Randolph "Dilda" Carter

The first thing you need to do when writing a Michael Moorcock sword and sorcery novella is divide your 60,000 words into four sections, 15,000 words apiece. Then divide each section into six chapters. Allow a major event to happen, something astonishing, every four pages. How about a plot? How about we have only six days to save the Multiverse? Now draw a map of your world so you know where you are at any given time. Now begin...

Sounds easy, right? Well, maybe for Moorcock. Seriously the major weakness with some of Moorcock is seeing through the planogram writing style. It still doesn't mean it isn't fun but Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon, Von Bek taken in too large doses will kill the intended effect. This is the good and the bad about these White Wolf/Borealis collections of Moorcock's Eternal Champion works: too much of a good thing makes one's stomach ache but we all want the whole story. 

The best bit in here is The Revenge of the Rose. The other two long pieces, The Sleeping Sorceress and Stormbringer, are not nearly as good or memorable. The former is too much of the "make it up as you go" style and the latter, while nicely tying up the entire Elric saga, drags on a little too long (but has a nice denouement). The short pieces in the middle gain from the tighter plotting inherent in a short story versus a novella.

This is volume 11 in the US Eternal Champion series. I think Elric: Song of the Black Sword (volume 5) was a little stronger than this one but between the two you pretty much get all of Moorcock's Elric, at least as it stood at the end of the century.

Bizarre creepy cover and interior art that seems to have little to do with Elric but looks cool nonetheless.