It would be really easy to dismiss Elric as tropey pulp fantasy. I mean, it absolutely IS that. But this is a character that first appeared in 1961 and a book that only came together in the early 70s. If anything D&D owes more to Moorcock than even Tolkien.

This is why when Elric is doing some his most stupid emo-princelinging, it helps to remember that pretty much everyone from Drizzt to Lotar and even Kylo Ren can trace their creative lineage back to the original mopey prince of pulp. ( )

Wonderfully inventive and surreal, it's not hard to see why this is a cult classic. Moorcock's prose is a pleasure to read and his characters are vivid and memorable. ( )

When I first read this book around forty years ago, I was looking for an epic fantasy like LOTR and I didn't care for this flawed and tragic hero Elric, but now I can appreciate this novel for the great work of fantasy that it is and my favorite Sword and Sorcery series. ( )

Mature fantasy with some great original world building. Really liked the start and end.
The opening is like some super-over-the top Conan novel but the last third felt more darkly humorous, as if the characters had wandered into Time Bandits or Labyrinth or something.

The main problem in my opinion is that at the start you really get to know the main hero but once the central plot gets going there seems to be a change in style and the reader gets pushed away. I never really felt connected to the protagonist after the first third.
Its also quite a random and fragmented story, as if it was a much longer book that was heavily pared down.

An interesting and unique feel, but it didn't make me care enough to want to read the rest of the saga. ( )

It's probably been close to forty years since I read the Elric novels and, though I have a vague memory of kinda sorta digging them, I could remember very little of them.

But lately, I've picked up a couple of Elric graphic novels that I enjoyed, and I've been listening to a lot of Blue Öyster Cult, who has several songs inspired by Elric. So, I went searching for my paperbacks to reread them...and I obviously lent them to some asshole who never got around to returning them. Likely the reason I run a strict policy of never lending any books anymore.

Anyway, by good fortune, while on vacation, I indulged in one of my favourite pastimes, visiting little hole-in-the-wall bookshops in small towns. And there, on the top shelf of the fantasy section, were the first six novels (handy, since I still have the seventh and last one, which I'm loathe to read because I distinctly remember hating it).

I snagged them all, and I'm going through the books again.

And while the plot of the first one seemed to meander a fair amount, I have to say, I enjoyed the hell out of it.

I mean, there's a certain amount of brain-checking at the door required, and you have to accept the 1970s standards of comic book typecasting: The brooding hero, the hero's hot girlfriend who's willing to wait however long it takes to be with him, and also conveniently acts as the standard woman-who-needs-saving occasionally, and finally, the villain who's a villain just because.

So, wrap your head around that, and the rest of the stuff is gravy.

Gotta say, while almost fifty years later, the fantasy genre has a much more seen-it-all done-it-all feel, back then, I have a feeling that Elric was truly something different. Yes, there was magic and gods, sword and sorcery, but it had never been stuffed together quite this way before. It wasn't Tolkien, and it was Robert E. Howard, but it was a pretty solid mash up of the two, with some bonus stuff thrown in for good measure.

Really looking forward to book two. ( )