The Joy of Erudition’s Reviews > Stormbringer > Status Update

I can understand that the scope of this book may appeal to a lot of people, but really, the previous ones were much, much better, and I rather regret reading this one, because it makes me less interested to read the next ones.

Okay, I absolutely hate what happened here, and it wasn't even narratively impactful due to the complete lack of development leading up to it. What was the point? My opinion of this book has dropped another notch.

So far this book has been a big disappointment compared to previous ones. It's focused around large-scale military engagements, with hardly any of the fantastical spectacles of previous books, and Elric's relationship with his wife is terrible! The author seems to have regretted marrying them off, as much as he keeps her out of the picture.

An *extremely* anticlimactic fight with the Chaos Lords.

He rescues his wife, and Moorcock makes a pretty poor excuse for why they don't have any dialogue with each other, and the book ends. I say "book" because although Moorcock introduced this as his first Elric novel, it's four short stories tied together as "books".

Boo for a likeable recurring character getting killed offscreen. Also, Elric sure isn't using much brainpower in this book. Hmm, I wonder what this prophecy means? Oh well, let's just keep going west. Some good dialogue, though.