Michael Moorcock is one of my favorite authors; reading his novels and their heady stew of existentialist angst & anarchism & multiple dimensions at a young age caused his world view to seriously impact my own. thanks a lot, Moorcock - I blame you for my general inability to give a straight answer to most questions. a year or so ago I decided to revisit his various hero-cycles. my mistake was starting with the hero I've seen as the fulcrum of Moorcock's various eternal champions: John Daker - better known as Erekosë. unlike protagonists such as Jerry Cornelius, Elric, Corum, Dorian Hawkmoon, etc et al, Erekosë is fitfully aware of all of his incarnations and the basically cyclical nature of his existence. unfortunately what this means is that the reader has to deal with a shitload of mopey, whiny bouts of infuriating self-pity. it gets incredibly wearying.I felt ready to give up after just the first section. happily, for a good 100 pages or so, right in the middle, it is almost as if Moorcock forgot he was writing a John Daker "adventure" and began writing a genuine adventure. his wonderfully baroque, pulpy, and often ironically self-aware imagination took flight. 6 dimensions that exist in a wheel formation, all with strangely long Germanic names. gigantic steamboats that are slowly moving cities! one of them powered by human corpses! swordfights! crazy costumes! giant bear-men! flying islands! warriors with skins of flowing blood! Hitler! an evil princess! good grief, this novel has Cannibal Ghost Women. what more could I ask for? even better, the obnoxiously petulant John Daker/Erekosë is joined by the witty and urbane Von Bek, star of his very own hero-cycle. I was a bit confused at first because I thought Von Bek and Daker are both incarnations of the eternal champion, and so the two of them being comrades-in-arms made my brain hurt. but mainly I was happy - Von Bek's presence seemed to inject a large, very necessary amount of fun and madcap creativity into the dreary un-adventures of Erekosë.alas, it didn't last much more than the lengthy middle section. eventually it gets back to the exceedingly drippy and mawkish annoyances that I had to struggle through during the prior two novels. sorry, Erekosë, but after your genocide of all of humanity (in one dimension) in your first adventure, I sort of lost interest in listening to you whine endlessly about your fucked-up life and how much you want to be with your lady love. have some perspective dude. do you even deserve the slightest bit of happiness? and sorry, Moorcock, but if you think the lines "We are the lost, we are the last, we are the unkind. We are the Warriors at the Edge of Time. And we're tired. We're tired. We're tired of making love..." sound like a timeless mythic chant, rather than just sounding painfully stilted, embarrassing - well, I don't even know what to say. I think someone was smoking hella weed the day he wrote this novel. which makes for some entertainment, but mainly a lot of eye-rolling.reviews for the prior two novels in this sequence:The Eternal ChampionPhoenix in Obsidion
This was pretty much the only thought arcing through my brain as I attempted to read The Dragon in the Sword. Moorcock's style reminds me a lot of Piers Anthony - there's the rambling, irrelevant descriptions; the self-congratulatory narrative style; annoying, two-dimensional main characters... However, while Piers manages to pull it off with fairly decent plot and interesting ideas, Moorcock just shoves it all at you in an unappetizing heap and expects you to dig in.Now, part of the fault may lie with the fact that this is apparently the third book in the series (since I get all my books used, this is a recurring problem). However, it is my firm belief that a truly good series (and author) is so good that you can pick up a book in any order and still be able to enjoy it (which is how I felt about the early Laurel K. Hamilton books, and a lot of those really good 80s and 90s mysteries). Moorcock certainly does not fall into this category.The plot revolves around this guy with a weird name who for some reason that isn't quite explained is somehow living out the lives of all his past and present and future incarnations - princes, average joes in the 21st century (joe six-packs), paupers, and what have you. He's searching for the love of his life (sorry, your princess is in another castle) and has a weird object some mystic gave him that talks (but only to say LET ME OUT! RELEASE THE DRAGON! and occasionally chant. I know this sounds like something I'd like to set free, mm-hmm. Nothing ominous about that).I'm super-bummed about not liking this because I heard his Elric saga was fantastic. This one... not so much. I have the feeling that if I stuck it out, my rating might bump up to two or three stars (optimistically speaking), but I have a huuuuuge to-read pile (a literal one), so I'm trying to chuck the ones that don't wow me. Maybe it will wow someone else. Maybe someone who has books 1 and 2 and was absolutely DYING to read the third will pick this up from the bargain bin and be like, "AT LAST! I HAVE FOUND YOU MY PRINCESS LOVE!" I certainly hope so.As it was, this book was definitely not for me. :/P.S. ALSO, WHAT IS HITLER DOING IN A FANTASY NOVEL? WTF WTF WTF WTF.
Do You like book The Dragon In The Sword (1987)?
This was the culmination of the Erekosë series, and it co-starred Ulrich von Bek, who met up with Erekosë as a result of a deal with Satan to help remove Hitler from power. This blurring of lines between the twentieth century and fantasy isn't a new thing, but it felt fresh the way Moorcock handled it. The modern world was just treated as one of many worlds where the battle between Law and Chaos was fought, nothing more.This was written in the late 80s, and Moorock's use of dialogue to flesh out his characters remains one of his strong points. He doesn't present long expositions to explain the back story, he presents it in little snippets that are often interrupted by some event. He also avoids falling into the trap of reusing the same character over and over (I'm talking to YOU, Palahniuk and Kuntz!!).I'm sad that this is the end of both of these series. I'm even more sad that I'm stepping away from the Moorcock for a while, as I look over at the 4 unread omnibuses on my bookshelf...but I have other fantasy series to read first. But it won't be long until the cycle of the Eternal Champion will continue...
—Traummachine
Der Abschluss der Trilogie um den Ewigen Helden ist ein gemischtes Mahl... sicherlich ist Moorcock mit dem Alter wortgewandter geworden und seine Ethik verfeinert sich wie seine Techniken, doch es ist etwas an der Wortfülle des Alters in diesen Zeilen, die in einem Kontrast mit der Kürze der vorherigen Bände steht. Immerhin, alles führt zu einem unausweichlichen Ende, das Multiversum konfiguriert sich um und der Ewige Held ficht seine Letzte Schlacht. Als Nebenfigur steht ihm ein Mitglied der deutschen Familie von Bek zur Seite, und auch andere Aspekte des Romans haben einen archaisch-niederdeutschen Anstrich.
—Axel M.
Definitely the best of the Jon Daker novels, and probably my favourite by Michael Moorcock so far. Actually contains a fairly strong female character, an unusual thing for Moorcock; I mean, come on, he outright has a group of characters sharing the same soul that exist across the multiverse, collectively known as the Eternal Consort, all of whom exist more or less entirely as love interests to the Eternal Champion.On a related note, it could be argued here that Sharadim is an aspect of the Eternal Consort; I'm all for this as it passively strengthens other aspects elsewhere in the multiverse. (view spoiler)[If it's assumed that she is indeed the Eternal Consort, then it would logically follow that she is the end result of such a being becoming corrupted by chaos; after all, in marrying the resurrected corpse of the original Flamadin, she fulfilled the usual requirements of the Consort. I choose to believe this is the case as it gives her a much greater degree of agency, along with a little more depth than she otherwise would have; the only other interpretation I can think of is that she is to the Eternal Consort what characters like Yyrkoon and Glandyth-a-Krae are to their incarnations of the Eternal Champion (Elric and Corum, respectively); a counterpart of sorts, seeking to undermine the balance, unlike the champion who fights, whether directly or indirectly, to uphold it. (hide spoiler)]
—Luke Johnson
