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The History of the Runestaff #3-4

Sword and Runestaff: The Sword of the Dawn and The Runestaff

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Fantasy legend Michael Moorcock's heroes of the multiverse have been lauded as some of the most iconic characters of fantasy. Among them, Dorian Hawkmoon is one of the best loved. In an alternate far future, Hawkmoon is pulled unwillingly into a war against the armies of the Dark Empire. Antique cities, scientific sorcery, and crystalline machines serve as a backdrop to this high adventure.

This omnibus collects The Sword of the Dawn and The Runestaff, two novels in Moorcock's acclaimed Hawkmoon series.

The Sword of the Dawn

Dorian Hawkmoon's quest to destroy the Dark Empire leads him onto the path of a man who possesses a rare ring that allows men to travel through time. Hawkmoon uses this ring to travel to the far future, where he must battle the Pirate Lords and claim the Great Sword of the Dawn, which can end the Dark Empire once and for all.

The Runestaff

Hawkmoon's mission leads him to Dnark, the home of the Runestaff. Now Hawkmoon must take up the Runestaff in a final effort to vanquish the Dark Empire of Grangretan.

416 pages, Paperback

First published November 17, 2015

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About the author

Michael Moorcock

1,209 books3,756 followers
Michael 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.

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1,416 reviews6 followers
December 31, 2018
A befitting end to a truly fantastic series. Moorcock writes stories that please my soul.
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2 reviews
December 4, 2023
Epic high fantasy from one of the authors who brought the genre to the fore.
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