Elric of Melnibone 1
by Michael Moorcock

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Book Reviews of Elric of Melnibone 1

Book Review: 1 of 6: This is where it all begins...
Summary: 4 Stars

Perhaps more than any fantasy series since The Lord of the Rings, the six "classic" Elric novels stand as the definitive fantasy novels. Not long after their original American publication in the authorized editions (with stunning Michael Whelan cover art), the TSR folks included a section on Elric in the original AD&D book Deities and Demigods, removed in subsequent printings for legal reasons. Then the gothic metal band Cirith Ungol used some of Whelan's Elric paintings for their album covers. And thus, the legendary books gained fame beyond that of normal readers...

But I digress. Given the unique nature of the growth of the Elric cult, the question needs asked: do the books themselves, the subject matter therein, stand up to all the hype? Yes, they do. Despite having some problems in the execution (clumsy handing of foreshadowing and detail introduction, overuse of exclamation points, inability to call a character by either a first or last name when a character has both [e.g., Dyvim Tvar is never referred to as "Dyvim" or "Tvar," but always "Dyvim Tvar"], etc.), Elric hands us something fantasy readers up to that point hadn't been used to: an antihero, and a sympathetic one to boot.

Elric is the eighty-eighth lord of the island kingdom of Melnibonë, once a power that ruled over the world. Its power has waned in the interim, and some see the sickly Elric as proof of this. His cousin Yyrkoon wants the throne as badly as Elric doesn't. The bulk of the first novel deals with the struggle between Elric and Yyrkoon for the throne, with Yyrkoon's sister Cymoril, who also happens to be Elric's betrothed, caught in the middle between them. It also sets up much of what comes in later books-Elric's meeting with his longtime friend Rackhir, descriptions of the defenses of Melnibonë against outside invasion, the rules which dragons follow on Moorcock's earth.

There are some minor niggles to get through in the way Moorcock presents his characters and their backgrounds; however, that may be retrospect speaking (it's impossible to compare stories Moorock was writing in the sixties, stylistically, to, for example, George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire; Martin is far better at slipping pieces of his characters' backgrounds into the text without drawing our attention to them, but few if any authors working in "genre fiction" were interested in the conventions of high literature at the time these books were written).

An excellent beginning. If you haven't yet read the Elric novels, whether you are a fantasy fan or not, this is where to begin. ****

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