wuduwasa 's review for:

The Sailor on the Seas of Fate by Michael Moorcock

4.0

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Hoh boy I had to relisten to a lot of this one, especially the first part. This is not really a novel, but rather three short novellas all tied (I might quite loosely) together. Being currently in the fourth (chronologically) of the Elric books, I can say that the greatest weakness is it's lack of a central arch and the a-chronological order in which Moorcock wrote them. This is also a strength however as each Elric story is a meaty, punchy sword and sorcery adventure. Sadly, some of the magic of the first novel is still hard to come by as the story shifts moreso to focus on the metaphysical conflict between Order and Chaos, the plight of the Champion Eternal, and Elric's own quasi-self-inflicted curse and exile. The problem with the order one which they are written means that some of these themes, details, and even characterisations are sometimes inconsistent or even contradictory. While I am personally not fan of the whole Chaos vs. Law thing and the mere me too of the term multiverse makes me want to gouge my eyes out, I recognize that these were novel concepts in Moorcock's time and that his work is the OG. My distaste for three concepts comes from how trite they have become in contemporary media. Now everything fantasy is multiverse this, chaos that, everything has to be the same interconnected universes. Parallel and pocket dimensions abound. I call this the science-fictionalizing of fantasy. And I hate it. But again a lot of this distaste comes from 1). oversaturation from Marvel and Dungeons and Dragons slop (I say this as an ardent DnD fan) and 2). my own personal, aesthetic, scholarly views on how fantasy should handle the concepts that the trope of the multiverse hamfists with all the originality of a screaching parrot or Warhammer Fantasy (hey I love Warhammer I can say that). All this said, Moorcock never misses and there is good reason that his concepts have become so sadly trite. Reading him reminds of their value and interest and how they became the victim of slop in the first place.