Moorcock, Michael Books - Page 6

Gloriana

Michael Moorcock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

One of Michael Moorcock's most brilliant and highly decorated novels, here isthe story of a powerful queen whose quest for sexual satisfaction could destroy her kingdom. A fable satirizing Spenser's The Faerie Queen and reflecting the real life of Elizabeth I, GLORIANA, OR THE UNFULFILL'D QUEEN tells of a woman who ascends to the throne upon thedeath of her debauched and corrupted father, King Hern. Gloriana's reign brings the Empire of Albion into a GoldenAge, but her oppressive responsibilities choke her, prohibiting any form of sexual satisfaction-no matter what fetish she tries. Her problem is in fact symbolic of the hypocrisy of her entire court. While her life is meant to mirror that of her nation-an image of purity, virtue, enlightenment and prosperity-the truth is that her peaceful empire is kept secure by her wicked chancellor Monfallcon and his corrupt network of spies and murderers, the most sinister of whom is CaptainQuire, who is commissioned to seduce Gloriana and thus bring down Albion and the entire empire.

Swords Trilogy

Michael Moorcock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Not Elric, but still pretty darn good. 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Michael Moorcock, The Swords Trilogy (Berkley, 1971)

Michael Moorcock here introduces us to another aspect of the Eternal Champion, Corum of the Scarlet Robe. Corum fits the Eternal Champion mold well in the first three books of this six-book series-he's a chap who's rather like the rest of his race, normal from that perspective, but whose race is somewhat divorced from (older than, as are Elric's race) the humans who share a planet with them. While devoid of supernatural powers himself, he gains them in the pursuance of a quest. Also like Elric, Corum's destiny, in the first books, is shaped by the Dukes of Hell-Arioch, Xiombarg, and Mabelrode. He also has a trusty sidekick (in this case, Jhary-a-Conel, who does make a brief appearance with Corum at the very end of The Vanishing Tower in the Elric series). In other words, you've got an inkling of what's going on here simply because this is an Eternal Champion series and you've already read the Elric books. (You have, haven't you? If not, go do so.)

Moorcock does throw in a few elements to keep you guessing. Corum serves Law, rather than Chaos (as Elric does), and doesn't have any of the fatal weaknesses at the beginning of the book that other manifestations of the Champion do. The variations lead to great musing from the reader over the true nature of the Eternal Champion and why it's so changeable. While this is an excellent thing, and raises the stakes for the whole extended family of books, these three tales themselves (available separately as The Knight of the Swords, The Queen of the Swords, and the King of the Swords) often follow the same formulae as the Elric novels, and thus become predictable. That doesn't make them any less fun. But one wonders whether there could have been something more to them, that ineffable something that sent the Elric novels to heights unmatched in fantasy since J. R. R. Tolkein. Whatever it is, there's far less of it here. *** ½

Byzantium Endures

Michael Moorcock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A great beginning! 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Byzantium Endures captures a slice of early twentieth century reality from a very unsuspecting source: That of a Russian youth caught in the riptides of history and his dreams. These forces would eventually cast him out of his homeland into unknown worlds and adventures unimagined by the mainstream. Michael Moorcock builds a story of not just one man, but of an entire civilized world, and the metamorphosis from fledgling western-world hegemony to self-fullfilling prophesy. Moorcock's grasp of world history and the forces that moved chaotically during the early twentieth century is brilliant when captured through the eyes of one character's neurosis. This book is not the climax of his entire story, but a superb entrance into the mindset and the stage of modern humanity, leading to the maturity of the main character, Col. Pyat, in the second of the series, The Laughter of Carthage. I have read the other fantasies by Moorcock, and none compare, to me, with the historical depth created in the Pyat series. It takes more effort and research and countless hours of detailed analysis to write books of this magnitude, and Moorcock is one of the unsung masters of historical fiction in his time, though his notoriety comes from pure fantasy and science fiction. I have grown to appreciate his historical works as I grow older and wiser and look forward to his interpretations of a growing global society.

Editorial Review:

First of the Pyat novels, Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski is born in Kiev on the hinge of the twentieth century. Brought up in Odessa, discovering the pleasures of sex and cocaine, he glimpses a sophisticated world beyond his horizons - which he determines to take by storm.

*OP Earl Aubec (HB) (Eternal Champion)

Michael Moorcock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

. . . AND OTHER STORIES 3 out of 5 stars.
17 of 21 people found this review helpful.

Although I have always loved Moorcock's work, and these are fine stories, I believe that a buyer's warning should be attached. The only Aubec story is one that was already in a previous Elric book,and is about 12 pages long, and the rest of the volume is filled with other old short stories. All good, but nothing new, as I was hoping when I bought the book.

Not so much "Aubec" as "And Other Stories" but still good 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The title of this book is a tad deceiving in the sense that in really big letters the cover trumpets "EARL AUBEC" and then in smaller letter smushed underneath the big title you have "and other stories" when really it should be the other way around. The title probably should have been "all the stories we didn't have room to fit in the other books" but that's not as catchy and probably wouldn't sell as well. I can't fault them for wanting to make money. You get the "Earl Aubec" part over with fast, it's the first story and not very long and I really didn't see the point of it other than it's somehow related to the Elric saga, if Mr Aubec is an Eternal Champion, he's not a very memorable one. So if you're buying the book purely for that story you're going to be in for some disappointment. However, the other stories do make up for that somewhat, the rest of the book (and it's hefty, almost six hundred pages) consists of a variety of short stories and longer stories that Moorcock's done over the last thirty years or so. I'm not sure what logic he used in picking these stories over others and they do try to arrange them to give lip service to some kind of overarching "concept" but it really doesn't matter. For the most part the stories are pretty decent, showcasing his imagination and penchant for odd ideas. Some stories are really short, only a few pages and they make their point and move on, while others are much longer and develop over the course of their lengths. There's no real duffers in the lot, though, and everyone could probably pick different favorites from the set, although the quality does tend to bounce up and down. Overall, it's a good collection, only tangentially related to the Eternal Champion concept (that I could tell at least) and not really a definitive collection by any stretch of the imagination, it's more of a clearinghouse for all those stories that really don't fit anywhere else. Which is just fine and the world is a better place for having had these available in one place like this, because Moorcock is worth reading. It's probably not worth paying the ridiculous used prices that I see for the White Wolf editions (what. the. heck?) although the cover painting by Jon Muth (formerly of Epic Comics' Moonshadow, he does the interior sketches as well) is really nice, but if you see it for a reasonable price, I'd say it's worth a shot. There's so many stories in here you'll have to like something, right? Nobody's that picky, eh?

Editorial Review:

Here is a collection of stories animated 'by the same vision, whether on a small or large scale...he is so easily able to move from contemporary realism to futuristic fantasy; both worlds share the same colour of dreams, and follow an imagination that conceives the world in symbolic terms...'Peter Ackroyd

Sailor On the Seas of Fate

Michael Moorcock

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The Laughter of Carthage

Michael Moorcock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A true literary classic 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

In The Laughter of Carthage Moorcock takes his riotiously unreliable narrator from Civil War Russia and post-war France to America, the Ku Klux Klan (which, of course, he joins), corrupt Washington politicians, stunt flyers, gangsters, engineers, Hollywood and a lot more in between. This is a wonderfully readable series, a War and Peace for our own times, without doubt, and part of a sequence which must form one of the great Anglophone novels. This novel has never been in paperback in the US and Jerusalem Commands, perhaps even better than this, has never appeared at all. We are still waiting for The Vengeance of Rome which, by all accounts, Mr Moorcock has finished but is still polishing! If it is as good as I hope, we will have a great masterpiece on our hands!

great writing, but too much whining from the protagonist's part 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Second instalment of Pyat's quartet...and though the writing is great, one feels tired after the hundreth tirade of the whining, self pityoing, self-glamorizing Pyat. his comprehension of hs times is limited, and his mawkish sentimentalism, combined with his frankly unpalatable racism make a very unpleasant combination. I don't know of others, but I prefer a protagonist I can empathize with, not an individual whose endorsement of the abject, evil ku-klux-klan exacted my utter distaste. But I could have overcome this, I suppose, had I not been bored with Pyat's annoying droning on the fact he practically invented everything that's been invented, that modernity is evil, that it's all the fault of the jews and so on and so on and so on....

Editorial Review:

'Colonel' Pyat escapes chaotic horrors of the Russian civil war only to encounter predators afloat and ashore. Second in the series.

The War Hound and the World's Pain

Michael Moorcock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Lucifer must be out of his mind! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

As much as I enjoyed the subsequent two novels of the Von Bek trilogy (_City in the Autumn Stars_ and The Dream Thief's Daughter_) this first volume is still my favorite. It could easily have stood on it's own as a classic.
The basic premise is that Lucifer is not an all-knowing, all-powerful arch fiend, but merely a frustrated, desperate exile. God exiled Lucifer to earth with no instructions and no further communication. In his own words, Lucifer tells how everything that he did since then was his own idea, done on his own initiative. First, he tried to prove that he could build a world that was greater than the Creator's (he reveals that most of the world's rulers and churchmen are really "his".) However, by the 17th century, Europe is clearly dieing in unending warfare and plague INSPITE of his efforts to make a better world. Lucifer admits that his efforts have been a colossal failure and that he has no idea why. Moreover, he just wants to reconcile with God and go back home to his old position in heaven.

In desperation Lucifer sends an agent to find the Holy Grail. Grasping at straws, he believes that the legendary Grail will grant immediate union with God, and as a result the Last Judgement and an end to the World's Pain. Unfortunately, the Devil has no pure knights to search for this Grail- the closest thing he can find is Capt. Ulrich Von Bek. Von Bek is far from innocent, since as a mercenary soldier he has wilfully commited murder, torture, rape, and robbery as "part of the soldier's craft." Von Bek does have a conscience, though- he just gambled that there was no God or Devil to answer to for his crimes.

Von Bek goes forth on this hopeless quest- quite convinced that Lucifer, and quite possibly God, are both out of their minds....

Elric: "The Stealer of Souls" AND "Stormbringer" (Millennium Fantasy Masterworks)

Michael Moorcock

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Editorial Review:

Elric of Melniboné is the haunted, treacherous and doomed albino sorcerer-prince. An introspective weakling in thrall to his black-bladed, soul-eating sword, Stormbringer, he is yet a hero whose bloody adventures and wanderings through brooding, desolate lands leads inexorably to his decisive intervention in the war between the forces of Law and Chaos. This volume brings together The Stealer of Souls and Stormbringer, the first two published books of Elric’s adventures, and confirms Michael Moorcock’s place as one of the most important fantasy writers of our time.

The Quest for Tanelorn (The Chronicles of Castle Brass, Book 3)

Michael Moorcock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A very mysterious and adventureous book 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The Quest for Tanelorn one of te most adventurous stories I ever read. This book was filled with worriors, giant energy-sucking monsters, mystery and adventure. Sailing on a death-ship to a place no one ever seen except in dreams. On a journy to find his long lost children, Hawkmoon found himself sailing on this death-ship. Another destiny-driven quest he'll have to conqure...

Moorcock's wonderful conclusion to the eternal champion. 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Michael Moorcock, The Quest for Tanelorn (Berkley, 1975)

The Quest for Tanelorn ends with the words "the end of the saga of the eternal champion." A quarter-century later, of course, we know the untruth of that statement; still it's tough to read.

In this last novel of Dorian Hawkmoon and his compatriots, Hawkmoon, united with his wife, goes on the search for his children. He is pulled into a land of limbo suddenly while on a journey to Londra, there to find himself with his old friend Jhary-a-Conel, and the two of them adrift in a boat. They soon work out that they are in limbo, and have been sent there for a particular purpose...

Readers of the Eternal Champion novels will no doubt remember Hawkmoon popping up in various places throughout where he doesn't seem to have ever gone before in the series dedicated to him. Well, here it all is; the battle with Agak and Gagak (and what happens afterwards, when whichever manifestation of the Champion the series in question revolves around leaves Hawkmoon and his coterie in the ruins), the boat on the seas of limbo and its odd, blind crew; the whole mess. (One point, for those who have read the Elric series; how the Runestaff itself ends up in the tower of Voilodion Gaghnasdiak is never explained.)

All in all, the series draws to a satisfying conclusion, with the events coming in the most logical time flow they ever do in the eternal champion novels, and with the final mystery of the deaths of the gods, presented at the end of the first Corum trilogy, solved. Everyone (well almost everyone) who has survived ends up happy, and all is right with the Universe. Or so we think. ****

The Distant Suns

Michael Moorcock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Science fiction for pre school children 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The title of this review says exactly how I feel about this novel.The two heroes are sent in a spaceships to a nearby star to find habitable planets. They find humans there!. there is no explanation whatsoever how this has occurred, no new ideas, no antastic setting or fantastic aliens and no interesting plot. It feels like a bedtime story to be told to children. A complete waste of effort.

Super Reader 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Jerry and Catherine Cornelius are intrepid space explorers of the United Nations Space Command.

The married couple are to take the spaceship The Hope of Man to Alpha Centauri, to check it out.

When they arrive, amazingly they find other humans there, with a completely different society. They run into problems with the local customs and have to leave.

Editorial Review:

The first book version of this comic-book story of the search for a new planet to house the Earth's population. The author has published over 70 science fiction titles, and has won awards such as the 1967 Nebula Award, the 1977 "Guardian" Fiction Prize and 1979 World Fantasy Award.