The fifth of the six classic Elric novels picks up, as is usual with these books, where the fourth leaves off. Moorcock sets the last pieces of the puzzle into place, introducing us to Zarozinia, the love of Elric's life. Once again, Moorcock takes his already intriguing concepts that he's built up throughout the series and adds a few more twists and turns, to make them even more intriguing than they already were. The book is good, it's readable, and the payoff, in Stormbringer, is astounding.

In the elaborate fictional cosmos Michael Moorcock has created, Elric and the various von Beks are all aspects of the Eternal Champion who fights for the Balance, preventing both Law and Chaos from dominating the universe and trapping it in either barren sterility or pointless fecundity. Elric, the albino sorcerer and last prince of the inhuman empire of Melnibone, was the creation of Moorcock's adventurous pot-boiling inventive youth, just as the von Bek family featured in the heroic fantasies of his more thoughtful middle-life. In The Dreamthief's Daughter, he brings together Elric and Ulric von Bek, last scion of the family, and we finally learn the sin for which the perpetual villain Gaynor the Damned was doomed: Nazi occultists are searching for the Grail and the Black Sword and must be prevented from attaining them. Ulric seeks allies wherever he can find them, including Oona, who wanders through dream realities and with whom he falls in love. This is fast-moving phantasmagorical stuff with ambiguously virtuous heroes and baddies whose villainy and charm is total. Moorcock's immensely powerful visual imagination and sense of the innate drama of crucial scenes make this a breathtaking read.

Elric of Melniboné is a requisite title in the hard fantasy canon, a book no fantasy fan should leave unread. Author Michael Moorcock, already a major player in science fiction, cemented his position in the fantasy pantheon with the Elric saga, of which Elric of Melniboné is the first installment. The book's namesake, the brooding albino emperor of the dying nation of Melniboné, is a sort of Superman for Goths, truly an archetype of the genre. The youthful Elric is a cynical and melancholy king, heir to a nation whose 100,000-year rule of the world ended less than 500 years hence. More interested in brooding contemplation than holding the throne, Elric is a reluctant ruler, but he also realizes that no other worthy successor exists and the survival of his once-powerful, decadent nation depends on him alone. Elric's nefarious, brutish cousin Yyrkoon has no patience for his physically weak kinsman, and he plots constantly to seize Elric's throne, usually over his dead body. Elric of Melniboné followsYrkoon's scheming, reaching its climax in a battle between Elric and Yyrkoon with the demonic runeblades Stormbringer and Mournblade. In this battle, Elric gains control of the soul-stealing Stormbringer, an event that proves pivotal to the Elric saga.

Knitting together many of the major characters and stories in Michael Moorcock's unparalleled creation of the Eternal Champion, this new novel depicts Elric, the White Wolf, at the end of his thousand-year dream quest, where he will be caught in a breathtaking chase across eras, worlds, and realities...One summer day in Yorkshire, young Oonagh von Bek finds herself on an extraordinary and perilous adventure. The earth outside her family home breaks open, and she is chased into the subterranean realms of the Middle March by a pair of dangerous men.Her grandmother and grandfather - Oona, the Dreamthief's Daughter, and Elric, the last sorcerer of Melnibone - follow, encountering other important avatars of the Eternal Champion and seeking Elric's son. Fanning out across the infinite realms of existence and time, they hope to stop Oonagh's would-be kidnappers, Gaynor the Damned and his allies. All paths will converge in the dark empire of Granbretan, a land of cruel tyranny and wicked magic, where defilers and murderers plan the ultimate arrogance: to re-create the entire Multiverse - and replace the Cosmic Balance with themselves as eternal overlords.