- Mass Market Paperback: 254 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins (Jun 1972)
- ISBN-10: 0060130032
- ISBN-13: 978-0060130039
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,741,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The English Assassin, the 3rd Jerry Cornelius novel, is an oddity in that it barely features the lead character at all. In the preceding novel, A Cure For Cancer, Jerry spent a large amount of time obsessing over his dead sister and how to bring her back to life - here the idea is almost inverted as Catherine spends the novel active while her brother spends most of it wailing in incoherent diseased agony in his coffin. The storyline - such as it is - is taken up by Moorcock's vivid cast of recurring characters; Colonel Pyat, Una Persson, Bishop Beesley, Miss Brunner et al, with the notable addition of Jerry's mother Honoria Cornelius, a coarse and ebullient cockney who adds a dash a colour to the proceedings.
As with A Cure For Cancer the plot is slight, with the novel being more of a series of fragmented vignettes (often set in an un-linear chronology) that add up to the whole. Disappointingly too much of A Cure For Cancer felt like a pointless adventure-filled shaggy-dog story, but the cartoonish feel of the latter novel is replaced here by a more serious and sombre mood, with death and mortality an ever present threat. As before, much of the characters motivations remain obscure - the world is at war, but which side the characters are on, and what they are fighting for is unclear, but here this irrelevancy seems to serve the given theme of entropy; in one standout scene in Jerry's absence the other characters resolve to join together in peace only to find their efforts doomed - without action their lives are as empty as the dead's, yet ironically the more energy they expend in action only hastens the entropy at the heart of all things.
Whilst absent in body, Jerry Cornelius' presence hangs heavy over the novel, casting a long shadow as the dead do in life. A little lacking in plot to really fire the imagination, The English Assassin is nevertheless a well-written darkly intriguing read, and a definite improvement over the preceding volume
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
The English Assassin; what does it mean?
25 Nov 1998
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This book is remotely enjoyable, but is hard to understand, due to the way time changes and the plot jumps. I also had a hard time with Michael Moorcock's writing (he had a 27 line sentence) which makes the book even harder to understand. The sections entitled "Alternative Apocalypse" and "Late News" were enjoyable to read, but failed in any way to comprehensibly relate to the book.
Super Reader
30 Aug 2007
Format:Mass Market Paperback
The titular life remover, is, of course Jerry Cornelius himself. Again this is a book where England is an important part, or the collapse of England under the weight of its problems, and war.
Jerry, in a bad way, will again have to deal with his considerably healthier for a change relatives, and Brunner, Beesley, and others,
The usual happens, with the odd attempt to rule the world.
Jerry, in a bad way, will again have to deal with his considerably healthier for a change relatives, and Brunner, Beesley, and others,
The usual happens, with the odd attempt to rule the world.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Moorcock is a splendid mix of William S burroughs, Dickens, and Philip K Dick
14 Mar 2011
Format:Hardcover
The whole of the book: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was all blended together and being offered in several alternatives.
This is quite simply the most involving human story I have ever read.
P.S
Yes. To understand this you will have to read carefully and indepth and perhaps a second or even a third time.
This is quite simply the most involving human story I have ever read.
P.S
Yes. To understand this you will have to read carefully and indepth and perhaps a second or even a third time.
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