Elric of Melniboné

Volume 1: Elric of Melnibone, The Fortress of the Pearl, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, and The Weird of the White Wolf

By: Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman

Narrated by: Samuel Roukin

When Michael Moorcock began chronicling the adventures of the albino sorcerer Elric, last king of decadent Melniboné, and his sentient vampiric sword, Stormbringer, he set out to create a new kind of fantasy adventure, one that broke with tradition and reflected a more up-to-date sophistication of theme and style. The result was a bold and unique hero - weak in body, subtle in mind, dependent on drugs for the vitality to sustain himself - with great crimes behind him and a greater destiny ahead: a rock-and-roll antihero who would channel all the violent excesses of the '60s into one enduring archetype.

Now, presented in the author's preferred story order, the classic Elric saga.

©2021 Michael Moorcock and Neil Gaiman (P)2021 Recorded Books

Dark and Tragic Fantasy At Its Best!

I love these stories of Elric; multi-layered, morally conflicted, complex, the quintessential doomed champion of a doomed world.

Michael Moorcock's literary prose is as good as I remember and doesn't feel dated like some of my other favorite authors from the 70's and 80's. The narration was very well done. Neil Gaiman's short story at the beginning felt a little out of place, as his style of writing doesn't blend well with the original books, but its a very minor complaint. An introduction and/or context might have been helpful, or perhaps placing the short story at the end of the audio book, not the beginning. But, again, not a big deal at all.

Highly recommended!

Definitive audiobook treatment at last

Been a fan of Moorcock since junior high. Thrilled to have a high-quality audiobook...

... but I really need the narrator to stop slipping up and calling our hero "Eric."

For those complaining about Neil Gaiman's contribution, were you not paying attention to the Elric stories? Melniboné gets more disturbing things done before breakfast than British schoolboys do all day.

Blood And Souls for Lord Moorcock!

The Thine White Duke has RETURNED! In a GORGEOUS new hardcover that collects the Pale Prince's 4 GREATEST stories! This compilation is an absolute dream come true for me, a chronological collection of the ultimate origin story, Elric of Melnibone. My 4 favorite books in the series bundled together nicely, The Elric Saga is a MUST read for anyone curious of the origins of Grim/Dark Fantasy!

Great stories and reading.

After listening to this book it explains to me where so much of dungeons and dragons was inspired. Tales of frost and fire! The Neil Gaiman book excerpt at the beginning was totally useless and off putting. Besides that, worth the money and wait!

Skip the introduction by Neil Gaiman

I don’t love the Elric tales so far, but I like them.

This was my first listen to Michael Moorcock, and it is a good style for my ears and the performance by the narrator was top notch.

The introduction is confusing, unrelated, bizarre, and off putting. The whole book suffers a bit, It would have been better without it.

Strange Beginning Segment, Redeemed by Great Elric Stories

The Beginning Segment I could have done without, why was it even included…??? The Elric Stories themselves were Great!!!

What the hell, Gaiman?

The foreword is just utterly bizarre, and I can't understand what either Gaiman or the publisher were thinking when they included it.

“Fate was teaching him strange lessons.”

The Elric Saga Volume 1: Elric of Melniboné (2022) presents in internal chronological order the following compact novels: Elric of Melniboné (1972), The Fortress of the Pearl (1989), The Sailor on the Seas of Fate (1976), and The Weird of the White Wolf (1977). Each novel features Michael Moorcock’s surreal imagination, bleak vision, vivid description, violent action, and pulpy characterization.

The albino wizard warrior Elric broods over it all: self-exiled, self-loathing, philosophizing, peripatetic; hating his decadent Melnibonéan home but unable to fit into the barbaric Young Kingdoms; asking existential questions; existing in an unhealthy symbiotic relationship with his moaning, singing, shrieking, and soul-eating Chaos-forged sword Stormbringer (don’t be standing next to Elric when he draws it). Without the vitality gained from rare drugs and his demonic blade, Elric wouldn’t even be able to lift the sentient sword, which he talks to “as another might talk to his horse or as a prisoner might share his thoughts with a cockroach in his cell.” As he says in one way or another more than once, “I am nothing without this blade,” and “I am not fit to live.”

The collection begins with an odd introduction-story by Neil Gaiman, “One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock,” about a loner book worm suffers boarding school while idolizing the consummate outsider Elric for living in “real” stories.

Elric of Melniboné introduces Elric, the physically weak, magically strong, and inappropriately thoughtful Emperor of the 10,000-year-old Melnibonéan Empire, now reduced to its capitol city Imrryr, the Dreaming Isle, and subject to the aggressive envy, hatred, and lust of the up-and-coming human Young Kingdoms. Elric loves his beautiful cousin Cymoril, while her ambitious brother Yrkoon loathes Elric (because he’s not cruel enough to rule) and yearns to replace him on the Ruby Throne. Sea and land battles, treachery, mercy, magic, a mirror that steals memories, another plane, Elric’s patron deity Duke Arioch of Chaos, and—finally—Stormbringer.

The Fortress of the Pearl begins with Elric dying in the city of Qvarzhasaat, which is at least as decadent and proud as Imrryr, when he’s “saved” by being made to agree to steal the Pearl at the Heart of the World for the ringleted, lipsticked, and giggling Lord Go. A trip to a desert oasis, a holy girl in an enchanted sleep, a dangerous dream quest with a beautiful dream thief through various realms of dream, and questions about reality and dreams. Finally, “More than pearls can be conceived in dreams.”

Sailor on the Seas of Fate is made of three novellas that could almost happen in any order. In the first, Elric joins Team Eternal Champion to try to prevent sibling sorcerers from consuming all the energy of our universe. In the second, he cruises around in a Limbo world with Count Smiorgan trying to solve the mystery of a stallion with an invisible rider, an obsessive love-sick Earl, and the daughter of a merchant’s daughter. In the third, Elric and Smiorgan join an adventurer to sail on his yacht to a legendary western continent to find a legendary city which may have a legendary statue with legendary jewels for eyes. Elric hopes to learn the origins of his people and their madness.

The Weird of the White Wolf is also comprised of three novellas. In “The Dreaming City,” instead of trying to reform his people (his mission hitherto), Elric has decided to lead a fleet of 500 reaver ships to sack Melniboné’s capital, ostensibly to get revenge on Yrkoon and to save Cymoril. In “While the Gods Laugh,” Elric agrees to accompany a beautiful “wingless woman of Myyrrhn” (an outcast among her winged people) on a quest for a “holy and mighty book” so he might learn whether or not an ultimate God exists. The third story, “The Singing Citadel,” features a tower that plays irresistible music, a charismatic queen, a vengeful wizard, the Jester of Chaos, and the Duke of Chaos.

Samuel Roukin reads the audiobook fine, with a pleasing voice and sensitivity to the text, but he does tend to too often pause pregnantly in places without punctuation to warrant pausing, as in “You Prince Yrkoon (pause) will be the first to benefit (pause) from this new rule of mine.”

Finally, I have mixed feelings about the Elric stories. On the one hand, Moorcock coolly subverted the sword and sorcery genre, writing an anti-Conan the Barbarian. (Can you imagine Robert E. Howard’s black-maned muscle-bound hero accidentally killing his friends or lovers, castigating himself, uttering pick-up lines like, “I should tell you that I scream at night sometimes,” relying on drugs and a demonic sword for energy, summoning aid from elementals and Chaos Lords, or speculating about an ultimate god and the meaning of life?) On the other hand, it isn’t often much fun hanging out with the white-haired albino “nigromancer” and his sentient blade. Too many of his quests are too dreamlike, with too many action scenes that get too boring too soon.

Furthermore, Moorcock’s female characters are unimpressive. Una the ace dream thief is rather interesting, but Elric’s great love Cymoril is a cypher, only warning the obtuse Elric or being kidnapped or sleeping enchantedly. Shaarilla loses heart during her quest with Elric. The ruthless queen who wants Elric can’t hang onto him. Etc.

In short, I found the Elric books less impressive and more contrived than when they enchanted junior high school me.

That said, I am glad to have reread the books, for their great lines, like—

“…for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.”
“Attempts to make [legends] real are rarely successful.”
“In his wisdom he had chosen to cross the desert in a time of drought.”

And their great creepy fantasy, like—

“The fly settled on Elric's forehead. It was a large, black fly and its buzz was loud, obscene. It rubbed its forelegs together, and it seemed to be taking a particular interest in Elric's face as it moved over it. Elric shuddered, but he did not have the strength to swat it. When it came into his field of vision, he watched it. When it was not visible he felt its legs covering every inch of his face. Then it flew up and, still buzzing loudly, hovered a short distance from Elric's nose. And then Elric could see the fly’s eyes and recognize something in them. They were the eyes—and yet not the eyes—he had seen on that other plane.
It began to dawn on him that this fly was no ordinary creature. It had features that were in some way faintly human.
The fly smiled at him.”

the classic dark fantasy series

Pithy and imaginative short stories, mostly about Elric flailing about trying to figure out how to behave as a powerful being in an immoral world. Probably best appreciated as a moody adolescent.

"The Fortress of the Pearl" was written later, and is a bit out of place stylistically in its use of dream worlds, presenting the desert people as unambiguously good, and general lack of moody introspection on the part of Elric.

The reading is not bad overall, but the exclusive use of various regional UK accents for exotic people from across the multiverse was a bit unconvincing.

I really wanted to like it

I will start by first saying that I heard a lot about this book series and I really wanted to like it.

There are good things about this audiobook. The narrator was quite good and I the world building was interesting.

However, there are just certain things about the book that really made it difficult to enjoy. The dialogue was wordy and the author would have to characters say the same thing in a slightly different way several times in a conversation.

Alaric ex character made such horrible decisions and placed himself in such asinine situations that it beggared belief.