Rating: 
Summary: One that stands out
Review: All of these books are well written. If you liked this book, you'll probably like all of the Moorcock eternal champion series, Corum, Hawkmoon etc...I just finished the first 3 books of Corum and really enjoyed them. They reminded me a lot of this series. What you can expect with this series is a lot of action and a clean, clear writing style describing some excellent ideas. Ideas of different worlds, interesting characters and larger than life challenges by great heroes. Another point, all 5 of the first Elric books blur somewhat into one big long series of short stories that are closely connected. I can never remember where all the pieces fit except for the first and last books which are actually done as full novels. All in all, a great fantasy and I can highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the greatest fantasy books ever.
Review: Elric of Melniboné, possibly the greatest fiction hero ever created. The Eternal Champion series is a must for any fantasy fan and Michael Moorcock must surely be one of the most creative authors of the past century.Stormbringer is one of the best novels I have ever read. Very Highly recommended. (Buy the hardback version!)
Rating:
Summary: Action from start to finish
Review: From the raid on Karlaak to the titantic finish it keeps you turning the pages. Elric is cultured, cynical and brutal by turns.
Rating:
Summary: Best ending to a series I have ever read
Review: I think the ending brings out so much character and depth in Elric. It reminded me of the first book...thus reminding me of what Elric is and where he came from. Everything that you've read about Elric's history comes into focus on the last few pages. If you are trying to pick up a Moorcock book, read Elric of Melnibone' first. If you think the book says too much that the sword "drinks souls"...think about the title for one second, then think about the whole premise for Elric. I was amazed at that comment in one of the summaries, but hey, everybody is entitled to their own opinions. My two cents is this: this is one of the best series I have ever read, and it won't disappoint you. If you like fantasy and sword play, this is definitely for you. Elric helped to reconstruct all of fantasy...isn't that enough to want to make you read these books? It was for me! Enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Not nearly as good as they say
Review: I will beg to differ with so many of the glowing reviews of Stormbringer, and indeed the whole of the Elric saga. Before reading them, I had heard how great they were from a variety of people. Given the time of their writing, they obviously fall into the latter stages of the great pulp/sci-fi/fantasy boom that occured from the twenties until the late sixties. I have greatly enjoyed many of Moorcock's contemporaries and forefathers, such as R.E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and, of course, Tolkien. Each writer has his own set of strengths and weaknesses, but they all bring some sparkling thing to their work, some great gift.
After reading a six book saga from Moorcock, as well as a three book Omnibus long since forgotten, I have to wonder if the same is true for this author. I've foud that his charactarization is poor, in the main. His central characters tend to be disconnected brooders, while the rest are really just moveable scenery. No one moves to the level of attaining a connection with the reader. In addition, even at points of wild action and universe-moving portent, the tension in the writing is lacking for me. It's all a fairly dispassionate walk-through, in my eyes. I'm sure people are cursing my name at this moment, but I can only provide my opinion, for good or ill.
In the end, however, the biggest problem with this whole saga is this: Elric is a one-trick horse. He laments the terrible cost that carrying Stormbringer incurs, killing his friends and loved ones, addicting him like a drug to its evil power. He tries to find ways to leave his dependence on the sword behind. Something occurs that causes him to pick up Stormbringer yet again. Elric gets in trouble, and Stormbringer's awful power solves the problem, albiet with some terrible cost to him. It's the same story every time. Even the type of evil that Stormbringer causes is fairly predictable. It plunges itself into someone's flesh and takes their soul, killing one of Elric's friends or comrades. Over the long haul (or even the short one, really), it becomes rather uninspiring.
There are far better fantasy sagas out there. I would hesitate to recommend this one to any but the hard-core reader. Though it's hard to find, Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World saga is a thousand times better, and deals with some of the same ideas. Cheers.
Rating:
Summary: Full throttle fantasy!
Review: I'm moved to write this review after finishing "Stormbringer" again for the nth time. Actually, I read Stormbringer again after slogging through one of the Robert Jordan books, and it was like a bucket of cold water over my head. I realized just how bored and uninterested I have become with the Wheel of Time series. Stormbringer and the other books about the brooding albino anti-hero Elric of Melnibone are full of apocalyptic energy, epic plots, and immense creativity. Stormbringer is of course the demonic sword carried by Elric of Melnibone, the last of the Dragon Emperors. Elric is an aspect of the Eternal Champion (a character found in nost of Moorcock's fantasy work) doomed, in this world, to bring its destruction and in the process, restore the balance between Law and Chaos. Stormbringer was written before a lot of the other stories in the Elric saga, so Moorcock really glories in the character he has created. In a series of short stories, Elric discovers his fate and seeks to carry it out. I've had the Stormbringer book for years, and read it from time to time. After finishing it (in about a day) I started on again with another Elric omnibus edition and I'm halfway through it already. Moorcock's prose is fast and deadly and moves like greased lightning. Each scene pushes things further and faster ahead and there is no wandering around, looking at the flowers. I've given up on Jordan and many of his contemporaries. There's just too much navel-gazing going on in current fantasy novels. But Moorcock is one of the best there is and was. If you're stuck in the fantasy doldrums, tired of slogging through 700 pages with no payoff, all it will take is for you to read "Stormbringer" to be whipped away in its gale force winds.
Rating:
Summary: Full throttle fantasy!
Review: I'm moved to write this review after finishing "Stormbringer" again for the nth time. Actually, I read Stormbringer again after slogging through one of the Robert Jordan books, and it was like a bucket of cold water over my head. I realized just how bored and uninterested I have become with the Wheel of Time series. Stormbringer and the other books about the brooding albino anti-hero Elric of Melnibone are full of apocalyptic energy, epic plots, and immense creativity. Stormbringer is of course the demonic sword carried by Elric of Melnibone, the last of the Dragon Emperors. Elric is an aspect of the Eternal Champion (a character found in nost of Moorcock's fantasy work) doomed, in this world, to bring its destruction and in the process, restore the balance between Law and Chaos. Stormbringer was written before a lot of the other stories in the Elric saga, so Moorcock really glories in the character he has created. In a series of short stories, Elric discovers his fate and seeks to carry it out. I've had the Stormbringer book for years, and read it from time to time. After finishing it (in about a day) I started on again with another Elric omnibus edition and I'm halfway through it already. Moorcock's prose is fast and deadly and moves like greased lightning. Each scene pushes things further and faster ahead and there is no wandering around, looking at the flowers. I've given up on Jordan and many of his contemporaries. There's just too much navel-gazing going on in current fantasy novels. But Moorcock is one of the best there is and was. If you're stuck in the fantasy doldrums, tired of slogging through 700 pages with no payoff, all it will take is for you to read "Stormbringer" to be whipped away in its gale force winds.
Rating:
Summary: worth a look for occasional fantasy readers
Review: I'm not a hardcore fantasy fan; I've read most of Tolkien's stuff a couple of times, grooved Ron Howard and HP Lovecraft when I was young, and these days I will check out a fantasy title if it comes highly recommended. This is such a book, and I highly recommend it for hard-core fantasy fans (but they've all read it anyway), and I give it a more modest recommendation for more casual fantasy readers.
This is a "concept" book. It is mostly about Elric's symbiotic relationship with his sword and the role he and the sword play in the Grand Designs of Fate. _Stormbringer_ delivers very well in this regard. Everything builds to an ending that is shocking, moving and deeply satisfying. The book starts out as standard swords and sorcery hackery, but it picks up steam, and by the second half it is quite compelling. Moorcock's description are wild and psychedelic (sometimes they backfire and elicit a chuckle), and he rarely lets up on the action (sometimes this gets repetitive). But, the wild-action style works quite well once you get into the spirit of things.
Elric is an atypical fantasy hero, and one with far more depth than other icons of the genre. He is capable of a wide range of actions and emotions, and he has more facets to his life than swinging that sword around. The most striking contrast between Elric and his rival fantasy heroes is Elric's intellectualism: he is painfully aware of his bizarre situation and he is always questioning himself and how he handles things.
The book has some problems, especially early on. All of the characters besides Elric are one-dimensional. Anybody who thinks Zorozinia or Moonglum have personalities needs to read more books(or even, watch more TV sitcoms). I snickered a few times when Moorcock would misuse a word. Far more often, I would wince at his overwrought sentences. Many times, Moorcock opts to tell us that something is interesting rather than show us something interesting, and he does so by piling on gratuitous adverbs and tortured, sometimes ambiguous, descriptive clauses. At one point, a magical artifact relevant to the plot inexplicably changes location in between chapters. Moorcock does not entirely transcend the genre and some annoying fantasy tropes make unwelcome appearances: Magical dwarves and oracles that appear at the right time to spout expository dialog, and unpronounceable proper nouns with no internal logic. But these flaws do not matter so much in a book that is as short as this, especially since the writing improves in the second half.
This book is rather short, and it could easily be finished on a single leg of a plane trip or bus ride. The investment is low, and the reward is high. Elric is a memorable character, and his doom is so remarkable, that it is worth the handful of hours to indulge this book and make his acquaintance.
Rating: 
Summary: Mmm, give me "Law and Chaos" instead.
Review: Maybe I missed the time when the Elric Saga was new and original, but truth be told by the time I got around to it it was just cynical and gory. Of course, I read the last book, "Stormbringer" first, accompanied by Wendy Pini's "Law and Chaos" artwork, and found the one paling in the face of the other. "Stormbringer" seems a rehash of everything the first five books showed us--doomed women, soul-sucking demons, doomed women, soul-sucking demons sucking the souls of doomed women, etc--basically not good '90s literary fare. Moorcock's characterizations are shoddy, the characters instead being mere extensions of the plot (which may in truth be the point, considering that free will is a major issue in the books). In this sense, the female characters suffer most, being present only to occupy Elric's time between his summoning of soul-sucking demons, and subsequently to provide a decent meal for the ravenous evildoers so that the reader can bemoan Elric's loneliness and have a good reason to cheer on the albino murderer and his soul-sucking demonic sword.
Rating:
Summary: The saga concludes with one of fantasy's great novels
Review: Michael Moorcock created the character of Elric, a doomed albino prince of a dying race who carries a cursed sword called Stormbringer in his wanderings throughout the Young Kingdoms of the humans, in the mid-sixties for "Science Fantasy Magazine." Elric starred in a series of novellas, the last four of which were gathered together to create this single novel, "Stormbringer." Although Moorcock has gone on to write many more novels featuring Elric, "Stormbringer is chronologically the last of the series; the albino prince meets his destiny and the world faces its fate in the eternal battle of law and chaos. And the saga ends on its highest note; without a doubt, "Stormbringer" is one of the best of Michael Moorcock novels. Most fans consider this finale the best in the series. Even though it was originally published as four novellas, the parts flow together in one concentrated epic of sorcerery, horror, and war. The storyline has the the Theocrat of Pan Tang, Jagreed Lern, ally himself with the Dukes of Hell to spread Chaos across the Earth, warping it in nightmarish ways. Leading the seemingly hopeless struggle against the conquerors, Elric comes to understand finally the destiny appointed him, and that the fate of the entire world -- and the one that will follow it -- rests on his own, hideous sacrifice. Moorcock's imagination here is feverish and grotesque, the battles sequences are epic and thrilling, and the language is poetic and deeply tragic. Everything that has come before in the saga of Elric (principally in the five earlier novellas that make up "The Werid of the White Wolf" and "The Bane of the Black Sword," as well as the 1972 prequel novel "Elric of Melniboné") crashes together for the cosmic, cathartic conclusion. This stands easily amongst the best fantasy novels ever written, and fine example of dark, philosophic fantasy filled with imagery that you will never forget.
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