The Sailor of the Seas of Fate (Elric Series) [Paperback]

Michael Moorcock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 12, 1989 | Series: Elric Series

Forced to flee his city of Melnibone, Elric and his sorcerous blade Stormbringer journey through barren hills to the edge of a black sea. Elric finds a dark ship and begins a voyage that will bring him face-to-face with all the champions Time can summon--and more. Reissue.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (April 12, 1989)
• ISBN-10: 0586208771
• ISBN-13: 978-0586208779
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #998,033 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

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best, September 3, 2001

By 

Ben Cooley (Chandler, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sailor on the Seas of Fate 2 (Elric Saga) (Book 2) (Paperback)

If you read the rest of the reviews on this page, you may come away with the impression that this book is not very good. This could hardly be further from the truth. The Elric series is not your standard "Here's the plot, here's the hero, here's the bad guy, now lets get busy" story. Elric is a swords and sorcery saga based on earlier pulp novels. These stories are more concerned with action, characterization, and wonder than they are about plodding through miles of dialogue and slowly creeping through many wonderous lands (lands which veteran fantasy readers have all seen many times before). Elric is concise, the stories are almost poetically direct, and the world in which this character lives is more imaginative and suprising than any ten "McFantasy" novels. It's weakness (if it is a weakness) is that the stories are all far too short, leaving you wanting more.

Sailor on the Seas of Fate expands on the poetry of the Elric story with its dreamlike quest to save an ephemeral Tanelorn threatened by two strange beings. The story evokes a dramatic and ghostlike feel, and segues into the next story with a dramatic voyage over a ghastly sea foreshadowing the events in the later Elric books. Each of the subsequent stories only adds to the spectral nature of the world in which Elric exists.

This particular book is my favorite of the Elric Saga, and I heartily recommend it to any true fan of fantasy.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not an escape route, October 31, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sailor on the Seas of Fate 2 (Elric Saga) (Book 2) (Paperback)

Moorcock wrote in one of his books about how his fantasy novels were intended to confront various personal and human problems, not escape from them. So many of the recent reviews of Elric stories are from people who seem to think they 'fail' by not having the same intentions as fat fantasy escapes. Like Peake and to some extent T.H.White, they are the very opposite of that kind of fiction. They deal with real life, real tragedy, real human concerns. There is almost a division between fantasy readers who use Tolkien as their bench-mark and those who prefer a more literary, symbolic fantasy which concerns itself with the stuff of mythology -- monumental events stemming from the weaknesses of human passion. That's what Moorcock gives you every time. But it's closer, in some ways, to what the mainstream literary novel offers and that is why Moorcock only offers comfort when he's confronted the harsh realities of our lives. Perhaps this is why there is such an aggressive response to his material ?

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a bad story, more creative than the first., October 24, 2000

By 

Steffan Ziegler "i_hate_emoticons" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sailor on the Seas of Fate 2 (Elric Saga) (Book 2) (Paperback)

I gave the first book of this series three stars for it's promise. Mainly, it got my reading, and it made me want to read on. I had my problems with the story, and I almost didn't continue.

I'm giving this book three stars on it's own merits. I feel that this tale with it's unusual displacement in time and space, is realy going somewhere different in the realm of Fantasy. Elric is rescued by an mysterious ship and paired with different aspects of himself, (although he does not realize this...) and transported to a limbo, to fight a couple of otherwordly foes while attempting to escape. In a certain sense, his foes are also echoes or aspects of himself, and for once Moorcock trusts his reader to discover this, rather than insulting him/her by revealing too much too soon. (A failing of Moorcock, IMHO.) Naturally, Elric has no motivation for this, Limbo is as good as anywhere to him. (I think the idea of "motivating" Elric is Moorcock's greatest challenge, and one that he never really rises to. He's hemmed himself in, wishing to create a dispassionate Non-hero (I can't really say "Anti-Hero," because Elric's NOT an Anti-Hero. Thomas Covenant is an Anti-Hero.) In any case, a hero who is neutral ... or perhaps chaotic neutral. One that cares little about his actions, and yet Moorcock is continually chained to the problem of resolving why Elric would WANT to do anything at all. So Moorcock conveniently dismisses motivation as "Destiny" or fate. He does things because he's no choice. It was Moorcock's only way out, but I think he should have thought a little bit longer about the problem. He'd have a MUCH better story.)

Anyhow, I don't find this to be such a problem here. This tale shows much more mature writing than the earlier work, and in hindsight, than the later ones as well. (It could have been written later and inserted.) Moorcock deviates from his normal course to indulge in this distraction of time shift and displacement. He finds a way to use this device to illustrate the idea that we ourselves are our best true friend and our worst true enemy. A mature and thoughtful concept that is faced and handled well, with Elric eventually triumphing with effort, and defeating his enemies, and advancing out into the world without learning anything at all or observing the lessons that the reader has leaned. This is a fitting end to the tale, and one that carries over into the rest of Elric's trials, such as they are.