The Mad God's Amulet by Michael Moorcock

The Mad God's Amulet by Michael Moorcock is the second book in the History of the Runestaff series. It documents Hawkmoon's journey back to the Kamarg.
During the journey, Hawkmoon and Oladahn meet the wraiths that inhabit the city of Soryandum. They appear later in the Chronicles of Count Brass but it was great to read about Hawkmoon's first meeting with them. They are a people with very advanced science that allows them to exist in another dimension. They send Hawkmoon and Oladahn on a short quest to retrieve two machines of theirs that they left in a cave guarded by a giant beast machine (also of their creation). While they do successfully bring back the machines, this quest almost spells the end for Hawkmoon. Once they have the machines, the wraiths are able to take Soryandum into the other dimension with them to hide from the invading Granbretanians. Before doing so, they give the second machine to Hawkmoon.
Hawkmoon and Oladahn later secure passage on The Smiling Girl to get to Crimea. The plan is to go from there to the Kamarg. During the journey, they find and rescue a shipwrecked D'Averc and are then attacked by a boat belonging to the Cult of the Mad God. After a long, hard battle, Hawkmoon, Oladahn and D'Averc steal the Cult's ship. Upon searching through the stolen treasure on the ship, they find a severed hand upon which is Yisselda's ring. This, of course, worries Hawkmoon.
The trio are also able to take one of the Cult pirates hostage during all of this. When they later go to check on him, they find him lucid and wondering what has happened. Apparently, the pirates have all been continually drugged into attacking ships and looting them in order to bring the spoils back to the Mad God. The sailor, now sober, tells Hawkmoon that all women captured were to be brought back to the Mad God alive. Upon hearing this, Hawkmoon decides to find the Mad God and hopefully Yisselda.
I do not want to go into more detail than this or give away any more of the story so will stop here. I don't want to spoil it for anyone that plans to read it.
One of the things I like most about these stories is the moral dilemmas that continually pop up. Hawkmoon often has to make a decision regarding the life of another. There are also characters that flip-flop between helping Hawkmoon and harming him (i.e. D'Averc). It all keeps you on your toes as a reader and I thoroughly enjoy it.
I cannot decide if I will move on to The Sword of the Dawn (the third book in the series) or read Elric of Melnibone next. I may take a break from the Runestaff stories for a book or two but will then come back to them if I do.

The Jewel in the Skull by Michael Moorcock

Believe it or not, I was going to take a break from Moorcock and read another story before I started the History of the Runestaff series. I picked up a few different books and started them but I kept wanting to know what happened before the Chronicles of Count Brass series. Then I picked up The Jewel in the Skull just to look at the table of contents. This is when I saw on the left page:

This book is dedicated to Dave Brock

and it was over. I had to read it.
For those of you that don't know, Dave Brock is a member of the legendary Hawkwind...who happens to be a band that I love. Moorcock was friends with the band and even collaborated with them on some tracks. Their album, The Chronicle of the Black Sword is entirely based on Moorcock's Elric character.
So I'm sorry dear readers (all 2 of you) but it's more Michael Moorcock for now. Get used to it.
This story begins with our old friend Count Brass. While out patrolling the Kamarg (his homeland) he comes across a horrifying creature known as a baragoon. These creatures were once men but were taken as slaves by the previous guardian of the Kamarg and transformed in his laboratories and used to terrorize the people of the Kamarg. Moorcock describes them as "eight feet high and enormously broad, bile-colored and slithering on their bellies through the marshlands; they rose only to leap upon and rend their prey with their steel-hard talons. When they did, on occasion, have the good fortune to find a man alone they would take slow vengeance, delighting in eating a man's limbs before his eyes." Count Brass slays the beast of course but even he finds it difficult to kill.
Being the first book in the History of the Runestaff series, we learn much about the history and lands inhabited by Count Brass, Yisselda, Dorian Hawkmoon, and the rest. It was easy to figure out that Granbretan was a future (and possibly other dimensional) Great Britain. However I don't remember knowing that the Kamarg is part of what was once France and that Köln is located in Germany. Perhaps Köln is Cologne but I'm not sure if the Kamarg would correspond to any place in our world.
I found the imagery in this book to be amazing. The bullfight early on in the book was filled with colorful scenery and even more colorful toreadors. In my imagination, the bullfights rivaled any extravagance shown in the recent Hunger Games movies (no, I have not read the books but I've enjoyed the films). We also meet the King-Emperor Huon, an ancient man who lives within a globe of milky white fluid. I get the feeling that his voice was actually not a voice but was telepathic. However, I don't believe this is stated in the book...just my own feeling on the matter.
There is an amazing array of characters within Granbretan and I want to know more and more about them all. Throughout the story, we are told a bit more about the various orders within Granbretan. The bulls, serpents, wolves, etc. Each order has a leader who is typically either insane, outrageously flamboyant in dress/armor, or both. The inhabitants of Granbretan spare no expense and torture and enslave all they conquer.
This book was a great read and I plan to start The Mad God's Amulet (Book 2) tonight.
As a bonus, here is Michael Moorcock performing with Hawkwind on their song Sonic Attack. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, William Hope Hodgson!

Today is the 137th birthday of one of my favorite writers, William Hope Hodgson. Although he died in the trenches of World War I, he has been immortalized by his contributions to the genre of Weird Fiction.
To read some of this stories for free online, check out eBooks@Adelaide. For a ton of his stories in a great looking book at an affordable price, check out his volume in the Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction.
So far on this blog, I've only wrote about The Night Land and The House on the Borderland but plan to write about some of this other stories in the future so stay tuned.

The Quest for Tanelorn by Michael Moorcock

The Quest for Tanelorn is the 3rd and last book in the Chronicles of Count Brass series by Michael Moorcock. As I stated in my post on Count Brass, this series is a continuation of The History of the Runestaff series also by Moorcock.
This story begins where The Champion of Garathorm left off. Dorian Hawkmoon is reunited with his wife Yisselda but still does not have their two children. Hawkmoon and Yisselda yearn for their children and begin to look for them. The remainder of the book concerns this adventure.
I loved the voyage to Tanelorn and everything that happened along the way but I particularly enjoyed the story once the travellers reached their destination. The city of Tanelorn itself is described as a beautiful, psychedelic city. Even the battle leading up to the actual discovery of the city is something out of an LSD trip.
In researching more about Moorcock and the Multiverse mythology, I discovered multiverse.org. This is a site I'm sure I will be perusing often in the coming months.
I cannot yet decide if I want to read the Elric series or The History of the Runestaff series next but I can't wait to read more of these stories.

The Champion of Garathorm by Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock is steadily becoming one of my favorite Sword & Sorcery writers. His stories are not only full of awesome characters but he also spends lots of time building a world that is fascinating and full of imaginative creatures. If you enjoy this genre, you will most certainly love his books.
The Champion of Garathorm begins where Count Brass left off. Dorian Hawkmoon is having an extremely hard time coping with the death of his wife Yisselda. He has descended into madness, playing out in miniature the battle that caused her demise. He plays the battle out over and over with different actions to see if he could have prevented her death.
Dorian believes that she is alive in another time or dimension. He feels her presence. He becomes convinced that he can find her and bring her back to his world. This is where things get interesting.
Dorian is visited by Katinka van Bak, a badass woman with sword fighting skill to rival kings. He convinces her to help him find Yisselda and the two leave on a quest that will change Dorian forever.
The rest of the book is filled with deception, intrigue and brutal battles. Much of the book takes place on the island continent of Garathorm. It is a beautiful place full of trees and buildings made of ebony, ivory, and hardwoods (some now extinct). I found this continent fascinating and want to know more, more, more...
This story also contained something that is rare in Sword & Sorcery fiction...women warriors. These were not your typical storied women that let the men do the fighting while they cower in a stable or end up getting overpowered by the males and have to be saved. These women were champions. These women were every bit as powerful as the men. It was refreshing.
Here is one of my favorite excerpts regarding some of these women:

     Though she now bled from a dozen minor cuts and grazes, Ilian was tireless. She unhorsed one rider with a blow of her buckler and in the same movement swept her sword round to take a green-furred dwarf through the roof of his gaping mouth so that the point ran deep into his brain. As the dwarf fell, Ilian twisted the sword from his corpse in time to parry an axe which had been thrown at her by a warrior in purple armour whose pointed steel teeth clashed as he tried to draw back his arm to thrust at her with the lance he held in his other hand. Ilian leaned out in her saddle and sliced the hand from the wrist so that fist and spear dropped to the ground. The stump, spouting blood, continued the motion of casting the spear and only then did the warrior with the steel teeth realise what had happened to him and he moaned. But Ilian was riding past him, to where one of her girl warriors stood over the corpse of her dead vayna desperately trying to ward off the blows of three men with reptilian skins (but who were otherwise dressed dissimilarly) who were determined to slay her. Ilian clove the skull of one reptile man, smashed another unconscious so that he fell backward across his horse's rump, and pierced the heart of the last, clearing a way for the girl who darted her a quick smile of gratitude before picking up her flame-lance and running for an open doorway.
     And then Ilian was in the square with a score of her warriors at her back and she called out jubilantly:
     'We are through!'
     Men on foot came running from every house then, those who had not taken part in the cavalry charge, and soon Ilian was surrounded again.
     And soon Ilian was laughing again, as life after life was extinguished by her sparkling sword.

As this is the second book in the Chronicles of Castle Brass series, you'll want to read the first story, Count Brass, before starting this one. You really should though...it's an amazing story.