Michael Moorcock

Es dificil a veces volver hacia atrás, a los cimientos de un género literario y no tener la sensación de cliché. Se que el Elric de Moorcock fue pionero en el Fantasy por muchas cosas, pero su lectura me resultó bastante formulera. Al parecer lo mas rompedor de esta novela fue la condiciòn de antihéroe de su protagonista, pero creo que Elric no lo es tanto, por lo menos en esta primer entrada, es un Rey, a quien le secuestran a su novia, y se pasa el libro de misión en misión, tratando de rescatarla. Su moral es bastante clara, e incluso superior a la de sus compatriotas. Lo más "distinto" de Elric como héroe es su apariencia, y tampoco creo que esto juegue demasiado en la trama. En fin, que es entretenido, razonablemente corto y tiene algunas ideas interesantes (el barco que anda por tierra; el espejo que roba la memoria y que al romperse invade de recuerdo ajenos el cerebro de quienes estan cerca; la manipulacion de los dioses/demonios). Al parecer en sus secuelas mejora.… (more)

DNF, so no rating.

I'll go on the record as saying that I absolutely love much of what Moorcock has produced. Elric? Absolutely. Corum? Definitely. Hawkmoon? Of course.

But when he gets too metaphysical, too deep into his own worlds and work...I find him confusing, pendantic, and unreadable.

Unfortunately, this collection? I read the first two chapters and literally not only had no idea what was going on, it also wasn't interesting enough to hang around and see if it ever did coalesce into something that might make sense.

So, instead, I just quickly flipped through the rest of the pages to admire the gorgeous Simonson art, and ignore the art from the other two artist.

Hugely disappointing, overall. And no, I won't be bothering with the second volume.… (more)

The War Amongst the Angels concludes Moorcock's Second Ether trilogy, largely returning to the key characters and narrative format of the first book Blood. Although speakers and viewpoints shift throughout the book, it begins and ends in the voice of Margaret Rose Moorcock, and it is "an autobiographical story by Michael Moorcock," whom the tale tells us is Rose's cousin in Texas. (Moorcock was indeed living in Texas when he wrote this book, but he never appears in person in the story. It does feature Rose's uncle Michael, for whom the author is supposedly named.)

The title does accurately reflect the plot as it eventuates in the final arc of the book, with a multiversal conflict in a world where the Chaos Engineers and the Singularity vie for the lost ship Spammer Gain on an ectoplasmic sea. Our Eternals (the heroes of the tale) are at least nominally aligned with Chaos, although they are the Just who oppose Law in order to preserve Balance. Readers of other Moorcock fantasies will quickly see the recurring patterns of the Eternal Champion hyperwork, but the travel on the Moonbeam Roads, transiting the axis of scale, is an approach to supernaturalism somewhat peculiar to the Second Ether stories.

Additionally, there are specific evocations of other previous Moorcock books, particularly Stormbringer and The War Hound and the World's Pain, especially in the climactic chapter Libres des Muertes. There may well have been some key references to books that I haven't even read, since I cannot claim complete familiarity with Moorcock's enormous bibliography. The echoes and allusions that I did perceive, however, increased my appreciation for what was happening in this story to the extent that I don't think the Second Ether is a good starting point for prospective Moorcock readers.

The War Amongst the Angels is dedicated to a clutch of 19th-century English authors, all of whom had long fallen out of print in 1996. Their works furnish most and perhaps all of the epigrams that head the chapters of the book. The second Second Ether book Fabulous Harbours was definitely fiction about fiction, and here too the imaginative faculty uses narrative to create and navigate multiple realities. Moorcock muses on politics frequently, albeit in varied voices and within his fantastic setting.

The feint of setting himself up as the "poor Texan cousin" who lends his name for Rose to use as a byline in "her" fiction (18) significantly undermines the book's apparent claim to be Michael Moorcock's autobiography. As mentioned, he doesn't even figure as an immediate character in the plot. But the Rose developed in these books is perhaps either his personified anima or a feminine alter-ego. Decades later, Moorcock would return far more transparently to the enterprise of autobiography through fantasy fiction in his Sanctuary of the White Friars, a series which saw its second volume published last year.… (more)