Gloriana [Hardcover]

Michael Moorcock (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 355 pages
• Publisher: SFBC; SFBC 50th Anniversary edition (2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 073945191X
• ISBN-13: 978-0739451915
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,463,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in London in 1939, Michael Moorcock now lives in Texas. A prolific and award-winning writer with more than eighty works of fiction and non-fiction to his name, he is the creator of Elric, Jerry Cornelius and Colonel Pyat, amongst many other memorable characters.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb writing and characterisation only matched by Peake, December 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Gloriana, Or the Unfulfill'd Queen (Paperback)

The cleverness of this book takes my breath away. No wonder it won the World Fantasy Award and no wonder Peter Ackroyd, among others, picked it as his Book of the Year (and seems to be dipping into it ever since!). As a student of Elizabethan, Jacobean and Carolignian literature, I am highly impressed both by the underlying philosophical argument (very late Renaissance) and the prose, which is more Carolignian than Elizabethan. Moorcock specifically says that while the book has some direct reference to Spenser's The Fairy Queen, it has none to Elizabethan England. What always astonishes me is how readers who don't read widely seem to know exactly why a book is bad! This is very much a book for grown-ups and I suppose it wouldn't appeal to bigots, but it's very hard to see bigots even beginning to understand it. The main characters represent Virtue and Vice, very much in a Jonsonian mode, but the plot has a more Jacobean feel -- Captain Quire the assassin, who enjoys his work and practises it like an art, an intellectual killer with a rationale subtler than Hannibal Lector's, and Gloriana, the burdened symbol of her Empire, the embodiment of all her nation regards as virtuous, yet unable to enjoy an organism and devoting all her free time to that quest, desperately seeking it in sensation, because she cannot trust herself to love. The book falls into four parts, following the seasons, very much a late Renaissance idea, and contains parodies of public poetry. The range of other characters, both comical and sinister, is brilliant. And so are the scenes -- the dance on the ice, the great masque, the hunt -- a major set piece for each season. Platonicism instead of Christianity. This is a well-considered and profoundly knowledgeable book, like most of Moorcock's ambitious fiction. This follows in theme books like Behold the Man and The Brothel in Rosenstrasse -- how much of the person is the embodiment of others' desires ? How do those desires mould the destiny of the person ? This is a superb piece of literary fiction. It is foolish to list it as generic fiction at all. It deserves a demanding and literate readership.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb new edition, August 10, 2004

By 

Father Thyme (San Francisco, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gloriana (Paperback)

This new special edition not only includes BOTH of the controversial penultimate chapters but an illuminating afterword by Moorcock, AND several of the lyrics from his aborted musical version. It is the best version of a classic novel praised by the likes of Angela Carter, Peter Ackroyd, D.M. Thomas, Michael Chabon and many of the best contemporary writers and there's nothing much more I can say about it except buy this edition rather than any other. There is a Fantasy Masterworks edition done in the UK, but it isn't a patch on this, either for production or 'extras'. Far easier to get into than Peake, there are obvious relationships to Gormenghast as well as to Spenser's The Fairy Queen, The Pilgrim's Progress and other conscious allegories. It bears up well on rereading!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moorcock's richest, most surprising work!, August 23, 1998

By 

WeHaveSixFeet (Montreal, Quebec Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gloriana: Or, The unfulfill'd queen : being a romance (Hardcover)

It is England under Elizabeth as it might have been if the Gods of Chaos still lurked in the walled-up secret corridors abandoned since mad, incestuous, violent Henry VIII was o'erthrown. In a palace in whose walled-in corridors lurk madmen and shadows, the frigid Queen seeks satisfaction, and a man who regards assassination as an art form seeks fulfillment. Moorcock's most surprising, rich and intense work, far beyond Elric and Corum.