“Elric: The Stealer of Souls”, by Michael Moorcock

 

 

625 pages, White Wolf Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1565041875

 

Over the course of the mid-to-late 90s, White Wolf Publishing produced this massive omnibus collection of Michael Moorcock’s “Eternal Champion” stories, a recurrent aspect in many of his tales. Elric: The Stealer of Souls was the eleventh in this series and the second volume once-more featuring the character Elric of Melniboné, and includes the tales The Sleeping Sorceress, The Revenge of the Rose, The Stealer of Souls, Kings in Darkness, The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams and Stormbringer. In this volume we revisit everybody’s favorite albino antihero and his continuing quest to betray everyone who is loyal to him. As Moorcock’s most famous and intriguing – to say nothing of infuriating – character, it should come as no surprise, I suppose, that we would see more of the bleached-skin bastard and his nefarious ways – because while we may hate to admit it, the best characters are sonsovbitches. Not “best” as in brave, trustworthy, loyal, dutiful, and so on and so forth, but rather driven, tortured, selfish, and etc. etc. etc. It’s impossible to love Elric, but it is equally impossible not to be fascinated by him and even to cheer for him even as you bemoan the manner in which he triumphs over his foes – and friends.

The Sleeping Sorceress (or, if you prefer, The Vanishing Tower) was released in the magnificent 80s – and shows it: as well as you more mundane fantasy-adventure plotting it is also a smorgasbord of Elrician excesses to spoil even the most cynical reader (or author). Instead of one large novel we have here instead three linked novellas that each moves the story along. We begin with Elric’s and “Empress of the Dawn” Myshella’s continuing vendetta against the evil wizard Theleb Ka’arna (last seen in The Dream of Earl Aubec, as you’ll no-doubt recall). We next come across Elric in Nadsokor, the City of Beggars, as he stumbles into a trap laid by its King and the self-same Theleb Ka’arna before moving on to a crossover with the Corum novel The King of Swords in which Elric teams up again with both Corum and Erekosë to battle a sorcerer named (get this) Voilodion Ghagnasdiak (I don’t know either; and when I say crossover, I mean it: read both stories side-by-side and compare the relevant sections). Pretty standard Elric stuff, except that he sounds even more petulant and whiney than ever, so much so that you sometimes wish he’d turn Stormbringer on himself and just end it already.

Next up is The Revenge of the Rose, in which a dragon delivers Elric to the ghost of his father, The Emperor Sadric the Eighty-Sixth, who demands that his son locate his soul, currently chillin’ in a rosewood box in a far distant land (aren’t they all “far distant”?) and restore it to him, or else dear ol’ dad Sadric will haunt the shit out of Elric forevermore (so, ghosts don’t have souls? I think Moorcock has some ‘splaining to do). During his Quest for Dad’s Soul Elric will come across the mysterious warrior princess Rose and face off against their mutual foe Charion, an undead agent of Chaos. Naturally, there are swords and sorcery and blood and guts and action and violence and Elric moping all over the Young Kingdoms, as you would expect from a Moorcock story in general and an Elric story especially. Oh, and the Chaos Gods Count Mashabak and Arioch (Lord of the Seven Darks, Knight of the Swords, Lord of the Higher Hell, etc.) raise all sorts of hell, too. The Revenge of the Rose is rather long on philosophy and short on action (also, the way the narrative slips from past to present tense and back, to no discernible purpose is annoying as all get out). All-in-all this book has the feel of a filler work.

The Stealer of Souls comes next, from which this White Wolf volume gets its title (indeed, in researching this review I found that there have been several editions of Elric books that have been collected underneath the rubric “The Stealer of Souls”). In this story we find our demented protagonist on his usual way, adventuring and killing and brooding and betraying, so much so that it is rather difficult to distinguish this story from many of the others that Moorcock has written about this most infuriating of characters. There are, however, a couple of interesting – if ultimately dissatisfying – elements that stood out for me. The first being that, at long last, Theleb Ka’arna gets his comeuppance in epic fantasy fashion, suitable enough for a Disney villain, if I may be so bold. The other is when Elric the Eighth of the Dragon Isle meets the remnants of Melniboné, something that hadn’t happened since he destroyed it’s capitol of Imrryr. Interesting in that the interaction of these forced-upon mercenaries and erstwhile Emperor was unexpected and promised high-drama – but no; these Melnibonéans are not only fatalistic but forgiving towards their ex-Emperor, a dissatisfying (like I said) arrangement, not to say unrealistic.

Kings in Darkness is next…I suppose, seeing as the chronology of many of Moorcock’s Elric books seems spotty, not helped by the fact that the man would often revisit and rewrite many of the earlier books and and/or subtract ideas and events, and even to reorder when what happened when (this also accounts for why so many of his books have been published and then republished with different titles). So anyway, the story begins with Elric and Moonglum of Elwher (that would be Elric’s most loyal companion thus far and, just possibly, the only true friend he ever had) barely escape with their lives from Nadsokor, the City of Beggars, and find themselves in the cursed Forest of Troos. Whilst traveling this accursed place Elric is able to collect various sorcerous herbs that grow only there; in so doing the pair meet the young and beautiful Lady Zarozinia of Kaarlak, sole survivor of a massacre by the physically and mentally twisted Orgians. From there we have more adventuring and bloodshed – oh, and an undead king that must be vanquished – before Elric and Friends at last triumph…and Elric settles down with Zarozinia in an attempt to lead a quiet and domesticated life. Yeah, right.

Onwards to The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams (or The Flame Bringers; see what I mean?), in which our…hero defeats the Mongolesque barbarian horde that threatens his newfound marital tranquility, a surprisingly vivid battle in which some of Moorcock’s old mojo seemingly returned. We also witness the return of Dyvim Tvar, the Dragon Master and Lord of the Dragon Caves, and his Merry Band of Melnibonéan Mercs, but only for a time. Frankly, I would have loved to have seen more of the erstwhile Dragon Prince and his one-time Emperor interact with one another; I really disliked his seemingly utter forgiveness of the man who destroyed his nation. I mean, he hated Theleb Ka’arna more for whacking Yishana’s suitors more then Elric, a plot device I just didn’t believe. Anyway…by story’s end, Elric thinks he’s found that the herbs he has been using can maintain his strength in place of Stormbringer and its stolen souls (he even thinks he’s finally managed to discard Stormbringer, as he seemingly lost it during the battle), telling Zarozinia that he’s “tired of swords and sorcery” – Zarozinia doesn’t have the heart to tell him that a screaming Stormbringer came back from battle before he did.

And lastly we have Stormbringer, the concluding story in Elric’s saga in which “[t]here came a time when the destiny of Men and Gods was hammered out upon the forge of Fate, when monstrous wars were brewed and mighty deeds were designed. And there rose up in this time, which was called the Age of the Young Kingdoms, heroes. Greatest of these heroes was a doom-driven adventurer who bore a crooning runeblade that he loathed. His name was Elric of Melniboné…”. And so it all officially ended here, in the final battle between Chaos and Law and Winner Take All, and although Elric is ostensibly a servant of Chaos, more often than not he is drafted into the ongoing efforts of the Cosmic Balance to maintain a balance between Law and Chaos, a balance that is ultimately undone by the end of this book. And as series-enders go, this was masterful, as everything that Moorcock brought to his Elric tales culminates with this epic fight at the End Times. It is a fitting end to one of fantasy literature’s most enduring, fascinating, infuriating characters, one that never ceased to keep you bound to him even as you sought release. When closing Stormbringer for the last time, I truly felt that an era had ended and a tale had been told.

“The Paper Girl of Paris” by Jordyn Taylor

 

384 pages, HarperTeen, ISBN-13: 978-0062936646

So, one night I popped in to Barnes & Noble ‘cause I had a hankering for their Lady Godiva chocolate cheesecake and saw a sign saying that this book, The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordyn Taylor, was a mere five bucks with purchase and, since I was, in fact, purchasing, I bought it – not knowing that it was published by Harper’s teen imprint. Sooooo…okay; in some ways this is apparent, as when Alice (our 16-year-old protagonist) complains about her appearance, or her inability to attract a boy at school or, when she does catch the eye of a dreamy French guy she gushes along with her friends (via email). All of which is embarrassing and not a little irritating; just get on with the story, will ya?

So, what is the story? Well, it’s this: 16-year-old Alice is spending the summer in Paris with her family after having inherited an apartment from her grandmother that nobody in the family even knew existed. An apartment that has been empty for more than seventy years. Alice is determined to find out why the apartment was abandoned and why her grandmother never once mentioned the family she left behind when she moved to America after World War II. But this is also the story of 16-year-old Adalyn – Alice’s great aunt whom she never heard of – and her life during the German occupation of France and her role in the French Resistance. Both stories of two very different 16-year-old girls are told in tandem as one searches the past of the other.

Right. How was it? Considering that I am well outside of the target demographic for this book, I thought it was pretty good. I think that it is, obviously, written with teens in mind – teens girls especially – and most of the characters are paper-thin in their development: geeky American girl, cute French boy, evil German officer, not-so-bad German officer, brave Resistance fighters…just about every character is interchangeable and doesn’t stand out. But the struggle against the Nazis in Paris is brought to life for young people, while the mystery of what happened to Alice’s unknown French family is at last solved in the end – a surprisingly tragic end. So, yeah, The Paper Girl of Paris was okay; if I were a teen girl I’m sure I’d appreciate it more.

“William Wallace”, by Andrew Fisher

 

305 pages, John Donald, ISBN-13: 978-0859765572

William Wallace by Andrew Fisher is “…the smartest, most savvy account of Wallace”, this from noted William Wallace expert…Mel Gibson, which is a laugh seeing as how Braveheart has about as much truth in it as your typical politician. While first published in 1986, this particular edition is from 2002 (which explains the Braveheart reference in the Preface). Speaking of Braveheart, William Wallace is about as far from that movie as Planet Earth is from the sun: there is no blue body paint, no tartans, no kilts…and the Battle of Stirling Bridge takes place on a f**king bridge. It is very much a scholarly type of book, so if you are looking for Braveheart sexiness – to say nothing of bullshit – stick with the movie.

Fisher is obviously a competent scholar, but his writing has the reserved tedium of a British work, lacking as it does the dynamism necessary to capture the imagination of the reader. He does, however, a great job of explaining the times, circumstances and history of Wallace’s era: the conflicts leading up to the Scottish War of Independence, the death of Alexander III, the problems of John Balliol and Edward I’s eventual invasion of Scotland, the uprisings that happened around Scotland (one of which is Wallace’s), the aforementioned Battle of Stirling Bridge (1297), Wallace’s time as a Guardian, the Battle of Falkirk, his return to leading small raids and his eventual capture and execution.

While reading William Wallace it becomes obvious that there just isn’t a lot of information on William Wallace: while Fisher damns other authors for their rampant speculation about the man and his motivations, he then turns around and, in order to better flesh-out his subject, resorts to…rampant speculation. While much of it is interesting and, it must be said, grounded in what little facts we have about Wallace, it made much of the book, from an historical perspective, rather unreliable (it put me in mind of Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen by Desmond Seward, reviewed on August 4^th, 2018, and Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life by Alison Weir, May 1^st, 2019, two books that also speculated madly about their famous yet little-known subject).

But the story told in William Wallace is not just about William Wallace, but of early Medieval Scotland as a whole and its struggle against England and its merciless king, Edward I. And for that it is an invaluable resource as this small, inaccessible yet (evidently) highly desirable piece of Planet Earth sought to retain its independence and make its own way, as so many small nations around the world and across time have tried to do, both back then and right now. That one man has been made the symbol of this struggle may make it easier to grasp, but it also rather cheapens the fight made by so many nameless, faceless men – and women – and their common cause. Wallace was important, but he was not irreplaceable, as this book unwittingly shows.

“Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire”, by Simon Winchester

 

400 pages, Harper Perennial, ISBN-13: 978-0060598617

Originally published in 1985, Simon Winchester’s Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire chronicles the author’s journey to find what’s left of the empire “on which the sun never sets”. This edition is a reprint from 2003, and the introduction alone is enough to display just how much changed in the 18-or-so years between editions. While I don’t always read the Introduction to a book, I’m I glad I did this time as Winchester shows just how much the unofficial “Empire” of Globalization has wreaked havoc on the nations of the Earth, not just of what is left of Rule Britannia. Don’t skip it.

As for the rest, Outposts is a fascinating travelogue for its era as we follow the author as he visits all the remaining territories of Great Britain, many of them obscure places about the globe – such as Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic and Boddam in the Indian Ocean – populated by people who have been more-or-less forgotten by the British government. One of the best chapters is on the Falkland Islands, where Winchester arrived a few days before the Argentine invasion and where his description was particularly evocative, describing as he does a society stuck in a 1950s time-warp but where the work ethic had been utterly lost.

Winchester makes a number of cogent points about the governance of these places, showing how while French citizens in her overseas territories elect representatives to the Assemblée nationale, the people of Britain’s territories have no representation in Parliament whatsoever, even though they are generally staunch patriots. Furthermore, Winchester emphasizes how unfair it is that people in predominantly white territories have the right to move to Britain but those in non-white territories are treated as foreigners not permitted to do so (apparently some reforms have occurred since the book was written in 1985. I should damn well hope so).

But the main theme of the book is melancholy, as Winchester visits these remnants of what was once the greatest Empire the world had ever seen – 412 million people, or 23% of the world population at the time; 13,700,000 sq mi, or 24% of the Earth’s total land area – reduced to the original home islands and a few bits or land spread here and there. But oh, what bits: British Indian Ocean Territory, Tristan, Gibraltar, Ascension Island, St Helena, Hong Kong, Bermuda, British West Indies, The Falklands, Pitcairn…and the fact that list has shrunk yet more since this book was originally published makes it sadder still.

A fascinating double-history – of the remnants of a once-proud and, in some-respects, still-extant empire; and also of a vanished world not even 40-years gone – Outposts was an enlightening historical travelogue about the impermanence of Man’s accomplishments.

“To Hold the Crown: The Story of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (A Novel of the Tudors)” by Jean Plaidy

 

416 pages, Three Rivers Press, ISBN-13: 978-0307346193 

To Hold the Crown: The Story of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (A Novel of the Tudors) – I wasn’t sure just how much of this title is really relevant, so I quoted the whole thing – is the first historical novel in Jean Plaidy’s “Tudor Saga” – although it was in fact published last, in 1982 (it’s also known as Uneasy Lies the Head). “Jean Plaidy” was one of the many pen names of Eleanor Alice Hibbert (née Burford), with a different one for each of the literary genres she wrote in: “Jean Plaidy” was for fictionalized histories of European royalty; “Victoria Holt” for gothic romances; “Philippa Carr” for multi-generational family sagas; “Eleanor Burford” for Romance novels, her Mills & Boon novels and the Mary Stuart Queen of Scots Series; as well as several other books written under “Elbur Ford”, “Kathleen Kellow”, “Ellalice Tate” and “Anna Percival” – in total over 200 books over her life, which ended in 1993. Talk about prolific.

I got this book from 2^nd & Charles, using some of the $400 in credit I have there…not knowing that it was just one part of a sprawling, 11-book series that does, indeed, cover the madcap Tudors and their rule over the sceptred isle. I bought it because Henry VII – the First Tudor Monarch – gets such short shrift compared to his larger-than-life descendants, so that any book starring him would prove to be an insight into this most reclusive of kings. I also, in the back of my mind, had to decide if I wanted to read the other ten books in the series…but upon completion of this book that was a decided “NO”. Perhaps it was because Plaidy – or Hibbert, or whomever – was so damn prolific that this book suffers on any number of fronts, from lousy grammar in many places, to an overabundance of ellipses (seriously: 15 of the damn things in 8 sentences…on a single page!) to not capitalizing the beginning of a sentence nor putting a period at the end.

Besides all of that, I found the writing to be rather simplistic, tedious and repetitive; in attempting to express a concept – such as the fact that Elizabeth and her sisters got their good looks from their father, or that Elizabeth always sided with her husband, or just what the hell happened to her young brothers, or any number of other examples – Plaidy would describe it, then she would describe it again…and again…and again…it was like she thought the only way she could make her point stick in her reader’s mind was to shove it down their throat until they vomited, which seriously detracted from any enjoyment of the book. As you could well imagine. And don’t get me started on all the inner monologues in which one character after another gives detailed background information to the reader in which their recent past is chronicled, just in case you know nothing of Tudor history; fear not: they’ll tell you all you need to know in their heads, as people are wont to do.

The long-ass title is also not very accurate, seeing as how Elizabeth of York is in fact an ancillary character in this novel, barely a secondary player in a story that is, ostensibly, half hers; overall she is portrayed as a meek woman who bows to her husband’s authority in all things and never asserts her own will or opinion, an assertion I found difficult to believe. I do believe, however, that Plaidy gives an accurate picture of Henry VII as a rather joyless man who does what he feels is best for his country and his house, but lacks warmth and emotion, even toward his family; a cold fish who nevertheless put England right again after so many decades of war and death and destruction. In comparison to his heirs, it is no wonder that so sober and dedicated a king should be out shown by the minor suns that were Henry VIII and Elizabeth I – but if not for Henry VII, neither of these mighty Tudors would have ever been.

To Hold the Crown, then, was a disappointing read, and if this author’s other work is anything like it, then they will be all too easy to skip.

“Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found”, by Suketu Mehta

 

560 pages, Vintage, ISBN-13: 978-0375703409

Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found is an insider’s view of this most-Indian of metropolises and has garnered a number of accolades: winner of the 2005 Kiriyama Prize (given to books that foster a greater understanding of the nations and peoples of the Pacific Rim and South Asia), winner of the 2005 Vodafone Crossword Book Award, one of the Economist 2004 Books of the Year, 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist and shortlisted for the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize. And no wonder, as this book is a very personal work of a native Bombayite who left with his parents for New York at 14 before returning as an adult twenty-one years later to examine all that has changed and, often sadly, all than has remained the same, told mostly through interviews with both power-brokers and ordinary people.

Maximum City is not a book to be read in search of a single theme, but is rather best enjoyed for what it is: a seemingly random collection of tales told by those whom Mehta encounters as if by chance on the streets of Bombay (assuredly not a reality, though; some of these Very Important Personages had to approve interviews – but it seems rather spontaneous all the same). It is sprawling, no doubt, just as Bombay is, but that is to be expected; this enormous patch of humanity of 233 square miles into which over 12½ million people have been crammed could never be described in a linear narrative. Better to do as Mehta did and piece together the lives of but a tiniest fraction of the inhabitants of the Gateway to India into broad divisions and allow them to speak and dream and pontificate on their own.

And just who are these people? Well, there is Sunil, the Hindu nationalist who rises from street thug to the ultranationalist Shiv Sena party leader. There’s also Monalisa, the “beer bar” dancing girl who dares to dream of escaping her sad existence in a seedy bar by winning the Miss India beauty pageant. We have Ajai Lal, who claims to be the only non-corrupted policeman in Bombay. As well as an unemployed young migrant worker from Bihar, one of India’s most backward states, struggling to establish a career as a poet. And why have they all come to Bombay? As Mehta puts it, Bombay still gives them room to dream and still allows them to live “closer to their seductive extremities than anyone I had ever known”. The siren call of Bombay is the same as every city the world over, then and now: a new start in a place where nobody knows you.

“Every day is an assault on the individual’s senses, from the time you get up, to the transport you take to go to work, to the offices you work in, to the forms of entertainment you are subjected to”. That is life in everyday Bombay, and yet still people come. One is put in mind of a Dickensian cityscape in which 19^th Century industrial urban blight has been married to a tropical climate with loads of sex, Islamic terrorism and Hindu violence – “A City in Heat” in Mehta’s memorable phrase, an overpowering, exhausting, violent and chaotic patch of planet Earth which is every bit a “functioning anarchy” (to borrow John Kenneth Galbraith’s famously patronizing description of India as a whole). How the place functions is a mystery, but function it does, if imperfectly and unfairly for all of its millions.

Part history, part travelogue, part memoir, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found brings to life this supercharged world through its people, presenting a meticulous documentary of living, thriving and surviving on this teeming island that always seems threaten to slip into the ocean at any moment, taking its struggling population with it.