The Dreamthief's Daughter: A Tale of the Albino [Hardcover]

Elric, the albino sorcerer, last prince of the inhuman empire of Melnibone, was the creation of Michael Moorcock's adventurous pot-boiling inventive youth, just as the vonBek family featured in the heroic fantasies of his more thoughtful middle-life. Yet, in the elaborate fictional cosmos Moorcock has created, Elric and the various vonBeks are all aspects of the Eternal Champion who fights for the Balance which prevents both Law and Chaos from dominating the universe and trapping it in either barren sterility or pointless fecundity. In The Dreamthief's Daughter, he brings together Elric and Ulric vonBek, last scion of the family, and we finally learn the sin for which the perpetual villain Gaynor the Damned was doomed; Nazi occultists are searching for the Grail and the Black Sword, and must be prevented from attaining them. Ulric seeks allies wherever he can find them, including Oona, who wanders through dream realities and with whom he falls in love. This is fast-moving phantasmagorical stuff with ambiguously virtuous heroes and baddies whose villainy and charm is total. Moorcock's immensely powerful visual imagination and sense of the innate drama of crucial scenes make this a breathtaking read. --Roz Kaveney

Fantasy fiction featuring Elric of Melnibone and Ulrich von Bek. Set in World War I and II and the rise of Nazi Germany we learn the origin of Stormbringer, Elric's black, soul-stealing runeblade and Mournblade, its sister sword. This is the first book of a new trilogy.

Michael Moorcock was born in England in 1939. He has written many novels and has won the Guardian Fiction Award for Condition of Musak and was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize for Mother London. In recent years he has achieved an international reputation and is now recognised as a major contemporary novelist. A longtime resident of London, he now lives near Austin, Texas, with his wife. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.