| Title | : | Stormbringer (The Elric Saga, #6) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0441787541 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780441787548 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 220 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1965 |
Stormbringer (The Elric Saga, #6) Reviews
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With Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock brings a superior fantasy series to a to formally effective and emotionally satisfying conclusion.
I love the Elric series, and sometimes wonder if I rate the books too highly. After all, the prose, ranging from workmanlike to vigorous, is often evocative but rarely poetic, and the tales themselves run to cliche, with too many love-besotted sorcerers, too many queens with hidden agendas, and too many marvelous towers—chock full of monsters and demons—appearing at the conflux of the time streams.
Here, however, Moorcock is at the top of his game. His prose is unusually concentrated and disciplined, and many of the plot elements he introduces are both surprising and pleasing. (My favorites? The quest for Roland’s horn, and—even better--the Sad Giant and his shield.)
But the best thing about this book is the seriousness with which Moorcock treats his hero, his hero’s destiny, and the startlingly original universe—a world torn between Chaos and Law—in which his hero lives. For it is the brooding Byronic character of Elric himself, fated to kill those whom he loves, and the unique philosophical realm which determines the nature of that character, that together are the twin source of the Elric fans’ delight, making it easy to excuse the patches of mundane prose, the occasional narrative cliche.
In fashioning Stormbringer, Moorcock has shown great courage, not flinching from the demands of fate or the requirements of his chosen universe. He brings the Elric series to its inevitable conclusion, and, in doing so, has crafted a thing of harsh beauty, as heartbreaking and bleak as Arthur’s battle at the plain of Camlann. -
"I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas." -Michael Moorcock
With this simple sentence, Moorcock reveals something troubling and endemic to the fantasy genre: that not enough fantasy authors start out with fantastical ideas. There are a lot of big writers out there (with really big books) who don't have very big ideas. But perhaps that shouldn't surprise us, since their ur-inspiration, Tolkien, has a remarkably vast amount of skill sadly limited by a very small vision, while Moorcock is the opposite: a man with grandiose visions who is sometimes limited by his meager skill.
Certainly, Moorcock is capable of some pretty, frilly prose, and shows in this story, as in the tale which opens Elric's saga, that he is capable of providing a consistent tone and driving plot. But, at his core, he is still (at least through the early Elric stories), a pulp writer, and he admits as much in the
introduction to 'Stealer of Souls', talking about how many of the stories were rushed, how some were written for money, that many disparate stories were combined to make saleable novels, and how most of these stories were explorations of ideas that he would only fully develop in later series.
I admit I appreciate this straightforward humility much more than the pretension of many in the genre, and as usual, it is the most humble author who tends to produce the best work--it is almost as if some level of restraint and self-awareness was vital to being a skilled writer. Though not all of his experiments work out so well, like Leiber, the earlier writing seems to have the most drive and vitality. While this dark, mythic vision of Ragnarok might be the conclusion of Elric's tragedy, it actually comprises some of the earliest stories.
Like the
introductory story of the series, this one has a consistent arc of plot and tone, and is much more concerned with Elric's psychological struggles than some of the others, where he is more standoffish and archetypally mythic.
There is also an interesting crossover here between Elric's story and the historical myths that inspired him--namely the
Song of Roland, and it is an interesting choice on Moorcock's part to create a literal connection to his inspirations instead of merely a symbolic, allusive one. It is another sign of his authorial inventiveness and boldness to delve suddenly into pastiche and give his mythic world a very real connection to his reader's reality.
Once again, I am struck by the fact that, reading the entirety of the original Elric tales, I have grossed about eight-hundred-fifty pages, and in that space, have gotten a character's life: his several loves, many companions met, befriended, lost, and mourned, empires destroyed, mythical realms explored, and a worldwide war begun, waged, and concluded. In many other fantasy series, I might still be waiting for the plot to actually pick up.
Already I have gotten a depth and breadth that exceeds many longer works, and that is despite the fact that several of the Elric stories are experiments that never quite concluded, and thus acted as filler. I know that Elric is not quite an 'Epic Fantasy' (though it does have some epic scope), but it seems to me that too few authors actually have enough ideas to actually fill a series the length of the average epic.
Moorcock does have a wealth of ideas, many of them promising and unusual, and it's unfortunate that Moorcock never quite explores them all, though he has said that for him, the Elric stories were just the opening forays for concepts he would develop more fully later, and so I look forward to reading those later books and seeing how his promising concepts play out when he has the opportunity to put more time and thought into them. One complaint I had with the stories was that the interesting magical cosmology of the world never seemed to manifest in the characters, who tended to be more mythical than psychologically complex, and if, in the future, Moorcock is able to rectify this, it would deepen his fantasy immensely.
The conclusion is impressive, and if all of the stories had the same drive, continuity of tone, and depth of psychology, it would be a much stronger series. As it stands, it is an interesting experiment, an exploration of fantastical concepts that, if not as focused as we might hope, at least present a unique, inspiring vision of what fantasy can be.
My List of Suggested Fantasy Books -
The epic tale of Elric of Melniboné, albino prince of ruins, moves to its awesome conclusion. The whole of the natural and supernatural world is in mighty conflict, Armageddon has come and all of existence clashes in a storm of death and chaos. Elric holds the key to the future: the new age which must follow the destruction of everything that once was. To turn that key, he must sacrifice all that he loves and risk his very soul.
This book was pure chaos (pun definitely intended) and I wouldn't have the finale for such a chaotic series end any other way. The true power of magic and Elric's demonic runeblade Stormbringer are on display, wicked sorcerers and the Dukes of Hell are out in full force, friends and lovers are brutally sacrificed, the fabric of reality comes apart as the world ends so it can begin once more. I think the final book is the best in the series. It's a high fantasy apocalyptic acid trip at its finest. -
When I was a student at Cambridge during the late 70s, the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society had an evening every week at one of the local pubs. They were sufficiently well-known there that they had managed to persuade the bartenders to add a few SF-themed cocktails to their repertoire.
The favourite was the Elric of Melnibone, which, if I recall correctly, consisted of vodka and milk, with two maraschino cherries floating in it. Now what the I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream? I'm pretty sure that ice-cream was involved... -
The saga of Elric of Melnibone has its highs and its lows - mostly highs - but it really does go down on a good note indeed. Nightmarish apocalyptic visions, terrible bloody battle, and dramatic irony and great tragedy. Even a few good character moments, though it's not Moorcock's strong point.
I wish it could have gone differently for poor Elric, though. I wonder if it could have gone differently. If he could have escaped this fate, and found happiness... or if all of this really was meant to be. -
The strongest feeling I get from Moorcock’s Elric series is melancholy. I understand the lure of that state, as I get it when I read my beloved King Arthur books or at the end of a Shakespearian tragedy. But I feel like Moorcock does it with smoke & mirrors instead of through masterful story-telling. In Stormbringer (and the other Elric novels to be sure) I get this feeling from a combination of atmosphere and setting, but Elric himself leaves me cold. It’s pretty hard to root for the guy who is portrayed as the lesser evil. The details of each novel are tiresomely repetitive—Elric tries to resist using his demonic sword, Stormbringer; without it, he is too weak to be of any use in macho pursuits; he returns once again to using his soul-sucking weapon.
One simple word, repeated several times, was also jarring to me. Elric keeps saying “thanks,” which to me feels like a very modern usage and out of place in this rather archaic setting. If he said “many thanks” it would have grated less for me. Likewise, a number of times contracted words were used, when I thought that spelling out both words would have been more true to the ancient atmosphere, not to mention matching with the other language used. I guess I expect more precise language in a pseudo-archaic world.
I can’t say that I’m unhappy to be finished the Elric saga…..in many ways, it has felt like reading the same book six times.
Book 203 of my science fiction and fantasy reading project. -
So this was in short like this:
Elric/entire world gets in trouble.
Wise folks: Elric, you gonna need that Magical Artifact to defeat your enemies.
Elric: No I won't, there's no time anyway.
Elric loses the battle.
Elric: All right, I'm gonna need that Magical Artifact after all.
Elric wins. Well, sort of.
And I sort of enjoyed the whole thing if we talk about the series but this installment dragged on me without any mercy. But I liked dragons and the ending. And myself for ending the series. -
What an impressive "end"! :) Of course, I already know there are a number of books that continue on, but I have to assume they take place before this Final Battle.
The black blade always gets the final laugh. Indeed.
I need to back up. These Elric tales are epic in the purest sense of the word. Forces of Chaos and Law rage across all lands and the multiverse... all time, as well. Elric's sword, Stormbringer, was designed to destroy the gods of Chaos together its twin, a blade of Law. Both are intelligent, drinkers of souls, and bloodthirsty as hell.
Elric straddles the line between both forces, focused on revenge as everything he's ever known or loved dies before him. He's a god-killer.
You know all those epic fantasies we love so much by all the biggest names in fantasy? Robert Jordan, Neil Gaiman, or hell, all of D&D pull from this author's epic ideas. Incarnations of Chaos, elementals, incarnations of Law (order), and Men. So many huge armies live and die, the continents change, the death toll utterly immense. Think about the fourth season of Babylon 5. It's this scope. This immensity.
But realize Elric came out long before all those. This is what Tolkien COULD have been had he gotten out of the minor details of all these lives and not fought for the static continuation of everyone's lives as the greatest good. Moorcock ramped up the stakes to the same level of Melkor versus all the Illuvatar and beyond since the stakes were for all time and all worlds across the multiverse. :)
Just saying... this is some impressive stuff. :) -
By book six I get the feeling that Moorcock has really gotten into his writing style. Each book is so much better than the last.
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It's hard for me to write objectively about this book. It blew me away when I first read it as a teenager and the memory of reading and re-reading it stays with me still. It's a doomy, angst-ridden tale with a bleak ending and some very haunting scenes. To this day, fourty years later, I can remember the mighty skyscraper sized Chaos fleet sailing across land and sea with its crew of the damned. I'm not sure it would have such impact if I read it for the first time now. Don't care. My angst-ridden teenage self gives it five stars!
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This is the sixth and final (chronologically) book in the Elric series, arguably Moorcock's most famous and popular character. The novel was originally published in 1963, and it's amazing to think that so much of the saga set prior to this one was written after it. Elric is the heroic fantasy field's ultimate anti-hero, an anti-Conan if you will... weak, dependent on drugs, magic, and the titular sword, he's doomed to fail and betray and kill those he loves. Stormbringer is more carefully written and polished than the earlier books, I think, and more of a traditional novel as opposed to novella-length stories put together. It brings the overall story to a satisfying conclusion, tying up characters and events from the first volume on, as well as doing more to showing more of how Elric fits into the overall Eternal Champion multiverse tapestry. My DAW edition has a terrific Michael Whelan cover; if anyone ever captured Elric as well as Jim Cawthorn, it was Whelan.
"Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou!" -
Wow, I love Elric! His brooding, vindictive character, pale skin and unusual tormented eyes, combined with existential agony makes for a - bluntly putting- sexy badass! He's the type of dark prince you want rescuing you from rich sadistic merchants! okay, enough fantasizing now!
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It is the end, the world is writhing with war and Chaos Lords are out seeking total sovereignty over the plane of earth. In the midst of turbulence and nature's revolt, Elric finds answers. Fate's servants are awoken and call to Elric to fulfill his destiny and Elric, though more saddened and tragedy stricken, accepts his role.
In learning of his destiny, Elric is also given knowledge of how cruel and unjust the course of life really is; In the beginning He is an outcast, driven from his homeland seeking some sense of belonging that would remedy his alien nature, He is inclined, at first, to question the ways of his fathers, to, at least mentally, experiment the more humane ways which are unnatural to his race and that is why he sets sails towards other lands. To find out if he is truely singled out in his peculiar dispositions. But His attempts at mercy and moderation fail and ultimately brings about destruction. He becomes stricken, failed and the evil in him is nurtured as he realises that, despite trying to be good natured, he cannot control the tide of events. He tries to find some pattern as to how the world operates, how things come to pass, if his presence in this world is meaningful now that he is most certainly not his own master. Who is it that pulls at the string? Is there some force that is compassionate? That will hold him firmly after his struggles are over? And to what end? Anything that would give meaning to his being where he is, when he is, who he is ... anything that flickers with even a faint light of an end.
After committing many acts of evil, is there anything that will be of consolation? Elric is not unrealistic, however, and knows the gravity of his deeds (or does not expect to simply be rid of the weight on his conscience) but he sees himself as 'driven' and in accepting that he raveges many things. Still, corrupted as he is I find that he is very understandable; not merely the nature of the questions that plague him (which I am sure will be a reminder to most people, of some bleak periods in their own lives) but how he responds to these forces, how he can be impulsive and evil...He still allows himself be possessed of Stormbringer despite loathing it and joyfully kills and destroys. He is by no means a man of pretense and does not try to be righteous, does not seek the human ways anymore but stays true to his emotions. Perhaps that is why I don't consider him entirely evil but in being what he is, he seems to be even more human.
Stormbringer (book VI) brings the most plausible answers regarding the nature and functionality of its world and Elric's place in it, answers that wouldn't stand on a bulky incongruity in Moorecock's world and turn his universe into a pleasant meal for the faint hearted.
Evil must fight Evil until good is strong enough to take hold. Thousands of years that have come to pass are merely an intro to exiatance, true civilization and nothing more. And The only thing that will comfort a turbulant mind is the smallest of hopes: We can only be assured that by being where we are, we - inadvertently - leave somethin behind and the earth will inherit it from us. It is a well -understood fear of mine; That we suffer and perish and all for nothing;
"Elric said: "but what are all our strivings for if we are doomed to die and the results of our actions with us?"
"That is not absolutely the case. Something will continue. Those who come after us will inherit something from us.""
This alone, is enough to convince Elric that he has to fight, even if he and the world to which he belongs must come to an end and be made as if they never existed. maybe it is all that can be offered, all other expectations are uncertain.
To attain this new horizon in the history of the earth (as the bringer of a new Era) he must fight himself; Chaos are the enemies and that is what he is also, different as he was from his people, his Melnibonean blood still runs hot. He must fight his very own nature and bring destruction to all and himself.
The final piece not only decides the fate of our dark protagonist, but also illustrates the working of different astral forces, how they all have been incorporating their will upon the plane of Earth and the effects of their cosmic struggle through the end. The configuration of the multiverse, the rules and physics governing it, the entirety of its definition is a major component of the Saga and despite seeming rather experimental than fully worked out, is engaging, thought-provoking and has a monumental scope.
This finale is magnifique; action packed, emotional, philosophically rich and graphically powerful.
there are still a lot I have to say about this great series. -
Short, Sharp, and Pretty Good
10 May 2013
I just browsed through another review of this book and I think that the writer of that review pretty much describes Moorcock's style perfectly. He is an ordinary writer with big vision and is able to tell a story in a short book that can be pretty much read in a day. In fact I am tempted to go down to Northcote and actually try to get my hands on some of the Moorcock books again because of the fact that they tend to be a very short and quick read.
Compare them to say 'Wheel of Time' where the book gets so bogged down into detail that by the time you hit the seventh book (and I think I need to add the seven books of the Wheel of Time up as well, and I think it was seven that I read because by the eighth book I had read at least a third of the book and nothing had happened) pretty much nothing happens for the most part. With Moorcock though, by chapter two you might have already had a city burnt to the ground and demons running around destroying things.
I actually like books that can be read quickly, though on the other hand there are some big books out there that are simply so good that you cannot put it down and in the end you find yourself reading it until you have finished. In fact there are some books that I get so engrossed in that I will literally dawdle home from work, sitting in pubs and drinking beer, simply because the book is so good (though by the time I get home I tend to be plastered).
Moorcock is not the best writer out there, and I must say that I did end up getting bored with some of his Elric books, but when I first discovered him (thankyou Ally, who gave me a copy of a Moorcock book for my birthday) I was instantly hooked. What was interesting though was that my English teacher, who hated us reading what he considered to be airport trash, was happy that I wrote a response to a Moorcock novel (though I am not sure what grade he gave me, and I remember that it involved Elric going mad, killing everybody around him, and then killing himself – no, actually it wasn't Elric it was his sword – Stormbringer is simply one awesome sword, in fact I have never known a sword more awesome than Stormbringer). -
So tragic, so sad, so beautiful.
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Notice: I have made a review for every book of this series and they need to be read in order since they are supposed to feel like an on-going impression. So if you read the second without reading the first will feel rather off.
I am mostly focusing on the style of storytelling and a lot less on if it reads well or something sophisticated like that. For the same reason I tend to have lots of SPOILERS which means that if you read this text you will know THE OVERALL PLOT and how much I DIDN’T like it. So be warned that this is a mostly negative opinion for the whole trilogy which tends to reveal in detail why I didn’t like it. Better be read after you have read the books or if you want to avoid a not-so-smart series. YOU HAVE NOW BEEN WARNED and I can now initiate the slaughter.
--- Storm Bringer ---
(Most boring title for an Elric story)
It begins with Elric’s slut of a wife getting kidnapped. Veeery easily. And Elric doesn’t even summon a god to chase the kidnapers. How convenient Moorcock! By the way, isn’t that a rehash of the first book where Erlik needs to save Cymoril?
And what is that? One of the dying attackers says there is a prophesy Elric needs to fulfil? Oh crap, here we go again with the automatic win BS! So he tells him where his wife is held and that it’s his destiny to go find her. Because if it wasn’t Elric would dump her? Silly Moorcock…
So Elric needs to invade the nation where his wife is held and for some reason he doesn’t summon a god to just wipe them all out or use a gizmo of mass destruction as he did before, things that are sooo easy for him to do. He instead gathers all the armies of all the nations he didn’t destroy so far and attacks at once. The enemy is surprisingly that powerful that every nation Elric didn’t destroy so far was now slaughtered for joining him in battle. Furthermore, a warrior-wizard manages to beat Elric in a duel yet doesn’t kill him (oh what a surprise) because the prophesy says it is not him who is destined to kill him. Great way to save your hero Moorcock…
After that Elric escapes the battle and confronts a rebel army who explain that his sword can kill even a god. They also tell him that the prophesy is about him going to a specific place to save his wife. AGAIN WITH THIS PROPHESY PULLING ELRIC BY THE NOSE??? How about some investigation or free will Moorcock?
And hold on a second, if Elric could just go to a light guarded place to save her all alone, what was the point of raising all the armies of the world? You have no idea what you are doing Moorcock…
So he goes there, along with an ally of his who yields the second cursed sword… Hey wait a second, wasn’t this sword thrown to limbo after Yrkoon was killed … again? How the hell do they keep losing and finding it every time Moorcock feels like it? Thanks for the explanation you idiot!
Elric confronts the God who tells him that if he dies, the entire world will be destroyed along with him and reality will change to that of a completely new world. Elric in the meantime is completely deaf because all he wants to do is save his slut. So he slays him and then gets surprised his world is about to be erased despite being warned about it. Oh you horny little devil, you destroyed the world for some pussy…
Anyways, Elric seeks guidance and more people Moorcock uses as means to pull him by the nose with the excuse of the prophesy, appear and tell him what to do. He finds this seer who tells him that it’s his fate to kill all the gods of chaos in order for the world to be remade in a more harmonic way and that it is ok to do so since YOU CAN’T ESCAPE FATE! Elric agrees, even when he knows that this way, he, his slut, and all the other faceless crowds Moorcock has filled this world with will be destroyed and forgotten. So what does he have to gain from all this? Death as means of finding peace? Well he is forcing everyone else to just go along with it even if they disagree. Hell, he decides to kill all his patron deities when up until a few hours ago he was they fanatic supporter since the first book. Oh but I forgot, the only character with a personality in this series is Elric so there is no problem as long as he does his emo stuff.
What is even more facepalming is that the gods were helping him with the excuse to NOT kill them when the time comes. Well excuse me you idiots, when a prophesy is telling you that you will be killed by him then you do not aid him in doing so. You refuse to help him and you let him get killed; thus the prophesy is averted. How hard was that to figure out?
After that he faces the gods and their archbishop, and despite their efforts to tell him to stop with the reward of him becoming a god as well, he attacks them anyway. Normally he is now toast because he can no longer summon gods to aid him, since it’s the same gods he is fighting. But no worries; he learns this new summon that will make a thousand swords like his own to rain down from the sky and they are supposed to be powerful enough to beat even them. Jesus, so he even summon swords??? Then who needs gods in the first place? Moorcock, did you just admitted that Elric never really needed them and that his sword was enough?
Anyways, for reasons not even Moorcock knows, Elric does NOT use the summon. He chooses to go for something smaller first, as if it would make a difference. He summons a few weak monsters to attack the gods and then he chases after the archbishop. He captures him and instead of killing him he starts to chat long enough for the gods to have won and to attack him. And THEN he summons the swords. WHY DID HE DO THAT NOW AND NOT RIGHT AWAY??? What is wrong Moorcock, did you need to waste a few pages so the book will look big?
Anyways, the gods are vanquished and he loses his power, so he is now captured by the archbishop. This wouldn’t have happened if he had killed him right away instead of chatting. The archbishop does NOT kill him (oh what a surprise) and instead he ties him on a flagship to witness the world being conquered by an evil army. As you probably guessed right away, Elric escapes by summoning back his sword.
After that he needs to find a magic shield that will negate the powers of chaos. Oh I see, so he does need a super gizmo after all. Why didn’t he go for it in the first place if his sword was not enough and the seer knew about it all along? Looks like fate makes no sense.
During his quest he and his allies are attacked by monsters so they fight them and kill them, the only thing Elric does with anyone he meets. His sword once again flies off on its own and kills the Red Archer and Erlic goes emo again. Moorcock dear, it was tragic the first time and a bit the second. After a dozen times I don’t care anymore. And you also gave him those herbs that make him be able to live without the sword; there isn’t even any black irony at how he needs to kill in order to live anymore. Thus you just killed a character with zero emotional response.
After that he goes to fight another god he missed the other day and finds his slut turned to a monster by him. She doesn’t feel like living as a monster so she jumps on the sword and dies too. Moorcock, what did we say about useless deaths? I DON’T CARE! In fact, I don’t even understand why they kidnapped her in the first place. As bait for Elric to come to them? That is exactly why you were all killed you stupid idiots! Just like Yrkoon in the first book, you dug your own graves; he would never chase after you if you didn’t take his woman. And what’s with the transformation to a monster? Was that supposed to make him lose faith in his quest to kill you all? You just enraged him and now he will kill you ten times more horribly you retarded gods! That goes for you too Moorcock; your characters are all retarded and you are a terrible scriptwriter.
After that he goes to fight the archbishop in the ruins of Melibone and he feels all nostalgic about it. Oh how nice were all the slaves he tortured, all the women he raped, all the nations he destroyed. He really missed those times and it’s a shame some asshole ruined the place… Oh that’s right; IT WAS HIMSELF WHO DID IT! Because he didn’t stay home, didn’t kill his cousin, didn’t summon a god to stop him and instead just KILLED EVERYONE! Yeah, that makes sense; I would feel nostalgic too… Not.
After that, a long line of ontological dialogues take place as he and his remaining allies ponder about the meaning of life. The evil army attacks to take over the world but Elric finds a magic horn that can summon other gods (oh how original) to battle his ex patrons. As usual, no matter how many millions of soldiers an army has, only its deities matter so it’s just a battle about them and all the rest dying fast and miserable. The battle ends and the old gods are now defeated and the world is now remade into something else that I have no idea how different it is than before. So Elric and his few allies are the last creatures of the old world, destined to die soon so he pretty much kills them and then falls on his own cursed blade as means to reunite with al those it absorbed. Oh how romantic. Too bad that place is Limbo and the souls are horribly tormented before fading to nothingness. Not exactly the best place to see old friends.
So only Storm Bringer remains in this world and it too takes a human shape and flies away to space or something, saying it was a million times more evil than Elric. Cocky little bastard.
Ok the final part of the book was exciting for having Armageddon taking place and all the heroes getting philosophical. The ending is otherwise a “kill them all” finale which leaves you a bit hollow inside since all that seem to have been done for nothing. But hey, no matter how good it was it could never make me savour the series, since I found a ton of BS in it. -
I have to admit that after the first five books of the series, I was worried that there would be no conclusion to the overall story arc. However, this does book contain a climax to the conflict between the forces of Chaos and the forces of Law. There are numerous references back to the events of those early books, which tend to wrap everything up. But I still feel a lot of the meandering in the plots of the earlier books was purposeless. Even in this book, new 'bad guys' continue to be introduced just pages from the end. I guess that's a necessary pitfall of a story world that involves such rapid elimination of characters.
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· Book 1:
Elric of Melnilboné ★★★★★
· Book 2:
The Fortress of the Pearl ★★★★★
· Book 3:
The Sailor on the Seas of Fate ★★★★★
· Book 4:
The Weird of the White Wolf ★★★
· Book 5:
The Vanishing Tower (aka “The Sleeping Sorceress”) - to be read.
· Book 6:
The Revenge of the Black Rose - to be read.
· Book 7:
The Bane of the Black Sword - to be read.
· Book 8:
Stormbringer - to be read.
· Book 9:
Elric at the End of Time - to be read.
· Book 10:
Daughter of Dreams - to be read.
· Book 11:
Destiny’s Brother - to be read.
· Book 12:
Son of the Wolf - to be read.
(Following the
Tor reading order) -
Stormbringer may be the best book in Elric series, a Strong also hard hit ending to Elric Saga. The
installment compares to others is really shockingly good ,at least in my opinion, because the battle scenes and dramatic story line are matched perfectly, especially the ending is appropriate to Elric stories's vibe. Hit the right tune for me after read Stormbringer. Everything had changed since the battle with the chaos lords. Elric stood on his friends's side, didn't support his patron god, Arioch. the whole process of saving young kingdoms Elric must find some magic items and bring them back to combat with chaos lords. Also Elric travel via sorcery to other dimension in order to gain the Horn, but ironically in the prophecy, the arrival of Elric who obtained the horn meant the doom to the dimensional world. It's a Interesting ideal! In the end, Elric still saved the world but everything had changed and eventually Eric was killed by his hateful sword, Stormbringer. It seems that Elric's was eliminated after the new age of Young kingdoms began. Previous books mentioned that Elric was a ancient race of Melnibone who was few still existed in Young Kingdoms and few people in Young Kingdoms knew about Melnibone, implied that Elric would still need to die in order to suit for the change after the battle with chaos lords.
A melancholy ending but it's an excellent book in Elric series no doubt! -
4/5
Considero que Tormentosa es el final más indicado para esta saga. Una conclusión acorde al tono imperante en todos los libros y a la naturaleza de las decisiones tomadas por Elric. El Caos arrambla a su paso y el Emperador Albino sólo puede detenerlo con una medicina similar, por lo que las fatales consecuencias son inevitables. El ritmo de toda la historia es abrumador: los hechos se suceden de forma vertiginosa, pero a la vez la narración resulta muy fácil de seguir. La breve aventura que enfrenta a Elric con el gigante por el control de un escudo es uno de los episodios más interesantes del libro.
Las páginas finales se me quedaron grabadas en la memoria tras la primera lectura hará probablemente un lustro, si no más. La relectura las ha convertido en inolvidables. Como digo, es la resolución perfecta para un anárquico periplo de uno de los personajes más carismáticos que ha parido la fantasía. No es lo mejor que he leído, pero sí es, sin lugar a dudas, de lo más original que leeré nunca dentro de este género. -
The crescendo to the Elric mythos. Our fabled spell-slinging doom-driven over-hyphenated swordsman plunges onward into an Apocalypse that he is at least in-part to blame for. Stolid, sable Moonglum returns bearing tidings of the creeping evil on the move, and Chaos itself comes to the world with murder on its mind.
Mighty fell-blade Stormbringer in hand, the final Lord of Melnibone has a destiny to keep. The world will change, and will hold its breath waiting. Elric will complete his misguided quests and deal with his rivals, who are now no less an august tribe as the Gods themselves.
Brilliantly written in Moorcock's incredibly flat, odd style. And I mean that as a compliment in the highest sense.
You tolerate his plot holes and the jackass stubbornness of Elric because of how it flows and feels so damn epic.
And in so short a novel! -
Fate runs its inexorable course for the albino sorcerer-emperor of Melniboné, his friends, and his world. The conclusion to the Elric Saga goes more info epic fantasy territory than the rest of the series, and one book of the Eternal Champion ends.
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Four novellas, cobbled together as a quasi-novel. Each novella begins with the premise of Fate's charioteers handing a mission to Elric. Elric then completes the mission, but in each case the hands of the doomsday clock nevertheless tick closer to the zero-hour. It's not to say that Elric's local successes actually make the world a worse place, but that simultaneous to his missions, the antagonists are consolidating entire continents, killing everything else off, reducing the landscapes to fluid chaos matter.
Includes several large battles, a map of the setting, death of many characters, quite a bit of inventiveness, and connections to prior volumes, and Elric appears to resume his war on memory at times, which had been abandoned in the middle volumes. Those are good things. The plot development is fairly juvenile, however--an inscrutable immortal hands out irrational missions, as in an adolescent D&D game. Missions typically involve fighting some weirdness to acquire a numinous object which is to be used in fighting an even weirder weirdness. Why the object should be important is never an issue in an Elric book--it's always a matter of acquisitiveness for its own sake. Elric is never content to be, but must have also (to use Fromm's phrasing).
I am somewhat disappointed that all of the ancient accords, pacts, contracts made between the nether regions and Elric's people are not really relevant in the end. Was hoping that these items would come back for satisfaction--but, instead, Elric summons many copies of his nuclear sword to cut up the various demons and banish them, so that he can later become the instrument of the other side of the conflict. It's not out of character at all, but it fails to bring the various threads together in a coherent way.
Recommended for speculative fiction fans, especially in conjunction with volume I (volumes II-V are optional). -
If you look at the order of publication (see the website of Moorcock's Miscallany for details), this is the second collection of Elric stories, preceded in the U.S. by
The Stealer of Souls, and this is the first one to tell a cohesive, novel-length story. Taking these two as the essential body, you have something different than the flabby construction adorning several large collected volumes today.
The situation has shifted from the first set of stories. They had smaller scope and focused on the personal relationship between the deficient Elric and the viciously evil Stormbringer, and on redemption through love and self-worth. Stormbringer is an apocalyptic tale, telling of the passing of the world through an Armageddon and out the other side. The battle of Law and Chaos, mentioned only in passing previously, is here the center of the story, as Law attempts to gain or regain a foothold in a world invaded and ruined by elemental Chaos.
The writing and imagery is stark, of a world consumed by madness and where nature itself is warped and cast down. There's some powerful ideas about a set of entities or vehicles which corrupt everything that approaches, and of the horrific monstrosities that are the Chaos Lords.
There is notably no mention of such things as the "Eternal Champion" or the "multiverse", although the cosmology has expanded to include the ideas of alternate planes of existence and creatures that may straddle the realms. At times the language feels more like metaphysics than mythology. I would be curious to see how the notion of Eternal Champion spread over Moorcock's writing once introduced. -
I’ve read Moorcock’s Eternal Champion novels multiple times in adulthood but, essentially, I associate them with my teens, which is when they made the greatest impression on me. Perhaps because Moorcock himself was barely out of his teens when he created Elric, the early stories of the series fizzle with unrestrained creativity and youthful energy. For sure, they lack the literary merit of the author’s later (astonishing) work, but they make up for it by immersing the reader in wildly exotic worlds, filled with mad gods possessed of inscrutable motives, and soaked through with a dark sense of unavoidable destinies. The “otherworldliness” is brilliantly realised. Where R. E. Howard’s Conan inhabits a bejewelled mythical past, Elric exists in what feels like a fluid manifestation of his own psyche. No part of his gloomy world is stable, and neither is he, occupying as he does a liminal position between good and evil, between Law and Chaos … and, of all his tales, his confused engagement with reality is best portrayed in STORMBRINGER, which brings his saga to a stunning conclusion (in retrospect, a premature one). It doesn’t surprise me at all that my first encounter with this novel was a pivotal moment of my rebellious youth. Now, halfway through my fifth decade, I don’t relate to Elric in the same way, but I can still appreciate his significance and the early incandescence of Moorcock’s talent. This edition from Gollancz makes the whole experience even better by supplementing the novel with plenty of extra material, essays, and a portfolio of art by Jim Cawthorn.
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I've delayed reading any of Moorcock's fantasy novels until now. Shame. This book was everything I was looking for as a fantasy obsessed D&D playing teenager - no surprise, because Moorcock's work is the source material - as much or more than LOTR - for all those D&D fantasy worlds I inhabited in my high school years.
Stormbringer is dark and tragic and painted in bold, psychedelic strokes. Like a lot of my favorite fantasy fiction, it doesn't pretend to realism or character subtleties. It exists in a world of archetypes and symbols, dreams and hallucinations. Elric is a great figure, carefully constructed from contradictions - the product of an awesomely powerful line of sadistic sorcerers and emperors who is weak and powerless and willing to believe in law and goodness. His only means of gaining power and strength is through the black sword Stormbringer which sucks out the souls of its victims. Stormbringer is itself a creation of evil. As Elric fights evil (or Chaos as it is represented in the book), his sword Stormbringer grows in evil power. Is Stormbringer Elric's tool, or is Elric Stormbringer's? -
J'ai du un peu louper mon ordre de lecture d'Elric, puisque j'ai encore un tome à lire avant celui-ci qui est évidement le dernier.
En effet, c'est dans ce tome que le Chaos, par l'entremise des sorciers de Pan Tang, tente de prendre le contrôle total de la Terre. Et le Chaos, ici, c'est la mutation et la plus abjecte des stagnations. Franchement, c'est un destin dégueulasse.
Heureusement, Elric est là, et au prix de tous les sacrifices, et après bien des péripéthies, sauve la Terre, et notre histoire, du Chaos.
Ce tome est assez chouette, et l'histoire ménage son lot de rebondissements, de sacrifices épiques, et de méchants ... vraiment pas sympas.
Mais ce qui en fait surtout le talent, c'est les dernières pages qui voient le terme sacrifice prendre tout son sens. J'avais beau le savoir avant d'entamer cette relecture, j'ai quand même été ému par cette conclusion.
Et c'était chouette ! Bravo à Moorcock de réussir, à trente ans d'intervalle, de me faire revivre ces émotions aussi fortes que tristes. -
مايكل موركوك يعود بقوة، بعد أن شككت أن الصراع بين سادة الفوضى وقوى النظام لن يصل إلى ذروته أبدًا ولن نعرف حقيقته، نشاهد مع إيلرك الصراع الحقيقي ونهاية الكون كما نعرفه لتبدأ الحياة من جديد، ويبدأ الصراع من جديد بين الفوضى والنظام.
الشيء الوحيد الذي لا يخيب موركوك ظني فيه هو وصفه للعالم، الوصف الفريد والغريب، والمخيف أحيانًا، لهذا العالم الساحر أحيانا والبدائي القاسي أحيانًا أخرى، لا أستطيع التفكير في كاتب آخر يستطيع جذبي بتلك الطريقة إلى عالمه سوى لورد دونساني أو تولكين في السيلماريليون أو جاك فينس في حكايات الأرض المحتضرة.
نهاية ملحمية حقيقية، تليق ببطل ملحمي مثل إيلرك، وإن كانت نهاية تراجيدية، كما عهدنا دومًا من حكايات موركوك التي تشبه التراجيدية الاغريقية في بعض سماتها. -
The conclusion was satisfying, but the bulk of the novel contained filler that prevents me from scoring it higher. The series worked better as a string of novellas whose length suited the rapid pace and shallow plot of the story. This longer form book exposed the author's limitations and stifled the impact of Elric's self-reflective moments by lingering too long to a conclusion we all knew was coming. I would only recommend this series for those looking at reading a classic in the fantasy genre that influenced many of the modern masters who improved on every aspect of it.
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Though I almost understand how this series of novellas forms a cornerstone of modern heroic, or anti-heroic, fantasy, I can't say that the stories themselves were anything special. Certainly dated, Elric's adventures through time and space became, in the end, repetitive and too hokey for me to care. Despite the dragons, finally awake at the end, dribbling venom on the bad guys.
