The Dreamthief's Daughter: A Tale of the Albino [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Through his long career, every form that Michael Moorcock has touched he has changed. Science Fiction was never the same again after New Worlds. The space story was changed through The Black Corridor and Behold the Man examined religion. He has put his unique stamp on mainstream novels like Mother London, King of the City or the Pyat sequence. And he has done the same for fantasy. Before Moorcock, there was nothing like this. After Moorcock, there was a lot like this -- but nothing which really has the flavour of the original, full strength old Master. This Elric book is a gem. I really hadn't expected to like it as much as I did. This really isn't the old mixture as before. This is a refined and intelligent supernatural adventure, full of love, magic and philosophy. It is the familiar Moorcock mix and it doesn't come any headier. This zoomed by and sent me straight back to the first Elric books. If you've never read Elric -- this is a fine place to start. The finest single Elric tale remains Stormbringer! but this runs it a very close second. The dragons are gorgeous, too, and the Nazi theme has more to do with an examination of perverse romanticism (and by extension sword and sorcery fiction) than it has to pointing out who the bad guys of the 1930s were. The great thing about this novel is that you can enjoy it on so many levels and they're all stimulating! Recommended! TT

I have been reading Michael Moorcock's stories since the 1960's. So, I have been through almost every incarnation of the Eternal Champion, as well as many efforts in other directions. I have admired Moorcock not just for his writing abilities, but also for the support and aid that he has given to many other writers. I've never counted money spent on one of his books as wasted, and was looking forward to my first visit with Moorcock in a long time. This time, however, I am lest satisfied with what was delivered. I'm afraid the Eternal Champion has been stretched a bit too thin.

Ostensibly the story is about Ulric von Bek (the last count of Bek), or it's about Elric (the last king of Melnibone) and, maybe, Oona (the last of Elric's line). All of these are albinos, hence the book's subtitle. The first third of the book tells of Ulric and his conflict with the Nazis over a mystic black sword, and the Holy Grail that was once entrusted to his family. The conflict enlarges, and Ulric becomes the means by which Elric can be released from a comatose state. Unfortunately, we are subjected to a host of ruminations and explanations from Ulric's viewpoint. Ulric's lack of narrative skill doesn't interfere in the least with his ability to go on and on pedantically about everything from politics to scenery. But the early story frequently verges on the tedious.

Elric is a moderately better storyteller, but the simple truth is that the overall narration is wooden, as if Moorcock was badly out of practice or has some preaching to do. The plot turns on the albinos' efforts to prevent Ulric's cousin Gaynor from copping all the swords and the Grail, and thus bringing the universe to a sudden and fatal halt. If this sounds a bit too much like many other Moorcock stories, the truth is that there is little to clearly differentiate this tale from those that have gone before other than a lot of material on Nazi superstition and an unusually strong female protagonist.

The book is neither a success nor a failure. I thing some heavy editing could have mat it a much better story. It is, however, a poor introduction for those readers who have never had a chance to make Elric's acquaintance in the old days when the Albino destroyed his home and set out to wander the younger kingdoms. My recommendation is to go back and read the original Elric and Corum stories and let "The Dreamthief's Daughter" rest for now, hopefully to be rescued by the promised sequel.

In his book about heroic fantasy, Wizardy and Wild Romance, Moorcock attacks what he believes is Inkling (Tolkien, Lewis and Co) sentimentalized Christianity, yet Elric is in some ways a far more powerful extension of Christian mythology, like other Gothic hero villains before him, dying essentially for our sins or so that we might live in some kind of harmony! (See Behold the Man and even the Jerry Cornelius books if you don't believe me!). Elric is also a creature for our time because he is a man in transition between cultures, between one value system and another, at a time when we are all having to re-think our value systems and work out how to make them stay functioning in the modern world most of us experience daily. Just as Jerry Cornelius takes on various distinct roles from book to book or story to story, so does the Eternal Champion continue his own quests and struggles in different guises. But the quest is always the same -- a discovery that existing values don't quite fit the bill and that new values must be forged. If that isn't a message for our times, I don't know what is! We have to learn increasingly to hold a decent value system in spite of it not being a conventional one, the kind our grandparents relied on successfully enough -- until Hitler! Hitler changed our world. Some of the changes were ultimately for the better, in our response to try to make sure his like never gained such power again, with the Declaration of Human Rights and other worthwhile advances. Out of evil can be said to have come good. And that is also Moorcock's message -- to judge, but not to judge too quickly. Elric, like many an existentialist before him, discovers his own values, only slowly accepts the values of humanism, rather like a mediaeval man trying to come to terms with the Enlightenment! His story is both apt and universal and that is why his adventures continue to entertain us on so many levels and why Elric's encounter with the Nazi holocaust in this book isn't just a plot device. The Nazis in their corrupted version of Nietzsche believed the strong always triumphed, that it was their destiny to devour the weak. These are the values of Elric's Melnibonean people. They are not his values, but he has yet to find any he can completely accept. He has to discover his own, through his own transcendental adventurings. Moorcock has earned his authority. We know that he considers every theme in his stories and links one book with another often in quite unlikely ways. The argument found in one book is extended or countered in another. You could read The Dreamthief's Daughter straight and never have to know another Elric book, but if you're a big Elric fan -- you have a treat in store! I speak as one who finds most fantasy both unimaginative and unoriginal. This is the cream and if you read no other fantasy this year, you'll be glad you read this one!