First of all, this is for the hardcover used like new copy I just got. I can tell it was either never read, or was well cared for. I really wanted a hard cover, as my old paperback of this omnibus from the early millennium is aging, falling apart, dog eared and smells of cigarettes from the time my whole family and I smoked. I long for a Digital copy or audible copy so I can have it read to me while I work, but alas, this will have to do. So kudos to whomever it was that supplied this used copy!
Now on to briefly review the book:
Everyone always talks about Elric. But when I was 13 and read Warhound and the worlds pain, it was my first Moorcock story. And I never even considered the genre of Dark Fantasy or Dark Heros before this book, but fell in love almost immediately. I remember devouring the book in under a week, finishing it while my father drove me home from a hunting trip trying to read it in intermittent light of streetlights as we drove home in the dark.
This review is mainly for that first book in the omnibus, which was my real reason for purchasing this.
Ulrich (the main protagonist of the first book) is basically a German Elric in almost every meaningful way, which is fine, the eternal Champion is meant to be basically a reincarnated being and so they will all be very similar. The other books in the omnibus didn't really capture my imagination like the Warhound and the Worlds pain.
Ulrich is a fallen being, a former idealist, turned rational skeptical realist, a veritable sword and pistol era mad max set adrift in the European apocalypse of the 30 years war with a powerful warhorse instead of a black interceptor muscle car. The book pulls no punches, and early on sets a magnificent tone by illustrating the setting and horrors of the age. Demonstrating Ulrich's wartorn world and his own traumatized fallen warrior mentality. All morality, all ethics, all things that make him human are gone, or repressed, he must kill, rape, and steal, and for what? Just to live? Nihilism is his unspoken motto. He is a cold self-oriented killer, the young idealist long since dead.
This is what makes him the perfect ally of a repentant envisioning of Satan, and his quest for the holy grail. Satan wants Ulrich to go on a grail quest for the most unlikely of reasons, making him one of the darkest heroes serving the blackest savior one can fathom. The rest of the long satisfying book reads like an Elric novel, complete with interesting supporting characters, and tons of thought-provoking philosophical conversations. One could even argue that Moorcock is using the conventions of this adventure to create spaces for metaphysical and philosophical dialogues between archetypal characters and their different views. The swashbuckling action and fantastic gothic adventures are no less impressive and well written and For a person like me, that is a potent elixir. A work worthy of a philosophical warrior.
The story today might not seem all that revolutionary, but for its time, and in the mind of a 13-year-old Christian in the early 90s, it was downright profane, and thus scandalously provocative and inspiring. I have since become a Luciferian, and have little doubt that the questions and ideas of this book had at least some small influence on that. Opening my eyes to the possibility that he dogma of the church was not absolute.
Now I am in my 40s and this book still does the trick. The first chapters are utterly captivating, the way Moorcock lays the foundation of the story amidst the 30 years war, the terrible horrors of religiosity, and war in the name of a self-righteous church following a god that should loathe such insantity. Most memorable to me is the first 1/3rd of the book, especially the chapters within the castle and The surreal "Dantes inferno" style meeting Ulrich has with Lucifer. It has a distinct Interview with the Vampire quality to it somehow at least thematically.
One could even argue that this is Moorcocks version of Dantes inferno and Paradiso. And I would agree that is possible.
The quest itself is good solid through and through. Focused on the gothic themes of the era. Filled with witch hunters, relics and remembrances of prior classical history, and plenty of supernatural happenings to really drive home the dark fantasy motif. the way the middle marches connect different parts of the world through alternative dimensional planes, not unlike mundane earth, but where the supernatural is common was rather brilliant. Allowing for a mix of mundane and fantastical that really worked well.
I will say though that I find myself remembering the first 3rd of the book with more intense fondness and remembrance than the rest of it. The conclusion is satisfying as well.
But it is, through and through, an eternal champion story and a hidden gem, underrated in my opinion, and set the stage for me to eventually discover the Elric stories and the rest of the Eternal champion books and fall in love with this concept and Moorcocks writing. In a way, I think I will always love Warhound and the Worlds pain best of all. Elric is a bit more over the top and larger than life, and the world too fantastical and high concept fantasy. Ulrich is somehow more relatable, more achievable, and the story more believable, despite how fantastical it is.
Sometimes even to this day, I will be hiking in the forest, and a fog might rise up. And as I explore the gloomy dark woods, with the animals falling silent, I feel as if when I turn a corner in the trail I will happen upon a clearing with a foreboding castle, or find myself in one of the middle marches, and come across a village that time and god forgot.
Do ye the Devils work? I do.
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