2007 Reading List - Elric
Book Five
Elric by Michael Moorcock
Hate to say it, but this bored me.
I know, I know, the Elric series is supposed to be one of those classics of modern fantasy, but I got about twenty pages in and all I could think was, "Jesus, this guy is emo." If he were living in the real world right now he'd be cutting himself and listening to Modest Mouse. He'd be wearing black eyeliner and getting beat up by the football team. He'd have a fantastically horrible MySpace page.
You get the idea.
I mean, I understand that the character was a major break from the norm - a warrior who was physically weak, a hero who was unabashedly on the side of evil and chaos, a character whose introduction to the world involved destroying his own homeland and murdering the woman he loved, the damsel in distress.
Still, I just wasn't interested in him, or his existential dilemmas or his evil sword. Well, the evil sword was kind of interesting and brought back good memories of the evil steel whip I used in my D&D days back in college. Ah, those were the days.
Honestly, I'm not sure why Elric didn't grab my imagination. Maybe because by now a lot of what was innovative in Moorcock's work has become cliche. Hell, I met the Elric parody character of Elrod of Melvinbone (in Dave Sim's Cerebus comic, back when it was brilliant and not insane) and knew what the joke was without having ever read an Elric story.
So, for whatever reason, Elric didn't do it for me. Go figure.
Moving on....
Elric by Michael Moorcock
Hate to say it, but this bored me.
I know, I know, the Elric series is supposed to be one of those classics of modern fantasy, but I got about twenty pages in and all I could think was, "Jesus, this guy is emo." If he were living in the real world right now he'd be cutting himself and listening to Modest Mouse. He'd be wearing black eyeliner and getting beat up by the football team. He'd have a fantastically horrible MySpace page.
You get the idea.
I mean, I understand that the character was a major break from the norm - a warrior who was physically weak, a hero who was unabashedly on the side of evil and chaos, a character whose introduction to the world involved destroying his own homeland and murdering the woman he loved, the damsel in distress.
Still, I just wasn't interested in him, or his existential dilemmas or his evil sword. Well, the evil sword was kind of interesting and brought back good memories of the evil steel whip I used in my D&D days back in college. Ah, those were the days.
Honestly, I'm not sure why Elric didn't grab my imagination. Maybe because by now a lot of what was innovative in Moorcock's work has become cliche. Hell, I met the Elric parody character of Elrod of Melvinbone (in Dave Sim's Cerebus comic, back when it was brilliant and not insane) and knew what the joke was without having ever read an Elric story.
So, for whatever reason, Elric didn't do it for me. Go figure.
Moving on....