This book is a landmark in Moorcock's writing, because it marks a change from his best known style of writing and (to me) tips a nod to one of his cult contemporaries.
This book could almost have been written by Philip K. Dick, almost, but not quite. So much of it is narrated from the, shall we say - unusual, outlook of the main character that it seems to follow the theme of a Dick novel. It deals with what would become one of Moorcock's recurring themes - the breakdown of society. Flash-backs tell the story of what went wrong, and the main protagonist tells what is going wrong in his head (maybe), which is what makes this like a Dick story. Anyone familiar with the Hawkmoon tales wil recognise a pre-history and a hint of how things came to be. This is, to my mind, an important book in the Moorcock ouevre, and a rare thing in the Moorcock canon - a psychological thriller. Recommended!
