Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "The Elric Saga, Part 1" (1972 - 1977) by Michael Moorcock
Age Range: 16 to adult
Genre: Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Dark Fantasy
Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champions" books are foundational to the modern field of fantasy. They brought the dark antihero to the genre, but that's not all they did; Moorcock also introduced the concepts of Law, Chaos, and the Balance to fantasy (the first two of which were adopted by Dungeons & Dragons), as well as the multiverse and arguably the concept of dark fantasy itself!
The Eternal Champion is a figure fated to be reborn or reincarnated throughout time and space. Most often a Champion of the Balance between Law and Chaos, he/she sometimes serves Law or Chaos instead. The Champion is often cursed to a terrible fate. Accompanied by incarnations of the Companion to Champions and by a true love, the Champion very often bears certain objects of cosmic power–the most famous of which is Stormbringer, the Black Blade.
And the most famous incarnation of the Eternal Champion is Elric, Prince of Melniboné. An eldritch albino of an elf-like race, he's fatally weakened by his albinism; only through dark sorcery is he able to survive, eventually relying on the soul-stealing power of the demonic runeblade Stormbringer.
[IT IS THE colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody, and from the loose sleeves of his yellow gown emerge two slender hands, also the colour of bone, resting on each arm of a seat which has been carved from a single, massive ruby.
The crimson eyes are troubled and sometimes one hand will rise to finger the light helm which sits upon the white locks: a helm made from some dark, greenish alloy and exquisitely moulded into the likeness of a dragon about to take wing. And on the hand which absently caresses the crown there is a ring in which is set a single rare Actorios stone whose core sometimes shifts sluggishly and reshapes itself, as if it were sentient smoke and as restless in its jewelled prison as the young albino on his Ruby Throne.
He looks down the long flight of quartz steps to where his court disports itself, dancing with such delicacy and whispering grace that it might be a court of ghosts. Mentally he debates moral issues and in itself this activity divides him from the great majority of his subjects, for these people are not human.
These are the people of Melniboné, the Dragon Isle, which ruled the world for ten thousand years and has ceased to rule it for less than five hundred years. And they are cruel and clever and to them ‘morality’ means little more than a proper respect for the traditions of a hundred centuries.]
Bands (usually heavy metal ones) have done songs about Elric, Stormbringer, and other aspects of the Champion. Some even named themselves after them. There are tabletop roleplaying systems based on various incarnations of the Champion. There's a lot of art that's been based on them, too. The cultural impact of the Eternal Champion is massive.
The Elric series is made up of six books (a seventh was later published), each of which is relatively slim. The first three novels are "Elric of Melniboné" (1972), "The Sailor on the Seas of Fate" (1977), and "The Weird of the White Wolf" (1977); those three are freely available to borrow on the Internet Archive as a single volume titled "The Elric Saga, Part 1".
https://archive.org/details/elricsaga0000mich_k9z1
Rather than tease things out, I'll also recommend the rest of the series. It consists of "The Sleeping Sorceress" (1971) also published as "The Vanishing Tower", "The Bane of the Black Sword", and "Stormbringer". They've been bundled as a single book, "The Elric Saga, Part 2" on the Internet Archive.
https://archive.org/details/elricsagapart20000mich
Moorcock wrote other stories about Elric, and Elric makes cameo appearances (so to speak) in other Eternal Champion series as well. And if you enjoy the Elric series, there are •dozens• more books in the Eternal Champion series. There are at least 19 whole SERIES included in it. An incarnation of the Champion was even included in the Doctor Who universe!
And here's a freebie: Michael Moorcock wrote the lyrics to a song about Elric and Stormbringer called "Black Blade". It was performed by Blue Öyster Cult. Here's a link.
https://youtu.be/_p1yaNC1mNg
Happy reading (and listening)! 🤓📖
Here's a complete spreadsheet of all the books I've recommended on Mastodon to date (along with links to each post):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSzubtaPojvprNwZCeR6N4xzCpZzMeb4xrrEHPtk6Bvx3RGj1Bxdg2KWY0CcjHjxUfMTGTF1eYpyoFn/pubhtml
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