The Joy of Erudition > Recent Status Updates

This book is shockingly amateurish considering it was given a traditional publishing mark of approval under an imprint of Hachette.

So far, this is "Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser" meets "The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings".

I groaned when upon finishing reading the textbook, the protagonist picked up *another* book and read it in its entirety, padding things out even more, but I changed my mind partway in, because that book turned out to be a short story that was much more of an actual *story* than the rest of this book. It had characters with motivations, a plot, a conflict, and a resolution. More like this, please.

There have been several glimpses of the ghost sister and her werewolf lover/protector, and I really wish the story was about them instead of about the political ambitions of this evil poisoner.

It's been getting more abstract and less a story, and in this chapter we've suddenly stopped following the main character and are instead reading the book that he's reading, which is a book of metaphysics, which is half textbook and half poetry.

A lot of dream-logic and accepting things casually without any reaction, like the fact that he just met Sir Percival after reading one of his stories in a book.

As usual, I rate collections of short stories like this based on the best of the stories, not an average.

This third story is the first one I've read where Moorcock introduces the idea that Elric has many alternate universe counterparts that are all incarnations of The Eternal Champion. Here, three of these "champions" team up against a dwarf. The banter between Champions feels rather silly:

Elric heard Corum cry: "My eye -- it will not see into the netherworld. I cannot summon help!"

I like Moonglum better.

I was surprised that the plot was getting resolved so quickly, until it turned out that this is a collection of short stories that form a rough sequence, rather than a single novel.

This is the way I like it. The characters are already established and competent in their abilities, and it starts out with Elric already on his quest, accompanied by Moonglum. No wasting time beginning with a dull everyday life and refusing a call to action before things actually start happening.

There are versions of a Cinderella in here, and a Beauty and the Beast, bits and pieces of a Snow White and a Rapunzel, and recognisable variants of The Brave Little Tailor, The Musicians of Bremen, The Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, King of the Golden Mountain, King Lindworm, and some others I know, but a lot of these are very unfamiliar to me.

Most of these stories are extremely terse synopses -- not unusual for oral folktales, but these are among the craziest I've seen. It's a parade of bizarre events without motivation, reason, or logic.

It's interesting that Lewis didn't mind including gods like Bacchus in these books, and even more so that they're good guys and allies!

“And the feasts on the poop and the musicians.”

Phrasing!

In publication order, this is Book 2, and that's how I'm reading it. So far this is a story-within-a-story, with the familiar characters from Book 1 (publication order, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) returning to Narnia, but they quickly meet a dwarf who starts telling them the story of Prince Caspian.