Rating: 
Summary: Almost as good as Stormbringer
Review: Nothing can beat the ending of Stormbringer, so this book's ending is a little weak in comparison (also it's the first of three, so we don't know how the overall story ends) but for me it is the best Elric book because it gives far deeper insight into the character of that intriguing hero-villain. What makes this series work is that they don't get hollower the way many long-running series do, but deepen all the time. A great plot set on a rich tapestry.
Rating: 
Summary: Elric defeats Hitler
Review: Once upon a time their was an author named Michael Moorcock, and he wrote short fantasy novels, and they were good. Then he got famous, stopped writing novels and became a philosopher, thinking many deep thoughts such as "war is dumb because people should be nice to each other because was is stupid"
In 2001, he decided to write a new novel. As with his previous novels, the main character is an albino with a soul stealing sword. Unlike his previous novels, it is really long (460 pages), no good people get hurt (despite three major battles), there's little action, tons of dialog (all of it variations on "why can't we all get along"), Elric cries alot and everyone lives happily ever after, right down to a beautiful wedding and five happy children.
The plot is simple. Chaos and Law fight across the multiverse but that war will soon end because the entire multiverse is going to be destroyed. Everything hinges on a single day in 1940 when Hitler's luftwaffe bomb England. In order to save all existence, Elric teleports to Germany, summons some dragons and leads them into battle against the Luftwaffe. In the meantime, Hitler, with the help of one of Satan's devils, uses the Holy Grail to summon Arioch
i learned many things in this book. First, all Germans are sweet, peace-loving people who wouldn't hurt a fly. Only Hitler was bad. Second, Hitler was a tiny, scared, incompetent little child who couldn't conqueor a playground much less Europe. Every win he had was due to pure luck. Third, Hess asked Elric if he could join his side. Fourth, many British people thought Elric was actually king Aurthur. Fifth, Stormbringer, the sword with a will of its own, is a noble sword that refuses to hurt innocent people. Sixth, Arioch likes to write poems about farting.
Although the book is long and covers three major battles, there is very little action. That's because roughly 400 of the 460 pages are dedicated to the main character saying over and over "Hitler is bad, WW2 wasn't Germany's fault, Britian sure is a great country, let's all be nice". He doesn't describe how Hitler is bad, he simply asserts it over and over. Some action happens, but it is over in a few pages, followed by dozens of pages of "don't people understand that war never solves anything?". The book is extremely light on descriptions and very heavy on monologues. For example, a demon who once served Satan but left when "Satan proved insufficiently committed to the cause of evil" (pg 386) is about to sacrifice Elric's daughter when Elric bursts in, Stormbringer covered in Nazi blood. So the demon, being only human (apparently demons are human), shoots Elric with a .38 caliber pistol. Elric then pretty much dies but snaps out of it thanks to the Holy Grail. That whole sequence is described in probably 5 paragraphs. The rest is spent thinking about how war is bad.
Once upon a time, Moorcock wrote interesting books. Now it appears he has contracted syphillis and gone insane.
Rating: 
Summary: Return of the Eternal Champion
Review: Once upon a time, Michael Moorcock wrote a whole bunch of fun books centered around the concept of the Eternal Champion, a being who inhabits various incarnations and is in constant conflict with the darker forces of the multiverse. The Eternal Champion went by various names: Hawkmoon, Corum, Erekose and most notably, Elric. After a while, Moorcock apparently decided to go off in other literary directions. Gone were the fun books; instead, there were more literary works such as Mother London; they may have been good (although I often found them unreadable), but they were not fun. Now, Moorcock has returned to the material that made him famous. Despite the way this book is marketed, it is not truly an Elric book, but rather the story of Ulric von Bek, an albino German horrified by the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. Ulric, the descendant of other Eternal Champion incarnations, owns a family heirloom called Ravenbrand, a sword that is intimately linked with Elric's Stormbringer. Ulric's struggles against the Nazis, in particular his cousin Gaynor, eventually link him us with Elric as well as other characters who are familiar to Moorcock fans. This is a pretty good book, but a lot of the old Moorcock magic isn't there. In particular, it moves a lot more slowly than earlier works, which is not surprising, since this is double the length of most of the original Elric stories. In addition, Ulric is not much of a man of action, allowing other characters to take charge throughout the story. Finally, there is a certain detached quality to the writing that makes it hard to empathize with the heroes or loathe the villains. So there are flaws...Moorcock is not the same writer he was thirty years ago. While more mature, he is also not as fun. But this book still has its pleasures, and they outweigh the faults: for Moorcock fans, this will be a little disappointing but still a good addition to their collection.
Rating:
Summary: Good Elric movie!
Review: Reading this, I thought what a great first Elric movie it would make. It starts in recognizeable history, then moves into weird fantasy worlds, then back into the real world. I know Mr Moorcock is famous for refusing to let Elric be filmed until the 'right' maker comes along, but this would really work great and maybe he could get Brad Pitt back to play him (rumor was Pitt was interested in doing Elric a few years back). Pitt would now make a great Elric of Melnibone! Think of Pitt when you read this and you'll see what I mean! With all the other movies coming out, surely it's time we got our Elric movie now! Please!
Rating:
Summary: Exciting Elric
Review: Rudolph Hess turns his attention to mystical artifacts that he feels the Master race deserves to own while furthering their chances of winning World War II. SS Major Gaynor von Minct is assigned to obtain the sword Ravenbrand from its owner Graf von Bek. On another world at relatively the same time, Elric, the sorcerer-emperor of Melnibone fights Gaynor the Damned for possession of Stormbringer, the stealer of souls sword. However, while Elric is entranced by a ruse of his deadly enemy, von Minct imprisons his earthly equivalent von Bek in a concentration camp. Through the aid of THE DREAMTHIEF'S DAUGHTER, Elric and Graf must find a way to merge in order to save the multiverse from the insane activities of Gaynor that threatens to destroy the time-space continuum. The legendary Michael Moorcock returns with his most popular character Elric in an exciting science fiction-fantasy that will please the great author's many fans. The story line, though similar in overall content to several Elric Eternal Champion tales, remains entertaining and fun to read. The link with the Nazis provides an intriguing reference to the paranormal beliefs of Hitler and his leadership. Though not new, THE DREAMTHIEF'S DAUGHTER retains Mr. Moorcock's abilities to provide his audience with a fabulous fantasy. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Youth and Maturity
Review: The first Elric stories -- wild and full of power -- were the work of a twenty-year-old. These later Elric books bring the wisdom, technique and still a quite astonishing energy, of a sixty-year-old. Revenge of the Rose was the best since Stormbringer and this, too, has much of the power of Stormbringer. They continue to explore the relationship between man and sword -- man and his sexuality, man and his dependency on violence, man who struggles between aggression and pacifism, between romantic Chaos and prosaic Law. All these symbols and ideas are bound up in the Elric series and were consciously there from the beginning (see Sojan, from Savoy Publishers). Moorcock takes the skills, experience and ambition of the fine literary novelist he also is (see King of the City -- which also has pile-driver energy and also came out this year!) and pumps fresh energy into a genre he long ago made his own. Everything he touches, he changes and continues to astonish his fans as much as he brings despair to his critics! If a book this good had come from an unknown, we would be celebrating. Moorcock can never be taken for granted!
Beautiful stuff, elegantly pushing the boundaries of the genre so that you hardly know it's happening! Thank you, Mr Moorcock!
Rating:
Summary: Moorcock is superb
Review: Through his long career, every form that Michael Moorcock has touched he has changed. Science Fiction was never the same again after New Worlds. The space story was changed through The Black Corridor and Behold the Man examined religion. He has put his unique stamp on mainstream novels like Mother London, King of the City or the Pyat sequence. And he has done the same for fantasy. Before Moorcock, there was nothing like this. After Moorcock, there was a lot like this -- but nothing which really has the flavour of the original, full strength old Master. This Elric book is a gem. I really hadn't expected to like it as much as I did. This really isn't the old mixture as before. This is a refined and intelligent supernatural adventure, full of love, magic and philosophy. It is the familiar Moorcock mix and it doesn't come any headier. This zoomed by and sent me straight back to the first Elric books. If you've never read Elric -- this is a fine place to start. The finest single Elric tale remains Stormbringer! but this runs it a very close second. The dragons are gorgeous, too, and the Nazi theme has more to do with an examination of perverse romanticism (and by extension sword and sorcery fiction) than it has to pointing out who the bad guys of the 1930s were. The great thing about this novel is that you can enjoy it on so many levels and they're all stimulating! Recommended! TT
Rating:
Summary: As great as Tolkien, but different.
Review: When I was growing up there were only Tolkien, Moorcock, Howard and Leiber writing this kind of fantasy and for me Moorcock was always the best, in spite of a certain haste in one or two of the earlier books. Stormbringer has to remain the greatest apocalyptic ending of all time and nobody has ever done better.
But one or two of the 'in-between' books, where Moorcock filled in some of Elric's past, didn't always come up to his best. Then, from Gloriana and The Warhound and the World's Pain on, we got a different, more thoughtful, far deeper Moorcock which was reflected in the Elric books he started to write in the mid-1980s beginning with The Fortress of the Pearl and then the superb Revenge of the Rose, which is almost Dickensian in its writing and detail, yet still has the dash and splendor of the best early work. Now, with The Dreamthief's Daughter, we see still another maturing and deepening of the Elric myth. Where most authors would thin down their character, or farm him out (as with Howard, for instance) Moorcock has stayed with him, bringing the wisdom of his non-fantasy books like Mother London and King of the City to the fantasy form. He has not abandoned his love of fantasy and remains as creative and innovative as always, but he has become more thoughtful -- exploring, as in this case, the elements of the form itself. He takes Nazi romanticism and shows how it is attractive and deadly at the same time. He explores Nazi ideas, such as the notion that there is a world below the Earth's surface (the famous 'Hollow Earth' theory) and he even has dragons making a brief, crucial appearance in the Battle of Britain. All this produces, as well as a great dynamic, a series of reflections, which leave you far more satisfied with the book than you are with almost all other modern fantasy and offers the reader something as great as Tolkien, but of an entirely different character. In brief -- Mr Moorcock doesn't let his readers down. As we mature, so does he. This story, which pulls off some interesting ideas (such as two characters -- Elric and
Ulric von Bek -- inhabiting the same body), is like nothing I've
read before. The next novel, The Skrayling Tree, which will deal with Elric and Ulric in the America of Hiawatha, promises to develop the intellectual strengths of the first book of the new sequence and still keep the action fast and furious. From being one of the leading best-selling fantasy writers of the 70s -- second only to Tolkien -- Moorcock seems to have been swamped by Tolkien imitations and lost his mass readership. The 80s saw him writing mostly literary fiction such as Byzantium Endures and Mother London. But what fantasy he did produce was outstanding, including Gloriana and The Warhound and the World's Pain, both of which won several prizes.
For this reader, at any rate, he remains as original and as powerful a writer as he was when he began, second only to Tolkien in his influence on the genre. I loved this book and was delighted by the respect Mr Moorcock shows his readership by continuously providing us with new, stimulating ideas in the form of our favourite fiction. For readers who want real substance to their fantasy diet -- I enthusiastically recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Delicious mind candy.
Review: While there are more lyric fantasy writers (the likes of McCaffrey, McKinley, McKillip, and De Lint), which I love dearly, for shear brain-bopping, mind engorging, plain ol' brainy fun, Michael Moorcock has no peers. His books are full of outrageously disparate concepts and beings, plunged together into the fabulously outre reality he has created for them. His plots are absolutely Byzantine in complexity and arty playfulness; his characters are archetypal, without being in the least stereotypical or flat, yet each is consummately heroic or vile. I'm not sure that it's possible to read only one Michael Moorcock book; there's just too much to leave behind; and with the ingenius techniques he uses to return and even revive his large cast, there's just no need to. But interestingly the historical characters he uses in this novel (primarily Hitler and his Top Nazis) are adroitly and appropriately drawn with exacting attention to period detail and personalities. An amazing book from a wild genius who never fails to engage and enthrall.
Rating:
Summary: Moorcock does it again
Review: Yet again, Michael Moorcock has given us a great tale of adventure to keep us up until the wee hours of morning reading. I give this book four stars rather than five because the book gets a little too multiversially philosophical at times. This gets a little old--Plus, as always, Moorcock is a little too dualistic in his view of the struggle between good and evil-- Probably, though, that is just because I have read so many of his books and heard most of it before. At any rate, this book is a great addition to the Elric sage--certainly a far cry better than the "Revenge of the Rose." I also liked how we were given a more intimate glimpse of Elric from a first-person narrative standpoint. Overall, a great book.
|
