Amazon.co.uk Review
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
Review
Addition to Moorcock's sprawling and often abstruse fantasy series set in the multiple-reality "multiverse"; this one's the first since "The Revenge of the Rose" (1991) to feature Elric, the albino Sorcerer-King of Tanelorn. In pre-WWII Germany, Ulrich, the Count of Bek, watches horrified as Nazism rises and his friend, Prince Gaynor, joins the S.S. and rises rapidly through the ranks. With Hitler firmly in control, Gaynor returns to Bek to demand Ulrich's ancient magical black sword, Ravenbrand, and the magic cup that Ulrich's father was sworn to guard. These objects are part of Germany's magic Nazi soul, according to Gaynor. The cup has vanished; Ulrich hides the black sword. For his pains he's arrested, beaten, tortured, and eventually consigned to a concentration camp. Gaynor has made a bargain with a mad goddess of Law, giving him the power to cast Elric, of whom Ulrich is an avatar, into a magical sleep; only Ulrich can help him break free. If, meanwhile, Gaynor succeeds in locating the cup - actually the Holy Grail - he could remake, or destroy, the multiverse itself..The best arrives early on, during the rise of Nazi Germany; thereafter, series fans will enjoy the warm familiarity of Elric's bloodthirsty adventures, but the feeble conclusion will satisfy nobody: Moorcock has never grasped that internal logic is far more important that inventiveness or even verisimilitude.. (Kirkus Reviews)
by Michael Moorcock
by Michael Moorcock
by Michael Moorcock
by Michael Moorcock
