing denizens of Hell ever put into words
Part of what made Elric hard to get into is its language. The prose feels aged: there is a lot of telling rather than showing, and some grammatical choices have not aged well. Particularly, the exclamation points! These stories are not in the vein of the realist novel that most of today’s fantasy novels draw upon. While contemporary fantasy usually seeks to draw you into their worlds and let you escape from reality for a time, the stories in Elric are more concerned with storytelling rather than world building or character development.
While Elric’s character is nuanced, Moorcock’s characterization of him is not. Elric is tormented by his reliance on the sword Stormbringer, which gives him great vitality by consuming the souls of its victims but has a tendency to kill people Elric would rather leave alive. After an unsuccessful attempt to abandon Stormbringer and a subsequent battle in which Elric slays multitudes (not a rare occurrence in the book), Elric ruminates on his emotional state: “‘I am still a Melnibonean,’ he thought, ‘and cannot rid myself of what else I do. And, in my strength I am still weak, ready to use their cursed blade in any small emergency’” (pg 188). The problem is that we already know Elric turns to the blade’s evil power too quickly for a man seeking to reject it. We just saw him do it. The subsequent internal monologue just cheapens Elric’s emotional complexity by removing any subtlety.
However, over the course of the book I grew less concerned with the aged syntax because it seemed to fit with the stories’ foundational place in the modern fantasy cannon. It almost feels more in line with The Epic of Gilgamesh or The Odyssey, both of which feature language that sounds strange and somewhat simplistic to the modern ear (in translation, of course), but underneath of which teems a world of subconscious impulses and primal fears. In Elric we find a template for the amoral tales of Glen Cook’s Black Company, and Stephen Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon features a character so similar to Elric that he is almost certainly an homage. Perhaps it’s because I know Moorcock’s stories are so influential (the back cover told me so), but the simplistic writing seems to accentuate the place that these stories hold for the contemporary fantasy reader. They feel older than their 40 years - at their best moments, they feel timeless.
But the theme of this timeless story is different from Tolkein’s foundational myth, and it is here that Elric achieves surprisingly compelling complexity. While The Lord of the Rings can be boiled down to a battle of Good versus Evil in which Evil inevitably corrupts and so must be rejected absolutely, Moorcock does not portray things so simply. Elric’s use of Stormbringer is akin to Frodo discovering that he must, in fact, use the One Ring to kill Sauron even if it turns him into a miniature Ringwraith. Elric does not choose between Evil power and Good nobility, he chooses between survival and death. In Elric there is very little, if anything, that can be called absolutely “Good” in the Tolkeinian sense - rather, there is a balance of Chaos and Law that must be preserved, and either could be called “evil” or “good” depending upon where that balance fell. Ultimately this is an apocalyptic conflict of Evil against Evil that must destroy the world in order to save it. In Moorcock’s myth that destruction takes the form of a necessary cleansing of men, gods, and memories from the earth to allow for a better future. Considering the 20th century’s mass bloodshed and the Cold War threat of complete annihilation, perhaps Moorcock’s myth is more realistic than Tolkein’s. In a world in which all sides of have committed atrocities, from the Holocaust to Hiroshima to the countless wars of imperialism, it is certainly hard to image a force of pure Good.
Elric is composed of stories about the titular hero, an albino with a semi-sentient soul-drinking sword named Stormbringer and a mastery of black magic. He is the last king of the cruel race of Melnibone and from them inherited both the sentient sword and a malicious streak to go with it. While Elric has rejected his place as the king of the cruel and decaying Bright Empire, Elric is never “good” despite his sometimes noble aims. This dark edge makes the character refreshing to read even 40 years after its initial publication.
Elric combines the first two volumes of Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga, The Stealer of Souls and Stormbringer. The Stealer of Souls is a collection of short stories while Stormbringer is a novel that feels like a collection of short stories. Because of the format, a lot happens in a few pages: continents are traversed in a sentence, gods defeated in a paragraph, and years pass with the start of a new chapter. The short stories of The Stealer of Souls are very loosely connected, and while entertaining they do not quite strike the epic chord that they strive for. There is simply too much happening to give any particular event dramatic clout. Elric must face a variety of supernatural difficulties, but overcomes them and moves on to the next so quickly that there is little sense of tension to his conflict. However, Stormbringer does a fantastic job of transforming these stories into an epic cycle that feels like a dark myth reclaimed from humanity’s subconscious. What seemed relatively brainless adventuring when first encountered takes on new significance after the metaphysical dimensions explored in Stormbringer, and when read in sequence Elric’s adventures build into a heroic journey that Joseph Campbell would feel right at home analyzing. During The Stealer of Souls I tended to put the book down after finishing a story without feeling terribly compelled to pick it back up again; after reaching the second book of Stormbringer, I finished the story in one sitting.
While the setting of Elric does not reach the depth of Tolkein’s or Erikson’s, or the plausibility of Patrick Rothfuss’s in his recent novel The Name of the Wind, it does feature wildly creative monsters and civilizations. The highlight is Elric’s own doomed Melnibone, the Bright Empire and rulers of the Dreaming City of Imrryr. Melnibone is a mixture of cruel magic and brightly colored decadence, of nobility and evil, of power and decay. In a way it recalls the British Empire - flamboyance on top of subjugation.
Moorcock has a flair for writing the grotesquely beautiful. For example, the following scene, while unimportant to the plot, stuck with me:
"At one time they saw in the distance a frightful sight, a wild and hellish mob destroying a village built around a castle. The castle itself was in flames and on the horizon a mountain gouted smoke and fire. Though the looters had human shape, they were degenerate creatures, spilling blood and drinking it with equal abandon. And directing them without joining their orgy Elric and Moonglum saw what seemed to be a corpse astride the living skeleton of a horse, bedecked in bright trappings, a flaming sword in its hand and a golden helm on its head." (pg 276)
The imagery recalls artwork from the Great Plague, but given color and vibrancy by the castle-turned-pyre, the volcanic eruption, and the dead king’s courtly regalia. Evil and death are not dour and dark things but wildly, insanely colorful and disturbingly picturesque. Likewise the supernatural entities in Moorcock’s world have a Lovecraftian sense of dread and madness, and the servants of Chaos which Elric frequently encounters are some of the most convincing denizens of Hell ever put into words
Part of what made Elric hard to get into is its language. The prose feels aged: there is a lot of telling rather than showing, and some grammatical choices have not aged well. Particularly, the exclamation points! These stories are not in the vein of the realist novel that most of today’s fantasy novels draw upon. While contemporary fantasy usually seeks to draw you into their worlds and let you escape from reality for a time, the stories in Elric are more concerned with storytelling rather than world building or character development.
While Elric’s character is nuanced, Moorcock’s characterization of him is not. Elric is tormented by his reliance on the sword Stormbringer, which gives him great vitality by consuming the souls of its victims but has a tendency to kill people Elric would rather leave alive. After an unsuccessful attempt to abandon Stormbringer and a subsequent battle in which Elric slays multitudes (not a rare occurrence in the book), Elric ruminates on his emotional state: “‘I am still a Melnibonean,’ he thought, ‘and cannot rid myself of what else I do. And, in my strength I am still weak, ready to use their cursed blade in any small emergency’” (pg 188). The problem is that we already know Elric turns to the blade’s evil power too quickly for a man seeking to reject it. We just saw him do it. The subsequent internal monologue just cheapens Elric’s emotional complexity by removing any subtlety.
However, over the course of the book I grew less concerned with the aged syntax because it seemed to fit with the stories’ foundational place in the modern fantasy cannon. It almost feels more in line with The Epic of Gilgamesh or The Odyssey, both of which feature language that sounds strange and somewhat simplistic to the modern ear (in translation, of course), but underneath of which teems a world of subconscious impulses and primal fears. In Elric we find a template for the amoral tales of Glen Cook’s Black Company, and Stephen Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon features a character so similar to Elric that he is almost certainly an homage. Perhaps it’s because I know Moorcock’s stories are so influential (the back cover told me so), but the simplistic writing seems to accentuate the place that these stories hold for the contemporary fantasy reader. They feel older than their 40 years - at their best moments, they feel timeless.
But the theme of this timeless story is different from Tolkein’s foundational myth, and it is here that Elric achieves surprisingly compelling complexity. While The Lord of the Rings can be boiled down to a battle of Good versus Evil in which Evil inevitably corrupts and so must be rejected absolutely, Moorcock does not portray things so simply. Elric’s use of Stormbringer is akin to Frodo discovering that he must, in fact, use the One Ring to kill Sauron even if it turns him into a miniature Ringwraith. Elric does not choose between Evil power and Good nobility, he chooses between survival and death. In Elric there is very little, if anything, that can be called absolutely “Good” in the Tolkeinian sense - rather, there is a balance of Chaos and Law that must be preserved, and either could be called “evil” or “good” depending upon where that balance fell. Ultimately this is an apocalyptic conflict of Evil against Evil that must destroy the world in order to save it. In Moorcock’s myth that destruction takes the form of a necessary cleansing of men, gods, and memories from the earth to allow for a better future. Considering the 20th century’s mass bloodshed and the Cold War threat of complete annihilation, perhaps Moorcock’s myth is more realistic than Tolkein’s. In a world in which all sides of have committed atrocities, from the Holocaust to Hiroshima to the countless wars of imperialism, it is certainly hard to image a force of pure Good.
October 9, 2020
Occasionally imaginative, otherwise this work is totally without merit. Truly awful. If you want passable character dimensionality, stakes, plot construction, internal consistency, suspense, worldbuilding - look elsewhere.
October 26, 2023
Have you ever gotten brain rot so hard about something, you decided to take a long-standing dream project off the backburner and make it come through? Because I read this Elric collection and it altered my chemistry so much, I decided to build a website where I can post essays about the things I read and how they connect in my head and in my life, as well as talk about all my hobbies and my personal/passion research projects (I have a whole stack of books on Catholicism and cistercian architecture). This review is going to be part of the very first essay on that website -- when that website is ready. Until then...
Background/Thoughts: Recently I've been spending most of my free time either editing my mom's second collection of short stories or playing Baldur's Gate 3, but in between that and my 9-to-5, I've still managed to read this.
In about 2007, Azette sent me a copy of Von Bek and a copy of the Romanian translation of John Fowles' The Magus. I read Von Bek and loved it. I read both of those books and loved them, actually, and they somehow ended up influencing my reading preferences quite a lot in the long-term. In both of those books, but especially in Von Bek, the level of detail, the narrative lushness, the general #capital-g-gothic tone, the magic and the horror: all perfect. Not to mention Von Bek has the whole Eternal Champion and Eternal Struggle concept, which I think must have set the tone for my love for circular, cyclical narratives, repetitions, reiterations, etc.
And then maybe 7-8 years later, I tried to get into Elric. I got a copy of The White Wolf and if I recall correctly, I got about 10 pages in and decided I hated it. I don't even remember why, at this point, but I can only think that after reading Von Bek when I was 17, in the early bloom of my life, when I read just about any fiction that seemed transgressive or just interesting without any regard to morals, I somehow regressed to a point where I needed my protagonists to be morally upright and pure. And Elric is just... not. Elric is definitely a sword-and-sorcery product of his time, which means innocents sometimes get brutalised for no reason, and women are not just super attractive but also super attracted to Elric, who by all accounts is a horrible cursèd weirdo with the personality of a wet dishrag. At 17, I would've devoured that. At 25, I loathed it. At 33, I want to explore the rich history of fantasy, and horrible cursèd weirdos with the personality of a wet dishrag are just delightful.
Anyway, because this is a collection and each story has a different thing going for it, here are story summaries and brief notes I took as I was reading the stories, so some early notes (eg "I hope Elric and Moonglun hang out forever") are irrelevant by the end, when they're confirmed to be true:
The Dreaming City: In Which Elric Gravely Miscalculates and Manages to Kill His Enemy, His Beloved, and All His Allies.
Buckets of drama and eldritch shenanigans, but a lot of straight exposition that I guess is just lore dump setting up the protagonist. 3/5.
While the Gods Laugh: In Which Elric Makes A Friend.
Creepy, weird, and so, so, so good. I love a travel story, which this is, especially a travel story through increasingly cursed and horrible and mysterious lands (what was that underground sea????????), which this is. But the highlight is definitely Elric himself. The desperate, aimless Elric in this story is both hilariously edgy--
and looking for purpose in a way that's relatable--
I hope Moonglum will turn out to be his perfect companion, because he definitely needs someone to complement his angst with good ol' venality and hedonism.
5/5.
Stealer of Souls: In Which Elric Kills Two More People Who Wished Him Well.
A dud, methinks. It's back to the pure exposition of The Dreaming City, with none of the grim, dramatic cynicism and despair of While the Gods Laugh. All the women Elric knows are weirdos who are obsessed with him sexually and either want to fix or to dominate him, though in his defence, this was the 60s. That sort of thing happened a lot to male protagonists, whether or not they were pleasant at all (which Elric isn't) or about as palatable as a sack of rotten carrots (which Elric kinda is), so the women end up reading like sexy cardboard cutouts. Cymoril is my favourite, having distinguished herself by having the good grace to die before she could also be nothing but a pubescent boy's idea of a woman.
Anyway, nothing interesting really happens in this one. A wizard sub simps for a queen dom who simps for Elric (who, if the stories didn't say he fucks, I'd peg for asexual), Elric fights a giant demon toad, Moonglum swims a moat to make a deal for Elric's rescue and that deal involves, I think, Elric slutting it up for the queen in the aftermath. Classic Elric shenanigans.
2.5/5.
Kings in Darkness: Elric, Betrothed!
It was... okay. It nearly was very good, but then Elric & Co diverted from Spooky Creepy Forest to the Cursèd Royal Court of Savages. The whole ancient king come back to destroy the court thing was also nearly very good, but I wish I'd been allowed to dwell upon the horror more. Alas, such is the way of the short story, sometimes.
Don't know how I feel about Zarozinia yet. This story in particular has the air of a fairytale, where Elric meets a young woman who loves him at first sight (why??? he tries so hard to be unpleasant!) and against his better knowledge is seduced also at first sight and agrees to marry her. This story was the point where I began to loathe that these were all just short stories. While the Gods Laugh could've easily been an amazing full-length novel, and this one... I really wanted to soak in the terror of the Old King's barrow, and also find out if Elric and his new lady love actually get married, and how happy that marriage is.
(Additional note added after I read the next story in this collection: I was reading an older review of a different story in another Elric collection, in which the reviewer said, "As with many stories in the Elric cycle, To Rescue Tanelorn feels almost like an outline for a longer, more detailed work." This is right on the money for all these stories, but I think this story in particular, Kings in Darkness, suffers from that abbreviation of plot and would greatly have benefitted from further exploration of the darkness of the accursed king's court vs the pleasure of Elric falling in love -- Eros and Thanatos going hand in hand, and all that.)
3.5/5.
The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams: Elric vs Fantasy Genghis Khan!
Strangely compelling as far as Elric himself goes. Elric's inner turmoil in this story, regarding his reunion with Stormbringer and then regarding the sacking of Gorjhan, was delightful. It's a change in his character from previous stories, which either shows growth, or signifies the beginning of a turn for Elric as a concept. Because I'm reading this in 2023 and these are non-continuous short stories, I have no context for the work. Is this heel-face turn (as it would be termed in the WWE) a planned-from-the-start natural evolution of the character, or is it that Moorcock is done telling the story of a cursèd man who treats his curse as a Get Out of Jail Free card and an opportunity to be a blaggard, and would rather tell the story of a cursèd man who regrets his dissipation and now chooses to protect instead of harm. I guess I'm going to find out with future stories and novels!
As far as the story itself goes, it's been three months since his marriage to Zarozinia and, to be frank, I still can't imagine what that must be like for Elric. He initially gave up his Melnibonean throne to ??? (go marauding? go adventuring? not sure yet), then came back to his home to raze it to the ground in revenge when he couldn't have his cake and eat it too, and then he spent a handful of years wandering the realms with and without friends, with and without lovers, doing not much by way of actual evil (despite his dramatic self-introductions) but mostly robbing and threatening and killing -- that last seeming more aimed at those who tried to kill him first, in all honesty. How does that translate into a life of peace so quickly? How does he deal with the struggles of everyday life? Nevermind that he's basically a kept man, so he probably doesn't have much struggle, really, but struggle isn't always about desiring physical wealth. Struggle is also disagreement with your new wife, or conflict with her parents, or getting used to the fact that no one in the city is actively trying to kill you. So, I dunno. It feels like the first part of the story is meant more to show Elric's increasing reluctance to rely on his powers and on Stormbringer, but for him to have transitioned to civilian life that quickly and successfully is unrealistic, bordering on the ridiculous.
Still, his thinly veiled terror at having to pick up Stormbringer from the vault (he skulks in quietly, takes the sword, then runs back out) went a long way to making up for that. Even after three months of peace and quiet, Elric remains a little scared weirdo, and I love that. He's a great protagonist in that starting from his first appearance in the 60s, he's among the first to be a rat bastard, among the first fantasy protagonists who aren't goody-two-shoes morally upright lads. Nowadays you can find bushels of scoundrel protagonists, some even in the tradition of sword & sorcery, but Elric was one of the progenitors of the archetype -- a guy who's kind of bad, kind of a dick, maybe even serving a Lord of Chaos or whatever, but who's not outright a villain, though it bears repeating: he keeps saying he's evil but he's not actively evil. Maybe word usage has just changed in the 60 years since his first appearance.
But anyway, his disgust with Terarn Gashtek and his marauding ways is palpable in this story, and it makes for a remarkably soft side to Elric's character. He and Moonglum, for all their locker room talk of how hardcore and badass they are, still save women and children, and he goes to great lengths to ensure his new home city is safe. If someone were to call Elric a hero, he would deride it, but that's what he's turning out to be. I'm genuinely looking forward to reading more stories and finding out whether this is a one-off.
The only real drawback to the story is Terarn Gashtek. Of course, any story with a barbarian conqueror, whether he's based on Genghis Khan or not, runs the usual issue of being... kinda racist -- that's just par for the course with old sword 'n' sorcery, I think. All the good guys are beautiful, city-dwelling, decent, probably white folk who value education, art, and peace, and the bad guys are all barbarians without a home, banded together by bloodlust and their shared ethnic features, which are often described in such terms that they're recognisably Mongolian or Black/African. Everyone is dark-skinned and slant-eyed and heavy-browed and so on and so forth. And then those traits get associated with villainy, and you end up with ethnic stereotypes. I recognise the historicity of Genghis Khan, which I do think is the inspiration for Terarn Gashtek, and I recognise that narrative simplicity is best for a short story or novella, but that doesn't mean this is a trope that should be reinforced. Historically speaking, white people who valued education and art have also been capable of atrocities, and of rape and pillage. Elric's own people, the whitest of the whites, are historically remembered as tyrants, and yet somehow not as evil as Terarn Gashtek. And yes, I know the story and the employ of the trope are "products of their time," but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't still be mentioned in reviews.
4/5.
Stormbringer: The End of Elric?
This one is not a short story but a full novel. Maybe it's a little on the short side, at 220 pages, but not so short it's a novella.
It starts off interestingly -- not Zarozinia's abduction by demons, because I think that's just a thing that would happen to Zarozinia a lot, being married to Elric, but Elric once more taking to the road and traversing lands that have become increasingly strange to him, and realising that he also was strange to begin with and he has become stranger still. His people lived and fought and conquered and ruled, but that was long ago and the only remains of their blood are wanderers like Elric and Dyvim Slorm, who no longer belong in the world. The switch from the earlier melancholy of Elric wanting to find whether his existence has any meaning to the melancholy of him feeling more out of place and more like a pawn in a game than ever before is really good. He was a happily married man, but his sadness remains compelling.
And, as a matter of fact, his sadness only grows the more he is given to understand that the time of his people was long over, and his own time is soon to be over, and the time of the Young Kingdoms is here, but even they won't last because the balance will tip and Law will prevail, at least for some ages, until there likely will be another Earth-spanning conflict. And as I briefly mentioned in my review for The Eye of the World, I love the concept, holy shit. This universal (and even multiversal) ouroboros, the new world devouring the old, the new balance upsetting the old, on and on forever, ahhh. Perfect.
Also, Zarozinia's transformation via Powers of Chaos reminded me of "would u still love me if i was a worm .. ?" and it made me laugh so hard.
Anyway, great story. Elric adventures on, does what he thinks is best and fails, then obeys destiny and Law and does what he's told and succeeds, and in the meantime sees a lot of fucked up shit. Great ending to the character, too.
10/5.
**
Final thoughts & Echoes: Whoever put this collection together knew what they were about. If I didn't know just how much Moorcock has written, especially how much other stuff about Elric, I would be happy with just having read this. The stories here establish his background and draw a perfect character arc, and it makes for a complete and satisfying narrative. The fact that there are so many other stories to fill in the blanks is just the cherry on top.
I won't talk about my feelings on the writing style, because I think that would just exhaust me. It could be better. It could be less infodump-y. It could be, idk, richer. It could be sharper. It could be wittier. It could be less of a slog. It could be more like books I've enjoyed more recently.
Then again, I think that the fantasy books I've enjoyed recently can be witty and sharp and rich precisely because stories like this one existed, and also that styles simply change. What worked and was popular 50 years ago will inevitably change and be completely different to what works and is popular now. Still, Moorcock's work endures. And besides, when I read things like --
and I can picture exactly what that's like, and I can feel the despair and defeat... the slog is so worth it.
Then there's also that one of my favourite character archetypes to read about is turning out to be the poor little meow meow, and Elric is definitely one. So is Ahzek Ahriman from Warhammer 40k, and also Lestat de Lioncourt of the Vampire Chronicles fame, and I love those guys. To some extent, though much lesser than Elric and Ahriman, so is D, from Vampire Hunter D (a series which I started reading and which I will continue reading and also reviewing in the somewhat near future). D is more frequently a heroic figure (in spite of how much he says he isn't), but Elric and Ahriman and Lestat have all the questionable morals and inclinations and angst of the trope, and they're all extremely entertaining.
Stand-out scene/character:
Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: Fuck yeah.
Background/Thoughts: Recently I've been spending most of my free time either editing my mom's second collection of short stories or playing Baldur's Gate 3, but in between that and my 9-to-5, I've still managed to read this.
In about 2007, Azette sent me a copy of Von Bek and a copy of the Romanian translation of John Fowles' The Magus. I read Von Bek and loved it. I read both of those books and loved them, actually, and they somehow ended up influencing my reading preferences quite a lot in the long-term. In both of those books, but especially in Von Bek, the level of detail, the narrative lushness, the general #capital-g-gothic tone, the magic and the horror: all perfect. Not to mention Von Bek has the whole Eternal Champion and Eternal Struggle concept, which I think must have set the tone for my love for circular, cyclical narratives, repetitions, reiterations, etc.
And then maybe 7-8 years later, I tried to get into Elric. I got a copy of The White Wolf and if I recall correctly, I got about 10 pages in and decided I hated it. I don't even remember why, at this point, but I can only think that after reading Von Bek when I was 17, in the early bloom of my life, when I read just about any fiction that seemed transgressive or just interesting without any regard to morals, I somehow regressed to a point where I needed my protagonists to be morally upright and pure. And Elric is just... not. Elric is definitely a sword-and-sorcery product of his time, which means innocents sometimes get brutalised for no reason, and women are not just super attractive but also super attracted to Elric, who by all accounts is a horrible cursèd weirdo with the personality of a wet dishrag. At 17, I would've devoured that. At 25, I loathed it. At 33, I want to explore the rich history of fantasy, and horrible cursèd weirdos with the personality of a wet dishrag are just delightful.
Anyway, because this is a collection and each story has a different thing going for it, here are story summaries and brief notes I took as I was reading the stories, so some early notes (eg "I hope Elric and Moonglun hang out forever") are irrelevant by the end, when they're confirmed to be true:
The Dreaming City: In Which Elric Gravely Miscalculates and Manages to Kill His Enemy, His Beloved, and All His Allies.
Buckets of drama and eldritch shenanigans, but a lot of straight exposition that I guess is just lore dump setting up the protagonist. 3/5.
While the Gods Laugh: In Which Elric Makes A Friend.
Creepy, weird, and so, so, so good. I love a travel story, which this is, especially a travel story through increasingly cursed and horrible and mysterious lands (what was that underground sea????????), which this is. But the highlight is definitely Elric himself. The desperate, aimless Elric in this story is both hilariously edgy--
"I am an evil man, lady, and my destiny is hell-bound."
and looking for purpose in a way that's relatable--
"Despairingly, sometimes, I seek the comfort of a benign God. My mind goes out, lying awake at night, searching through black barrenness for something -- anything -- which will take me to it, warm me, protect me, tell me that there is order in the chaotic tumble of the universe; that it is consistent, this precision of the planets not simply a brief, bright spark of sanity in an eternity of malevolent anarchy."
I hope Moonglum will turn out to be his perfect companion, because he definitely needs someone to complement his angst with good ol' venality and hedonism.
5/5.
Stealer of Souls: In Which Elric Kills Two More People Who Wished Him Well.
A dud, methinks. It's back to the pure exposition of The Dreaming City, with none of the grim, dramatic cynicism and despair of While the Gods Laugh. All the women Elric knows are weirdos who are obsessed with him sexually and either want to fix or to dominate him, though in his defence, this was the 60s. That sort of thing happened a lot to male protagonists, whether or not they were pleasant at all (which Elric isn't) or about as palatable as a sack of rotten carrots (which Elric kinda is), so the women end up reading like sexy cardboard cutouts. Cymoril is my favourite, having distinguished herself by having the good grace to die before she could also be nothing but a pubescent boy's idea of a woman.
Anyway, nothing interesting really happens in this one. A wizard sub simps for a queen dom who simps for Elric (who, if the stories didn't say he fucks, I'd peg for asexual), Elric fights a giant demon toad, Moonglum swims a moat to make a deal for Elric's rescue and that deal involves, I think, Elric slutting it up for the queen in the aftermath. Classic Elric shenanigans.
2.5/5.
Kings in Darkness: Elric, Betrothed!
It was... okay. It nearly was very good, but then Elric & Co diverted from Spooky Creepy Forest to the Cursèd Royal Court of Savages. The whole ancient king come back to destroy the court thing was also nearly very good, but I wish I'd been allowed to dwell upon the horror more. Alas, such is the way of the short story, sometimes.
Don't know how I feel about Zarozinia yet. This story in particular has the air of a fairytale, where Elric meets a young woman who loves him at first sight (why??? he tries so hard to be unpleasant!) and against his better knowledge is seduced also at first sight and agrees to marry her. This story was the point where I began to loathe that these were all just short stories. While the Gods Laugh could've easily been an amazing full-length novel, and this one... I really wanted to soak in the terror of the Old King's barrow, and also find out if Elric and his new lady love actually get married, and how happy that marriage is.
(Additional note added after I read the next story in this collection: I was reading an older review of a different story in another Elric collection, in which the reviewer said, "As with many stories in the Elric cycle, To Rescue Tanelorn feels almost like an outline for a longer, more detailed work." This is right on the money for all these stories, but I think this story in particular, Kings in Darkness, suffers from that abbreviation of plot and would greatly have benefitted from further exploration of the darkness of the accursed king's court vs the pleasure of Elric falling in love -- Eros and Thanatos going hand in hand, and all that.)
3.5/5.
The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams: Elric vs Fantasy Genghis Khan!
Strangely compelling as far as Elric himself goes. Elric's inner turmoil in this story, regarding his reunion with Stormbringer and then regarding the sacking of Gorjhan, was delightful. It's a change in his character from previous stories, which either shows growth, or signifies the beginning of a turn for Elric as a concept. Because I'm reading this in 2023 and these are non-continuous short stories, I have no context for the work. Is this heel-face turn (as it would be termed in the WWE) a planned-from-the-start natural evolution of the character, or is it that Moorcock is done telling the story of a cursèd man who treats his curse as a Get Out of Jail Free card and an opportunity to be a blaggard, and would rather tell the story of a cursèd man who regrets his dissipation and now chooses to protect instead of harm. I guess I'm going to find out with future stories and novels!
As far as the story itself goes, it's been three months since his marriage to Zarozinia and, to be frank, I still can't imagine what that must be like for Elric. He initially gave up his Melnibonean throne to ??? (go marauding? go adventuring? not sure yet), then came back to his home to raze it to the ground in revenge when he couldn't have his cake and eat it too, and then he spent a handful of years wandering the realms with and without friends, with and without lovers, doing not much by way of actual evil (despite his dramatic self-introductions) but mostly robbing and threatening and killing -- that last seeming more aimed at those who tried to kill him first, in all honesty. How does that translate into a life of peace so quickly? How does he deal with the struggles of everyday life? Nevermind that he's basically a kept man, so he probably doesn't have much struggle, really, but struggle isn't always about desiring physical wealth. Struggle is also disagreement with your new wife, or conflict with her parents, or getting used to the fact that no one in the city is actively trying to kill you. So, I dunno. It feels like the first part of the story is meant more to show Elric's increasing reluctance to rely on his powers and on Stormbringer, but for him to have transitioned to civilian life that quickly and successfully is unrealistic, bordering on the ridiculous.
Still, his thinly veiled terror at having to pick up Stormbringer from the vault (he skulks in quietly, takes the sword, then runs back out) went a long way to making up for that. Even after three months of peace and quiet, Elric remains a little scared weirdo, and I love that. He's a great protagonist in that starting from his first appearance in the 60s, he's among the first to be a rat bastard, among the first fantasy protagonists who aren't goody-two-shoes morally upright lads. Nowadays you can find bushels of scoundrel protagonists, some even in the tradition of sword & sorcery, but Elric was one of the progenitors of the archetype -- a guy who's kind of bad, kind of a dick, maybe even serving a Lord of Chaos or whatever, but who's not outright a villain, though it bears repeating: he keeps saying he's evil but he's not actively evil. Maybe word usage has just changed in the 60 years since his first appearance.
But anyway, his disgust with Terarn Gashtek and his marauding ways is palpable in this story, and it makes for a remarkably soft side to Elric's character. He and Moonglum, for all their locker room talk of how hardcore and badass they are, still save women and children, and he goes to great lengths to ensure his new home city is safe. If someone were to call Elric a hero, he would deride it, but that's what he's turning out to be. I'm genuinely looking forward to reading more stories and finding out whether this is a one-off.
The only real drawback to the story is Terarn Gashtek. Of course, any story with a barbarian conqueror, whether he's based on Genghis Khan or not, runs the usual issue of being... kinda racist -- that's just par for the course with old sword 'n' sorcery, I think. All the good guys are beautiful, city-dwelling, decent, probably white folk who value education, art, and peace, and the bad guys are all barbarians without a home, banded together by bloodlust and their shared ethnic features, which are often described in such terms that they're recognisably Mongolian or Black/African. Everyone is dark-skinned and slant-eyed and heavy-browed and so on and so forth. And then those traits get associated with villainy, and you end up with ethnic stereotypes. I recognise the historicity of Genghis Khan, which I do think is the inspiration for Terarn Gashtek, and I recognise that narrative simplicity is best for a short story or novella, but that doesn't mean this is a trope that should be reinforced. Historically speaking, white people who valued education and art have also been capable of atrocities, and of rape and pillage. Elric's own people, the whitest of the whites, are historically remembered as tyrants, and yet somehow not as evil as Terarn Gashtek. And yes, I know the story and the employ of the trope are "products of their time," but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't still be mentioned in reviews.
4/5.
Stormbringer: The End of Elric?
This one is not a short story but a full novel. Maybe it's a little on the short side, at 220 pages, but not so short it's a novella.
It starts off interestingly -- not Zarozinia's abduction by demons, because I think that's just a thing that would happen to Zarozinia a lot, being married to Elric, but Elric once more taking to the road and traversing lands that have become increasingly strange to him, and realising that he also was strange to begin with and he has become stranger still. His people lived and fought and conquered and ruled, but that was long ago and the only remains of their blood are wanderers like Elric and Dyvim Slorm, who no longer belong in the world. The switch from the earlier melancholy of Elric wanting to find whether his existence has any meaning to the melancholy of him feeling more out of place and more like a pawn in a game than ever before is really good. He was a happily married man, but his sadness remains compelling.
And, as a matter of fact, his sadness only grows the more he is given to understand that the time of his people was long over, and his own time is soon to be over, and the time of the Young Kingdoms is here, but even they won't last because the balance will tip and Law will prevail, at least for some ages, until there likely will be another Earth-spanning conflict. And as I briefly mentioned in my review for The Eye of the World, I love the concept, holy shit. This universal (and even multiversal) ouroboros, the new world devouring the old, the new balance upsetting the old, on and on forever, ahhh. Perfect.
Also, Zarozinia's transformation via Powers of Chaos reminded me of "would u still love me if i was a worm .. ?" and it made me laugh so hard.
Anyway, great story. Elric adventures on, does what he thinks is best and fails, then obeys destiny and Law and does what he's told and succeeds, and in the meantime sees a lot of fucked up shit. Great ending to the character, too.
10/5.
**
Final thoughts & Echoes: Whoever put this collection together knew what they were about. If I didn't know just how much Moorcock has written, especially how much other stuff about Elric, I would be happy with just having read this. The stories here establish his background and draw a perfect character arc, and it makes for a complete and satisfying narrative. The fact that there are so many other stories to fill in the blanks is just the cherry on top.
I won't talk about my feelings on the writing style, because I think that would just exhaust me. It could be better. It could be less infodump-y. It could be, idk, richer. It could be sharper. It could be wittier. It could be less of a slog. It could be more like books I've enjoyed more recently.
Then again, I think that the fantasy books I've enjoyed recently can be witty and sharp and rich precisely because stories like this one existed, and also that styles simply change. What worked and was popular 50 years ago will inevitably change and be completely different to what works and is popular now. Still, Moorcock's work endures. And besides, when I read things like --
Wherever Jargreen Lern conquered, the warping influence of Chaos was manifest. The very spirits of nature were tortured into becoming what they should not be - air, fire, water and earth, all became unstable, for Jargreen Lern and his allies were tampering not only with the lives and souls of men, but the very constituents of the planet itself. And there were none of sufficient power to punish them for these crimes. None.
and I can picture exactly what that's like, and I can feel the despair and defeat... the slog is so worth it.
Then there's also that one of my favourite character archetypes to read about is turning out to be the poor little meow meow, and Elric is definitely one. So is Ahzek Ahriman from Warhammer 40k, and also Lestat de Lioncourt of the Vampire Chronicles fame, and I love those guys. To some extent, though much lesser than Elric and Ahriman, so is D, from Vampire Hunter D (a series which I started reading and which I will continue reading and also reviewing in the somewhat near future). D is more frequently a heroic figure (in spite of how much he says he isn't), but Elric and Ahriman and Lestat have all the questionable morals and inclinations and angst of the trope, and they're all extremely entertaining.
Stand-out scene/character:
Elric of Melniboné, last of the Bright Emperors, cried out, and then his body collapsed, a sprawled husk beside its comrade, and he lay beneath the mighty balance that still hung in the sky.
Then Stormbringer's shape began to change, writhing and curling above the body of the albino, finally to stand astraddle it.
The entity that was Stormbringer, last manifestation of Chaos which would remain with this new world as it grew, looked down on the corpse of Elric of Melniboné and smiled.
'Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou!'
And then it leapt from the Earth and went spearing upwards, its wild voice laughing mockery at the Cosmic Balance; filling the universe with its unholy joy.
Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: Fuck yeah.
September 23, 2023
One of my all time favourite books that I've just finished reading again.
Michael moorcock books are a psychedelic and fatalist response to the standard conventions of heroic fantasy and Elric possibly embodies this more than any other incarnation of the eternal champion.
The pace of the adventures in this book are lightning quick, the supposed heroes are anything but whilst the stories still tackle epic themes throughout.
I'd recommend to anyone who wants a true alternative to the other giants of the genre.
Michael moorcock books are a psychedelic and fatalist response to the standard conventions of heroic fantasy and Elric possibly embodies this more than any other incarnation of the eternal champion.
The pace of the adventures in this book are lightning quick, the supposed heroes are anything but whilst the stories still tackle epic themes throughout.
I'd recommend to anyone who wants a true alternative to the other giants of the genre.
January 3, 2010
Elric might not have been so original idea when he was created but he is a fascinating character.
I might have some problems with how Moorcock writes his dialouge in these stories but not how he writes Elric himself.
I might have some problems with how Moorcock writes his dialouge in these stories but not how he writes Elric himself.
May 22, 2023
I struggled to get into the adventures of Elric at first. In theory I have no problem reading a swords, dragons and magic type of story. The problem is, I didn't like Elric as a character and most of the first book focuses on Elric going on some quest or other, everyone dies, the outcome of the quest is disappointing and Elric hates Stormbringer. It all felt a bit pointless. Gradually however, Elric starts to realise he has a role to play, however reluctantly, in a more over arching story. Now that the outcome of his quests is essential to the fate of his universe, Elric becomes a more sympathetic figure in my eyes and therefore I'm more invested in his success.
July 9, 2012
Michael Moorcock is an excellent writer of heroic fantasy. His storytelling language is excellent to read, and to read aloud. Elric of Melnibone is both hero and anti-hero, not exactly what you'd expect as an aspect of The Eternal Champion. In a milieu where characters are aligned to either Law or Chaos, Elric the albino sorcerer frequently calls upon his patron deity, Arioch, a Duke of Chaos. Each story is a portrayal of his unholy symbiosis with the sentient demon sword Stormbringer. It either helps him achieve his goals (usually motivated by vengeance), or thwarts him at unexpected moments - stuff of chaos indeed. He often questions if he is the one controlling the sword, or if it controls him. As a result, guilt often tempers his triumphs. Elric is heroic and tragic, and therefore very interesting.
This version of Elric I have is Volume 17 of the Fantasy Masterworks series. It is a compilation of Elric adventures that fit within the timeline of the actual Elric series of books. I first read an Elric book back when I was in college, and was delighted to encounter Elric again in this book. (I have also enjoyed Moorcock's other aspect of the Eternal Champion, Corum - another series I recommend). Moorcock's fantasy is dark and elegant, full of betrayal, revenge and valor. He has more than one work included in the Fantasy Mastworks series, and these books deserve being called true classics.
This version of Elric I have is Volume 17 of the Fantasy Masterworks series. It is a compilation of Elric adventures that fit within the timeline of the actual Elric series of books. I first read an Elric book back when I was in college, and was delighted to encounter Elric again in this book. (I have also enjoyed Moorcock's other aspect of the Eternal Champion, Corum - another series I recommend). Moorcock's fantasy is dark and elegant, full of betrayal, revenge and valor. He has more than one work included in the Fantasy Mastworks series, and these books deserve being called true classics.
May 31, 2021
This volume collects the earliest stories in the Elric saga, and while I didn't warm to the stories collected in the first part, "Stealer of Souls," I grew to appreciate the saga more as a whole as I read through the stories in the second part, "Stormbringer." There's something alluring in Moorcock's nihilistic worldview, and while I don't think the rampant sexism and racism in these stories really offers the riposte to Tolkien that Moorcock seemed to think it did, it certainly broadened the scope of fantasy fiction in the later twentieth century. This is the one Elric collection anyone really needs, and Gollancz score again for another great addition to their invaluable Fantasy Masterworks series.
November 28, 2017
This is the book that for me started my love affair with fantasy, particularly anti-hero or flawed hero fantasy. On a family trip to Florida, we had stopped for gas at a roadside station, and my father saw the book rack near the cash register. With a spin of the rack, he came to this book, grabbed it and thrust it into my 11 year old hands. I read the covers off this book during that trip, totally enthralled by the journey of Elric and his unlikely travel companions. While this book isn’t the entry point for the Elric cycle of the Eternal Champion stories, it is a wonderful, inventive and memorable read. And beware when the sword is unleashed...
June 2, 2023
The Elric saga constitutes a sprawling array of short stories, novellas and novels written over a vast time period and taking in Moorcock's ever shifting ideas and approaches to writing. Volumes have been re-edited, collated and ordered so many times now that it's difficult to know where to start reading the saga. Publishers want you to take in everything chronologically but I tend to prefer something close to publication order, and so went back to this slimmer volume to admire the earlier Elric stories which mostly betray a strong Sword and Sorcery influence, but nevertheless show a young Moorcock really pushing the boundaries of what the genre could do and might become.
There wasn't even a vast body of S&S work to draw on at the time, just Howard, Leiber (who he admired) and a couple of imitators and it seemed that Science fiction counterparts were selling better. Nevertheless, you can see how Moorcock was in a constantly antagonistic relationship to already published material, as these stories show an absolute love - particularly in the linguistic flourishes, that are often both lazy and achingly beautiful - as well as a desire to move his hero on and to put him in situations never seen before, confronting things and facing philosophies never encountered in the fiction marketplace.
The titular Elric, of course you know, is an Albino who carries with him a soulsucking sword of chaos which, through death, gives him the strength he needs to be a great warrior. It's a symbiotic relationship, an original concept, one that keeps these stories driving forward to the explosive conclusion and one that provides Elric with that well-known angst (overstated by most since the idea of a whiney goth EMO Lord sits strongly in the mind's eye). What sets these stories further apart from the down to earth, grizzled hack and slash of Howard - an author who delighted in the subtler tensions his stories would create, far more interested in setup and payoff than Moorcock -is his fascination with war, movement (across wastelands, arid landscapes, desolate nihilistic plains and dimensions), pseudo-philosophical ramblings (not in a convoluted or wordy sense), demons and Gods. Elric's travels, in just a few stories, span the globe multiple times over. He meets friends, lovers and settles down. He kills enemies, lovers forswears the sword and then rekindles the relationship (yeah, I believe they had drugs in the 60s) in the space of time that Conan would walk from one town to the other and swear by Crom how much he loathes magic (btw Elric is a Sorceror too and he loves magic. Unfortunately his chosen God of Chaos, Arioch, often forsakes him ... an amusing but oft-unexplored tension in these stories thus far)
Already by the final story/novel/collection of four linked novelettes "Stormbringer" you can feel Moorcock's desire to keep the pace going, to move on to the next thing, to throw that idea out there and be damned! These feel like the stories of a young person, for sure, but they're awfully exciting because of it. One can - and I'm sure many do - complain that there's not a lot of characterisation here. I'd concur that if you're looking for a character piece then this won't work for you - Elric and his companions are ciphers, Elric is one form of the Eternal Champion and he represents the struggle to maintain the balance between Law and Chaos, and this philosophy of law and order vs chaotic creativity matters more to Moorcock than small character beats. So ultimately we're left with a pulse-racing, frenetic kind of fiction that's frequently stuffed with way too much to digest, but when it's over you genuinely feel like you experienced climactic inter-dimensional battles, lives lived and friendships/loves lost, gigantic quests for magical artefacts, demonspawn, dragons, cities razed to the ground and the world ending.
Moorcock comes into his own as a writer throughout the final tale Stormbringer (probably as long as the entirety of the other stories) so it's worth bearing in mind as one reads through the earlier tales. I think the shorter stories are fun and unique S&S tales in their own right but it's only in Stormbringer that the zaniness of Moorcock's philosophy and world-creation (worldbuilding would be a stretch) come together and beat you around the head.
I'd previously dismissed these tales as a flippancy back in 2001 when I read some of them from an omnibus which started with the prequels. As well as it making no sense to read them this way, and discouraging me from ploughing through 1000 pages to the end (I never did read Stormbringer) Moorcock is a tough author to put alongside the more literary when one is young and looking for lifechanging reading experiences. Moorcock writes great prose for someone who dashed this stuff out in a matter of days, but he also - at least in the 60s - has no pretentions to being other than he is, a teller of tall tales, but he's a passionate one for sure who managed to change the face of fantasy writing, albeit in a time when, admittedly, it was changing very quickly anyway. This time I'll get my breath and plough on with further Moorcock - although Elric's origins can wait for now!
NB: I also read the following not in this volume
"The Last Enchantment"
"To Rescue Tanelorn" Both of which do fall slightly outside the Elric saga but make interesting diversions from a lore perspective
There wasn't even a vast body of S&S work to draw on at the time, just Howard, Leiber (who he admired) and a couple of imitators and it seemed that Science fiction counterparts were selling better. Nevertheless, you can see how Moorcock was in a constantly antagonistic relationship to already published material, as these stories show an absolute love - particularly in the linguistic flourishes, that are often both lazy and achingly beautiful - as well as a desire to move his hero on and to put him in situations never seen before, confronting things and facing philosophies never encountered in the fiction marketplace.
The titular Elric, of course you know, is an Albino who carries with him a soulsucking sword of chaos which, through death, gives him the strength he needs to be a great warrior. It's a symbiotic relationship, an original concept, one that keeps these stories driving forward to the explosive conclusion and one that provides Elric with that well-known angst (overstated by most since the idea of a whiney goth EMO Lord sits strongly in the mind's eye). What sets these stories further apart from the down to earth, grizzled hack and slash of Howard - an author who delighted in the subtler tensions his stories would create, far more interested in setup and payoff than Moorcock -is his fascination with war, movement (across wastelands, arid landscapes, desolate nihilistic plains and dimensions), pseudo-philosophical ramblings (not in a convoluted or wordy sense), demons and Gods. Elric's travels, in just a few stories, span the globe multiple times over. He meets friends, lovers and settles down. He kills enemies, lovers forswears the sword and then rekindles the relationship (yeah, I believe they had drugs in the 60s) in the space of time that Conan would walk from one town to the other and swear by Crom how much he loathes magic (btw Elric is a Sorceror too and he loves magic. Unfortunately his chosen God of Chaos, Arioch, often forsakes him ... an amusing but oft-unexplored tension in these stories thus far)
Already by the final story/novel/collection of four linked novelettes "Stormbringer" you can feel Moorcock's desire to keep the pace going, to move on to the next thing, to throw that idea out there and be damned! These feel like the stories of a young person, for sure, but they're awfully exciting because of it. One can - and I'm sure many do - complain that there's not a lot of characterisation here. I'd concur that if you're looking for a character piece then this won't work for you - Elric and his companions are ciphers, Elric is one form of the Eternal Champion and he represents the struggle to maintain the balance between Law and Chaos, and this philosophy of law and order vs chaotic creativity matters more to Moorcock than small character beats. So ultimately we're left with a pulse-racing, frenetic kind of fiction that's frequently stuffed with way too much to digest, but when it's over you genuinely feel like you experienced climactic inter-dimensional battles, lives lived and friendships/loves lost, gigantic quests for magical artefacts, demonspawn, dragons, cities razed to the ground and the world ending.
Moorcock comes into his own as a writer throughout the final tale Stormbringer (probably as long as the entirety of the other stories) so it's worth bearing in mind as one reads through the earlier tales. I think the shorter stories are fun and unique S&S tales in their own right but it's only in Stormbringer that the zaniness of Moorcock's philosophy and world-creation (worldbuilding would be a stretch) come together and beat you around the head.
I'd previously dismissed these tales as a flippancy back in 2001 when I read some of them from an omnibus which started with the prequels. As well as it making no sense to read them this way, and discouraging me from ploughing through 1000 pages to the end (I never did read Stormbringer) Moorcock is a tough author to put alongside the more literary when one is young and looking for lifechanging reading experiences. Moorcock writes great prose for someone who dashed this stuff out in a matter of days, but he also - at least in the 60s - has no pretentions to being other than he is, a teller of tall tales, but he's a passionate one for sure who managed to change the face of fantasy writing, albeit in a time when, admittedly, it was changing very quickly anyway. This time I'll get my breath and plough on with further Moorcock - although Elric's origins can wait for now!
NB: I also read the following not in this volume
"The Last Enchantment"
"To Rescue Tanelorn" Both of which do fall slightly outside the Elric saga but make interesting diversions from a lore perspective
August 8, 2019
the beginning of a love story
between a pale prince and me
hahaha
between a pale prince and me
hahaha
November 8, 2025
A fun treat for longtime fans of Elric, but will probably be confusing and disorienting for newcomers.
This book is based on the Stealer of Souls part of the Last Emperor of Melnibone version of the Elric Saga. It collects the Elric stories in the order they were originally published in pulp magazines, rather than in chronological order like most modern editions of Moorcock’s collected works do. As such, this offers a totally different version of the Elric saga with additional side stories relating to the grander Eternal Champion multiverse at large which all share a single interconnected history of lore, gods, magic, cursed weapons and artifacts, as well as multiple dimensions of chaos and balance constantly warring against each other causing a universal ripple effect across the multiple alternate timelines coexisting in parallel.
Stealer of Souls revolves mostly around stories about Elric’s downfall from grace. It tells you how he becomes a danger to his loved ones, a slave to his own sentient sword and the cruelty of destiny, as well as his descent into madness and darker morality.
A good collection of tales from the Elric saga, but be warned they are written out of chronological order which means it’s easy to get massive spoilers for newcomers who aren’t already familiar or have no prior experience already reading this series. For newcomers I would personally recommend the latest 60th anniversary Saga Press omnibus editions which has all of the Elric stories in chronological order contained within three massive omnibuses:
1: Elric of Melnibone
Contents:
Elric of Melniboné.
The Fortress of the Pearl.
The Sailor on the Seas of Fate.
The Weird of the White Wolf.
2: Stormbringer
Contents:
The Vanishing Tower
The Revenge of the Rose
The Bane of the Black Sword
Stormbringer
3: The White Wolf
Contents:
The Dreamthief’s Daughter
The Skrayling Tree
The White Wolf’s Son
This book is based on the Stealer of Souls part of the Last Emperor of Melnibone version of the Elric Saga. It collects the Elric stories in the order they were originally published in pulp magazines, rather than in chronological order like most modern editions of Moorcock’s collected works do. As such, this offers a totally different version of the Elric saga with additional side stories relating to the grander Eternal Champion multiverse at large which all share a single interconnected history of lore, gods, magic, cursed weapons and artifacts, as well as multiple dimensions of chaos and balance constantly warring against each other causing a universal ripple effect across the multiple alternate timelines coexisting in parallel.
Stealer of Souls revolves mostly around stories about Elric’s downfall from grace. It tells you how he becomes a danger to his loved ones, a slave to his own sentient sword and the cruelty of destiny, as well as his descent into madness and darker morality.
A good collection of tales from the Elric saga, but be warned they are written out of chronological order which means it’s easy to get massive spoilers for newcomers who aren’t already familiar or have no prior experience already reading this series. For newcomers I would personally recommend the latest 60th anniversary Saga Press omnibus editions which has all of the Elric stories in chronological order contained within three massive omnibuses:
1: Elric of Melnibone
Contents:
Elric of Melniboné.
The Fortress of the Pearl.
The Sailor on the Seas of Fate.
The Weird of the White Wolf.
2: Stormbringer
Contents:
The Vanishing Tower
The Revenge of the Rose
The Bane of the Black Sword
Stormbringer
3: The White Wolf
Contents:
The Dreamthief’s Daughter
The Skrayling Tree
The White Wolf’s Son
January 21, 2020
What a great guy is our Elric, the albino wanderer who, I think, just needs friends and hobbies other than wandering around looking for trouble. While Elric is probably a decent guy under all the emo brooding, sadly his sword isn't a great guy - it has a mind and power of its own, which comes in handy when fighting off nasty demon creatures, but it's a bit of a problem when it goes after friends and lovers.
I came to Elric through my own new year quest to read (and review) much and randomly. I felt confident in my heroic ability to resist doing other things than laying around reading books, but I thought adventuring into randomly selected books might be a serious challenge. Halfway through this book, however, Elric's sword "Stormbringer" slayed all my doubts about reading randomly.
Despite hardly ever having read fantasy I found myself loving Elric. The action cracked along so nicely that I found myself contemplating a previously unimagined future as a guy who reads fantasy on a regular, perhaps even, obsessive basis. I could see myself growing a ponytail and a paunch that's inadequately concealed under my death metal t-shirts while I ride local buses reading my fantasy books….
Then Elric began another battle. And another. And another. There is only so much battling bewildering beasts a person can tolerate. I feared becoming physically unwell if I had to once again read about how Stormbringer quivered in Elric's hand pre-battle.
While fantasy is not for me, I imagine this one would be loved by fans of the genre. For me, fantasy books, like all other fantasies, are best short and sweet.
I came to Elric through my own new year quest to read (and review) much and randomly. I felt confident in my heroic ability to resist doing other things than laying around reading books, but I thought adventuring into randomly selected books might be a serious challenge. Halfway through this book, however, Elric's sword "Stormbringer" slayed all my doubts about reading randomly.
Despite hardly ever having read fantasy I found myself loving Elric. The action cracked along so nicely that I found myself contemplating a previously unimagined future as a guy who reads fantasy on a regular, perhaps even, obsessive basis. I could see myself growing a ponytail and a paunch that's inadequately concealed under my death metal t-shirts while I ride local buses reading my fantasy books….
Then Elric began another battle. And another. And another. There is only so much battling bewildering beasts a person can tolerate. I feared becoming physically unwell if I had to once again read about how Stormbringer quivered in Elric's hand pre-battle.
While fantasy is not for me, I imagine this one would be loved by fans of the genre. For me, fantasy books, like all other fantasies, are best short and sweet.
December 31, 2018
These are the earliest collected stories in the Elric series and, fittingly, given Moorcock's cavalier attitude to series order, they also conclude the series.
It's pretty grim stuff: Elric is not the cheeriest or least sensitive of protagonists so it's not unexpected that his path through the story is littered with the bodies of enemies and loved ones alike.
The stories in this volume cover Elric's adventures from the time of him returning to Imrryr to take vengeance on Yyrkoon who has stolen his throne right through to the final conflict between Order and Chaos. Moorcock tells a great story and manages to create some magnificent images and situations. The influence of Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft looms over these stories (not surprisingly since Elric is a reaction to the Weird fiction of the thirties and forties) but there's a very clear resemblance to the style of Mervyn Peake as well, of whom Moorcock is a huge fan.
These are great fun and don't suffer from the anachronism order that the series is published in. Ironically they may be the best stories in the series as we later on come up against the problem of finding places to fit stories in that are believable and logical as well as Moorcock's writing style changing away from the free and easy style of these potboilers.
It's pretty grim stuff: Elric is not the cheeriest or least sensitive of protagonists so it's not unexpected that his path through the story is littered with the bodies of enemies and loved ones alike.
The stories in this volume cover Elric's adventures from the time of him returning to Imrryr to take vengeance on Yyrkoon who has stolen his throne right through to the final conflict between Order and Chaos. Moorcock tells a great story and manages to create some magnificent images and situations. The influence of Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft looms over these stories (not surprisingly since Elric is a reaction to the Weird fiction of the thirties and forties) but there's a very clear resemblance to the style of Mervyn Peake as well, of whom Moorcock is a huge fan.
These are great fun and don't suffer from the anachronism order that the series is published in. Ironically they may be the best stories in the series as we later on come up against the problem of finding places to fit stories in that are believable and logical as well as Moorcock's writing style changing away from the free and easy style of these potboilers.
August 5, 2018
This is a compilation of Moorcock's brooding warrior novellas from the 1960's. Never heard of this anti-hero before and after researching how much influence this series has had to dark fantasy literature and Dungeons and Dragon, I gave it a whirl. I was very impressed! At first I thought it was a bit confusing as you are thrown in the thick of the adventure in which for what ever reason Elric is combating his family/heritage, a sorcery/conjure supreme, an albino with a very weak constitution without medications or his trusty big black sword that happens to suck souls. Pretty cool but also pretty confusing. The story peaked my interest and I thought this was going to be standard teen sword and sorcery fan fare. But I was surprised as how quickly the character develops and the overarching themes of chaos versus law were put into play. Also, that this series is just a taste for Moorcock's big arching theme of parallel universes/alternate earths and the gods using a reincarnated hero to tip the balance in their cosmic chess game. The compilation leads up to several Elric stand alone novels that I plan to read and fits in with the other "eternal champions" that fit in the Moorcock universe. Next up is the Corum chronicles and see how he stacks up to Elric!
February 14, 2018
The one word who sums up this book the most is "dated": the book starts with what is now a very stereotypical anti-hero going to absurd extents to do things out of spite, often failing in his plans and having to make up solutions as he goes, caring little for the well-being of his companions and focusing only on his own interests.
As you reach further into the later works, the writing gets better and the asides that the main character sometimes has become actually something to look forward to.
That doesn't mean that the book ever gets to what is now perceived as a good pace or and enticing style, but there is reason to see the entire book through if you've stuck with it to the second half.
I understand it's a seminal work, and I can see how many facets of it could be very innovative at the time: it's still a book that hasn't aged well, because the fundamentals of characterization and writing style are really not there, so I can't really judge it as a good book overall.
As you reach further into the later works, the writing gets better and the asides that the main character sometimes has become actually something to look forward to.
That doesn't mean that the book ever gets to what is now perceived as a good pace or and enticing style, but there is reason to see the entire book through if you've stuck with it to the second half.
I understand it's a seminal work, and I can see how many facets of it could be very innovative at the time: it's still a book that hasn't aged well, because the fundamentals of characterization and writing style are really not there, so I can't really judge it as a good book overall.
August 8, 2025
*Existentially brooding;
*Loved & hated; proud prince of
*Ruins; pawn of Fate;
*Infamous & doomed wielder of the soul-stealing sword, Stormbringer; nigromantic sorcerer &
*Conjurer of unearthly/extradimensional aid etc... The ur-stories of the last tragic & melancholic albino lord of Melniboné are here chronologically collected in all their proto-grimdark, Sword&Sorcery glory, before Moorcock began publishing the latter prequels/sequels, gap-filling & follow-up novels & tales that have confused future readers & newcomers to the Elric saga ever since. If you, like me, simply need a foundational omnibus that takes you effortlessly from pulpy start to apocalyptic finish, then I recommend this Gollancz volume.
*Loved & hated; proud prince of
*Ruins; pawn of Fate;
*Infamous & doomed wielder of the soul-stealing sword, Stormbringer; nigromantic sorcerer &
*Conjurer of unearthly/extradimensional aid etc... The ur-stories of the last tragic & melancholic albino lord of Melniboné are here chronologically collected in all their proto-grimdark, Sword&Sorcery glory, before Moorcock began publishing the latter prequels/sequels, gap-filling & follow-up novels & tales that have confused future readers & newcomers to the Elric saga ever since. If you, like me, simply need a foundational omnibus that takes you effortlessly from pulpy start to apocalyptic finish, then I recommend this Gollancz volume.
November 18, 2016
"Meaning, Elric? Do not seek that, for madness lies in such a course."
Only in the last three pages does the book finally have something clever to say.
A prime example of telling over showing and bad use of omniscient point of view. Who actually writes a sentence starting with "As you know..."? Characters are one-dimensional if they are even there and the plots are irrelevant, and overall it' just pretty bad amateur writing. The only good thing about the book, and the only reason to read it, are the monsters and magic. Moorcock had some great ideas in that area, but lacked the skill to make them into a decent story.
Only in the last three pages does the book finally have something clever to say.
A prime example of telling over showing and bad use of omniscient point of view. Who actually writes a sentence starting with "As you know..."? Characters are one-dimensional if they are even there and the plots are irrelevant, and overall it' just pretty bad amateur writing. The only good thing about the book, and the only reason to read it, are the monsters and magic. Moorcock had some great ideas in that area, but lacked the skill to make them into a decent story.
Read
September 20, 2020Good old skool fantasy adventuring. If you like Conan and that sort of episodic dark fantasy, this is for you. Like Conan though, Elric's stories do coagulate into a more ambitious narrative story with a definite conclusion and I think that aspect will turn people away or convince them it's great. I am personally a fan of how mental Moorcock's stuff gets so I enjoy the interdimensional silliness. But it does lose a bit of the grounded charm the early stories have. Also, unlike his other stuff, it's quite bereft of humour, which is perhaps appropriate but does leave reading story after story feeling a bit dry.
June 3, 2022
This apparently classic fantsasy collection, that had taken sword & sorcery into a completely different direction and had been the precursor of subsequent grimdark tales, turned out to be a really bad choice, as far as my tastes are concerned. The stories could have been solid tales of heroic quest and adventures. Unfortunately, the protagonist (or antagonist?) turned out to be a major let-down.
Nah! Not my cup of tea.
Give me Anthony Ryan's 'Pilgrimage of Swords' any day, any time, over this.
Nah! Not my cup of tea.
Give me Anthony Ryan's 'Pilgrimage of Swords' any day, any time, over this.
August 10, 2022
Collects the full original run of Elric novellas - from his debut in The Dreaming City to the four novellas which make up Stormbringer, the climax of the series. This is therefore the best way to experience Elric, because every time Moorcock came back to add stuff to the series after this it was always at best a misguided error, at worst a shameless cash-in. Full review of the saga: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/201...
February 14, 2018
A timeless classic.
May 24, 2020
high fantasy. swords,sourcery and philosophy. very good
February 14, 2023
I’ve read a fair bit of Moorcock down the years, but had always struggled with Elric. I’ve started and abandoned these on a few occasions.
Finally finished in August 2021.
Finally finished in August 2021.
May 6, 2016
Michael Moorcock’s fiction is tied together in a multiverse where Law and Chaos are engaged in a constant struggle to overturn the Balance. My favorite Moorcock character is Dorian Hawkmoon who serves the Balance. Ultimately, he serves “Good” but to do so he must preserve the Balance and that means working both sides, Law and Order. Elric, on the other hand, was destined to be the last monarch of Melníbone when his restless nature demanded that he explore other options that serving the historic gods, the Lords of Chaos. There, goes the background story, was the beginning of the end of Elric’s reign. He was betrayed and the throne was usurped.
Elric of Melníbone is an anthology of the earlier stories about Elric, beginning with his revenge upon the usurper. Thus begins a tale told with sound and fury, but signifying excitement. Elric carries what nearly every gamer knows as a “vampiric sword” but “Stormbringer” not only drinks blood and demands to be fed; it devours souls. The tale is not a full-length novel but a series of short stories and novellas, originally published in Science Fantasy magazine, starting in 1961. In the current anthology, the stories and novellas are closer to the raw power of the original rather than the more polished novelizations. Rather like reading a memoir as opposed to a biography, the current version feels more honest and more exciting because one is allowed to be invested with the author’s effort in seeking just the right voice for the story soon to become epic within an epic.
Having read some of the original sourcebooks for games based on Elric and even coding a Java version of character generation for the d20 game, Dragons of Melníbone, I seem to have read from the saga here and there, but never to have started at the beginning. The current anthology gave me a chance to do so and to savor the stories in spades. One discovers the origin of the title “Friend-slayer” and finds that the reality goes far deeper than surface betrayal and having Stormbringer devour one’s comrades. Without this “Sword of Damocles” of Stormbringer’s appetite having over Elric’s head, the erstwhile monarch of mythic proportions would be more superhero than a protagonist one could care about. With this one recurring weakness, Elric is driven and feels the pain associated with power.
There is a poetry to Elric of Melníbone beyond its portrayal of epic battles and dark magic. In all its temporal and dimensional twisting, Elric betrays the humanity underlying his very denial of humanity, his vulnerability in spite of his virtual immortality. What can one say? This is high quality fantasy. In all honesty, I believe I was more engaged with Hawkmoon as a version of The Eternal Champion, but I suddenly care more about Elric as an incarnation of this champion than ever before.
Elric of Melníbone is an anthology of the earlier stories about Elric, beginning with his revenge upon the usurper. Thus begins a tale told with sound and fury, but signifying excitement. Elric carries what nearly every gamer knows as a “vampiric sword” but “Stormbringer” not only drinks blood and demands to be fed; it devours souls. The tale is not a full-length novel but a series of short stories and novellas, originally published in Science Fantasy magazine, starting in 1961. In the current anthology, the stories and novellas are closer to the raw power of the original rather than the more polished novelizations. Rather like reading a memoir as opposed to a biography, the current version feels more honest and more exciting because one is allowed to be invested with the author’s effort in seeking just the right voice for the story soon to become epic within an epic.
Having read some of the original sourcebooks for games based on Elric and even coding a Java version of character generation for the d20 game, Dragons of Melníbone, I seem to have read from the saga here and there, but never to have started at the beginning. The current anthology gave me a chance to do so and to savor the stories in spades. One discovers the origin of the title “Friend-slayer” and finds that the reality goes far deeper than surface betrayal and having Stormbringer devour one’s comrades. Without this “Sword of Damocles” of Stormbringer’s appetite having over Elric’s head, the erstwhile monarch of mythic proportions would be more superhero than a protagonist one could care about. With this one recurring weakness, Elric is driven and feels the pain associated with power.
There is a poetry to Elric of Melníbone beyond its portrayal of epic battles and dark magic. In all its temporal and dimensional twisting, Elric betrays the humanity underlying his very denial of humanity, his vulnerability in spite of his virtual immortality. What can one say? This is high quality fantasy. In all honesty, I believe I was more engaged with Hawkmoon as a version of The Eternal Champion, but I suddenly care more about Elric as an incarnation of this champion than ever before.
November 21, 2014
Wonderfully ambiguous in its morality and emotion, lametably inconsistent in quality. These are the first written Elric stories, but they take place in the most dramatic moments of his life, including the end of his saga culminating in the fix-up novel, "Stormbringer".
Moorcock has a wild imagination, a terrific penchant for metaphysical musings, and he is able to conjure fantastic, often nightmarish images. Therefore, he is at his best, one of the top writers of his genre; beneath the outlandish events are universal themes, and I was absorbed by Elric's feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and predestination, but not without a certain determination before forces beyond comprehension.
Unfortunately, some of the stories feel very, very rushed. Characterisation feels off, the writing doesn't flow, the tension is missing, and overall there is feeling of these being first drafts or written under strict deadlines. The novel "Stormbringer" is composed of four novellas, brought together into a mostly coherent whole, and while the first three feel rushed, the final story is fortunately young Moorcock at his prime.
All in all, the unevenness is smoothed out by wonderful ideas, and this is definitely a landmark in fantasy and, if you're interested in the genre, well worth your time.
Moorcock has a wild imagination, a terrific penchant for metaphysical musings, and he is able to conjure fantastic, often nightmarish images. Therefore, he is at his best, one of the top writers of his genre; beneath the outlandish events are universal themes, and I was absorbed by Elric's feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and predestination, but not without a certain determination before forces beyond comprehension.
Unfortunately, some of the stories feel very, very rushed. Characterisation feels off, the writing doesn't flow, the tension is missing, and overall there is feeling of these being first drafts or written under strict deadlines. The novel "Stormbringer" is composed of four novellas, brought together into a mostly coherent whole, and while the first three feel rushed, the final story is fortunately young Moorcock at his prime.
All in all, the unevenness is smoothed out by wonderful ideas, and this is definitely a landmark in fantasy and, if you're interested in the genre, well worth your time.
November 1, 2011
It's a very fun and easy to read book.
Its actually a collection of stories about the character Elric.
From the beginning, to his famous adventures till his last big story (the others are short stories, the last is like a novella).
Moorcock is an intelligent writer and he guides the stories to its endings while at the same time weaving the greater saga of Elric and his people.
Most of the short stories are very fast, with little time spent on description, moved only by action and the characters interaction.
On the last story, there's a lot of lost momentum because he takes his time detailing scenes, making the character suffer untold pain and sorrow until the very end...
I had some previous experience with Elric so i knew a little of the backstory, but its all here, really. MM explains most of it with detail and some repetition so you wont miss his meaning.
Its a great read and a Fantasy Masterworks, for sure!
Its actually a collection of stories about the character Elric.
From the beginning, to his famous adventures till his last big story (the others are short stories, the last is like a novella).
Moorcock is an intelligent writer and he guides the stories to its endings while at the same time weaving the greater saga of Elric and his people.
Most of the short stories are very fast, with little time spent on description, moved only by action and the characters interaction.
On the last story, there's a lot of lost momentum because he takes his time detailing scenes, making the character suffer untold pain and sorrow until the very end...
I had some previous experience with Elric so i knew a little of the backstory, but its all here, really. MM explains most of it with detail and some repetition so you wont miss his meaning.
Its a great read and a Fantasy Masterworks, for sure!
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