Author: Michael Moorcock
Themes: Moral and political corruption
Quotes: "We are victims, cousin, of a conspiracy--a game played by gods, demons and sentient swords."
Reading/Listening Time: 5 hours, 34 minutes
Rant:
Michael Moorcock is kind of like George R.R. Martin in that he kinda sees himself as an anti-tolkien writer. He thinks that Tolkien kind of infantalizes fantasy, that it lulls people into a passive mentality, and his particular "brand" of fantasy isn't realistic to what one sees in the real world
I have this vision of JRR Tolkien in the afterlife going:
Now I can understand, within the context of there being a lot of copycat Tolkienesque writers in Mr Moorcock's day, that there comes a point where the mimicking of a certain style can be awfully repetitive, and I appreciate a lot of the ideas that Mr Moorcock focused on in this book...
But Mr Tolkien and Mr Moorcock are writing from two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT literary traditions and comparing them just because their both "fantasy" demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what each of them is trying to say.
Rant:
Michael Moorcock is kind of like George R.R. Martin in that he kinda sees himself as an anti-tolkien writer. He thinks that Tolkien kind of infantalizes fantasy, that it lulls people into a passive mentality, and his particular "brand" of fantasy isn't realistic to what one sees in the real world
I have this vision of JRR Tolkien in the afterlife going:
Now I can understand, within the context of there being a lot of copycat Tolkienesque writers in Mr Moorcock's day, that there comes a point where the mimicking of a certain style can be awfully repetitive, and I appreciate a lot of the ideas that Mr Moorcock focused on in this book...
But Mr Tolkien and Mr Moorcock are writing from two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT literary traditions and comparing them just because their both "fantasy" demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what each of them is trying to say.
One thing that's been reinforced in my mind from my Year of Epic Fantasy Reading is that Tolkien is really only a nominally fantasy writer: his writing is more focused on culture, and language, and most importantly...mythology (which is actually quite a different thing from fantasy because it has a basis in history and tells us the things people valued in life...NOT what they typically did).
This is quite a bit different from the realism school of fantasy- which is more about introducing fantasy races and monsters into a psudo-historical landscape and using them to project a story (imagining what real people would do in that situation).
So if LOTR isn't completely realistic it's because THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE REALISTIC!! They're supposed to reflect MYTHS! A part of our history, and our past, how we relate to it, and how we figuratively have to WATCH IT DIE to adopt a modern perspective...
It's like comparing apples to oranges when you absolutely hate apples...
/UHG!
/end rant
Review:
Now that I've got that off my chest...
I'm just gonna copy-paste my goodreads review:
This book is supposed to be, like, the literary successor to another book I read called "The Sword of Welleran".
This one is like...The Sword of Welleran's moody younger brother. Not too moody, you know? But still through the whole thing there's these little forshadowing moments where the narrator hints that things aren't going to turn out so good for our protagonist in the long run. I really felt like the story could have done without those. Elric is dynamic and conflicted enough of a character that that quality shines about him without the narrator having to point it out all the time.
Elric is an emperor of this certain magical land, somewhere. And he was born an albino, and very weak. He has to take a lot of medicine so he doesn't die, and he's a bit of an intellectual. His country is kind of on the barbaric side: like they will do things that by modern standards are really atrocious and it is A-OK. But Elric has the nagging feeling that maaaybe things like gang rape and slavery aren't such great ideas. He wants to guide his people to change, but at the start of the story he really doesn't know how.
He's got these two cousins, one of them is a girl and she is his fiance. The other is a guy who thinks he could be doing Elric's job better than Elric can. And he tries to prove it by, in the middle of a campaign against these enemy marauders, staging a mutiny. NOT such a bright idea...
So Elric, to get more power to defeat his cousin who's challenging him, enlists the power of these semi-demonic forces. And his cousin does the same, and they retaliate against each other back and forth.
Pretty early on Elric is conflicted because he recognizes that to get what he wants he's violating all his principles, and he's gonna do it anyway. He basically feels horrible about himself as a human being (or whatever species/race he is) but he's still not going to change.
And then he finally confronts his cousin: he's leveled up, geared up, and their tension has come to a head. And he realizes that, if he kills his cousin, he's just bein' a pawn in the hands of the supernatural forces that he's allied himself with...And those guys do NOT have his best interests at heart!
(Which is exactly what I tell myself whenever I meet a Daedric Prince in Skyrim)
So he does the weird thing and decides to make peace with his cousin instead of killing him. They go home happy together in a state of semi-peace, and Elric decides he needs to learn more about himself and the world before he tries to change it and make it better.
He leaves the country in the care of his cousins and goes on a road trip to accomplish this goal, accompanied by his trusty sword Stormbringer, and his trusty friend Rackhir.
All in all, I think that this book works well as a standalone novel. It reads more like a Lovecraft Weird Tale, or a Superhero/villian origin story, than regular fantasy.
Notes:
Through the whole thing I kept imagining the Elf Prince Nuada from Hellboy 2, but like with pinkish-red eyes as what Elric looks like.
Rating: 3/4 Stars.
So if LOTR isn't completely realistic it's because THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE REALISTIC!! They're supposed to reflect MYTHS! A part of our history, and our past, how we relate to it, and how we figuratively have to WATCH IT DIE to adopt a modern perspective...
It's like comparing apples to oranges when you absolutely hate apples...
/UHG!
/end rant
Review:
Now that I've got that off my chest...
I'm just gonna copy-paste my goodreads review:
This book is supposed to be, like, the literary successor to another book I read called "The Sword of Welleran".
This one is like...The Sword of Welleran's moody younger brother. Not too moody, you know? But still through the whole thing there's these little forshadowing moments where the narrator hints that things aren't going to turn out so good for our protagonist in the long run. I really felt like the story could have done without those. Elric is dynamic and conflicted enough of a character that that quality shines about him without the narrator having to point it out all the time.
Elric is an emperor of this certain magical land, somewhere. And he was born an albino, and very weak. He has to take a lot of medicine so he doesn't die, and he's a bit of an intellectual. His country is kind of on the barbaric side: like they will do things that by modern standards are really atrocious and it is A-OK. But Elric has the nagging feeling that maaaybe things like gang rape and slavery aren't such great ideas. He wants to guide his people to change, but at the start of the story he really doesn't know how.
He's got these two cousins, one of them is a girl and she is his fiance. The other is a guy who thinks he could be doing Elric's job better than Elric can. And he tries to prove it by, in the middle of a campaign against these enemy marauders, staging a mutiny. NOT such a bright idea...
So Elric, to get more power to defeat his cousin who's challenging him, enlists the power of these semi-demonic forces. And his cousin does the same, and they retaliate against each other back and forth.
Pretty early on Elric is conflicted because he recognizes that to get what he wants he's violating all his principles, and he's gonna do it anyway. He basically feels horrible about himself as a human being (or whatever species/race he is) but he's still not going to change.
And then he finally confronts his cousin: he's leveled up, geared up, and their tension has come to a head. And he realizes that, if he kills his cousin, he's just bein' a pawn in the hands of the supernatural forces that he's allied himself with...And those guys do NOT have his best interests at heart!
(Which is exactly what I tell myself whenever I meet a Daedric Prince in Skyrim)
So he does the weird thing and decides to make peace with his cousin instead of killing him. They go home happy together in a state of semi-peace, and Elric decides he needs to learn more about himself and the world before he tries to change it and make it better.
He leaves the country in the care of his cousins and goes on a road trip to accomplish this goal, accompanied by his trusty sword Stormbringer, and his trusty friend Rackhir.
All in all, I think that this book works well as a standalone novel. It reads more like a Lovecraft Weird Tale, or a Superhero/villian origin story, than regular fantasy.
Notes:
Through the whole thing I kept imagining the Elf Prince Nuada from Hellboy 2, but like with pinkish-red eyes as what Elric looks like.
Rating: 3/4 Stars.
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