Moorcock has posited himself as the rebel of fantasy, sapping the high walls built by Howard and Tolkien. He is a well-spoken and thoughtful critic of the complete lack of romance in either of these would-be romances, but the love in Gloriana's court is anything but courtly.

There is a delightful Quentin Crisp quote about how innovation is not 'seeing your neighbor to the left has a straight walk and your neighbor to the right a curved and thence making your own diagonal', suffice it to say that contrariness is not the mother of invention.

Moorcock's Elric was, in many ways, written to be contrary; to be the antithesis of the fantasy that came before. However, Moorcock is not being contrary in this case. In fact, he's not even being particularly original. In most regards, Gloriana reads like an abridged Elizabethan take on Peake's Gormenghast books (which, incidentally, are the origin of Crisp's quotation, by way of his introduction).

Gloriana is considered by highfalutin Moorcock fans to be perhaps his most remarkable and original work. It is certainly in no way genre Fantasy, and though the characters may not be easy to empathize with, you certainly won't be stuck resenting them for flimsily facaded archetypes.

Though they are not based upon those same silly cliches, they are still immediately as one-dimensional and unchanging. The book is really nothing so much as an eroticized rewrite of Peake, and Moorcock does not have the capacious wit necessary to evoke Peake. It is more of a fond imitation than a reimagining.

That being said, it takes a skilled writer to draw any comparisons to Peake, even when that's precisely what they are trying to do.

The book will also teach you the word 'seraglio'; a one which I hope to have more and more a need to use in the future, hopefully in the same sentence as 'odalisque'. ( )

http://olvasonaplo.freeblog.hu/archiv... ( )

Gloriana is unfulfilled in that she can't easily get her rocks off, no matter how many bed warmers, gorgeous maids, or sex slaves she has. Even half-men/apes don't necessarily do it.

Her inattention leaves a fair burden on a couple of her spymasters, one of whom decides to use this for his own rise to power, and to get rid of the queen and destroy her empire.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2006/12/gloriana-michael-moorcock.html ( )

One of Moorcock's best novels and so a classic of fantasy. A symbolic tale beautifully structured around the four seasons. The main influences are Mervyn Peake and the decadent writers of the late 19th Century, but Moorcock creates something original out of these; an alternative 'Elizabethan' London dominated by a palace of complex dimensions that rivels Gormanghast and a Queen (Gloriania) both with human emotions and symbolic of virtue. ( )

Elizabethan but not Elizabeth~she is unfufilled because she cannot be fufilled (no matter how hard she tries~and believe me she tries.) Starts off wonderfully, then sort of devolves~a little too degenerate but very interesting at that ( )