Elric: The Stealer of Souls (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné, #1) in Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"

Apr 04, 2011 Joseph rated it really liked it

It's been a long time since I read the original Elric series, and I'm pleased to find that they still hold up. The writing is sometimes a bit clumsy (unsurprising given that Moorcock was in his early twenties when these were written), but the stories are fast-moving and the Doomed Albino Prince still has a sinister mesmeric effect.

Having said that, I'm a bit conflicted about this edition, at least as an introduction for someone who hasn't read Elric before. It's interesting to approach the stori ...more

5 likes · Like · see review

Jun 20, 2019 Derek rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sword-and-sorcery

This is my third time through this material, the second via a strict original-publication-chronology, and three times is enough for me. There are whole midpart sections and stories where you can tell that Moorcock just wasn't feeling it, and the plots and images devolve into fetch quests and exquisite corpse monster battles and Elric calling for metaphysical help and whining an awful lot.

But when Moorcock is on task, he's on task. He throws out little ideas here and there--that the Melnibonean m This is my third time through this material, the second via a strict original-publication-chronology, and three times is enough for me. There are whole midpart sections and stories where you can tell that Moorcock just wasn't feeling it, and the plots and images devolve into fetch quests and exquisite corpse monster battles and Elric calling for metaphysical help and whining an awful lot.

But when Moorcock is on task, he's on task. He throws out little ideas here and there--that the Melnibonean magic is dream-state, that these people straddle the line between humanity and inhumanity--that the author admits will become raw material for revisions and successor generations of Eternal Champion. The fervor behind "The Dreaming City" and "Doomed Lord's Passing" is shown in powerful imagery and intricate ideas. And these are the ones where we see into the life of Immryr and their decadent, dreaming, tortured society.

And you have to admit that dropping the whole of _The Stealer of Souls_ and _Stormbringer_ into the middle of this thing is a real cop-out. I would rather have seen a more curated set of material of what Moorcock favored or felt was essential, even if the total set was smaller and consisted of excerpts.

The essays are worth the price of admission, in particular Alan Moore's "The Return of the Thin White Duke", which Moorcock-wise posits an alt-history unfashionable Melnibonean ancestry in England and proceeds to a scathing appraisal of competing works. It is compulsively quotable.

And Moorcock's own introduction and follow-on material is not just interesting for its backstory and set of influences, but also for the anecdotes. (It turns out that he did not like the pointy-helmet design that Jack Gaughan cooked up for a book cover, which in turn became part of the graphic novel character designs. So it goes.) He does not discuss the Eternal Champion origin or evolution other than mentioning that Jerry Cornelius is a twisted photocopy of the Elric original. This ties into how Moorcock appears to operate by iteration, refining and revising already-published material and producing sequels and prequels and fix-ups in an endless program of tinkering with what he already has.

And in the middle here is a Sojan story, "Mission to Asno!". I have absolutely no idea why.

The fascination with this read-through was, first, that Stormbringer is eventually gendered as female, and I'm not certain where this started. Significant? I don't know, but there comes a point where Zarozinia considers it to be her competitor. And the image of "codependent love interest" is powerful.

Secondly, the observation that the magic Elric wields is all in terms of summonings and invocations: he calls for help, he appeals to a higher authority, he abdicates personal power or involvement. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review