Michael Moorcock Elric of Melniboné (1972)
Much as I loves me some Moorcock, I had no real intention of going anywhere near these. I've never been particularly big on sword and sorcery or sagas amounting to a million volumes, the existence of which seems to imply that you need to collect the whole fucking set because one on its own won't make any sense, and I'm sure I'd heard somewhere that Moorcock had churned out his Elric books to a formula mainly for the sake of getting paid. Also, I recall a ton of these things hogging a certain corner of the bookstore during my seventies childhood, and suspected Elric to be the first step on a slippery slope which would inevitably lead to Sven Hassel, Pan horror anthologies, and more Judas Priest albums than I really had use for; but there it was for just a couple of dollars, and being the first one it would surely be obliged to make some sort of sense without my having to take a degree in Elric Studies, and - fuck it - it's Moorcock, so how bad could it really be?
Actually, it's great, and great beyond my expectations. I suppose I should have known, what with it being Moorcock and all. Even if this was his crowd-pleasing money spinner, he still had to keep himself sufficiently interested in writing the thing and so we have sword and sorcery which inhabits the familiarly mythic language of the genre but otherwise shoots off in all sorts of weird, wonderful, and entirely unexpected directions, and accordingly very much distinguishes itself as massively superior to the usual bumbling Tolkien karaoke turns. Elric manages to be both faithful to the genre, and yet completely fucking weird, and therefore healthily and spikily at odds with the usual stumpy twats who do a-questing go.
Every time I read a new Moorcock, my estimation of the man's talents - and of the extent of his influence on all which has come since - goes up, just a little.
Much as I loves me some Moorcock, I had no real intention of going anywhere near these. I've never been particularly big on sword and sorcery or sagas amounting to a million volumes, the existence of which seems to imply that you need to collect the whole fucking set because one on its own won't make any sense, and I'm sure I'd heard somewhere that Moorcock had churned out his Elric books to a formula mainly for the sake of getting paid. Also, I recall a ton of these things hogging a certain corner of the bookstore during my seventies childhood, and suspected Elric to be the first step on a slippery slope which would inevitably lead to Sven Hassel, Pan horror anthologies, and more Judas Priest albums than I really had use for; but there it was for just a couple of dollars, and being the first one it would surely be obliged to make some sort of sense without my having to take a degree in Elric Studies, and - fuck it - it's Moorcock, so how bad could it really be?
Actually, it's great, and great beyond my expectations. I suppose I should have known, what with it being Moorcock and all. Even if this was his crowd-pleasing money spinner, he still had to keep himself sufficiently interested in writing the thing and so we have sword and sorcery which inhabits the familiarly mythic language of the genre but otherwise shoots off in all sorts of weird, wonderful, and entirely unexpected directions, and accordingly very much distinguishes itself as massively superior to the usual bumbling Tolkien karaoke turns. Elric manages to be both faithful to the genre, and yet completely fucking weird, and therefore healthily and spikily at odds with the usual stumpy twats who do a-questing go.
Every time I read a new Moorcock, my estimation of the man's talents - and of the extent of his influence on all which has come since - goes up, just a little.
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