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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best, September 3, 2001
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.
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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
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 ?
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great follow-up to the first book !, July 26, 2004
Let me start by saying that I read the 1976 DAW version of this novel. The Sailor on The Seas of Fate begins with our hero Elric escaping from one of the nations of the Young Kingdoms which took him captive between books 1 and 2. He finally loses his pursuers on a lonely unknown beach. Hungry and cold Elric encounters a strange ship with a blind captain and a crew made up of several of the Eternal Champions. Once aboard, Elric begins a long journey through an alternate world where the boarder between dream and reality becomes blurred. The book is really one story told through 3 separate adventures.
During these adventures, Elric makes new friends, fights powerful supernatural creatures and does his usual summoning of demons and elementals. As usual in the Elric novels the line between good and evil is not clear, nor should it be since Elric's world is based around the conflict between Chaos and Order. Because of this good and evil somtimes share the same host. Elric learns more about the strange black sword Stormbringer and how it's lust for blood has the power to influence his relationships.
This book has the same crisp clean writing style of other Moorcock books. Moorcock's writing style is straight forward and to the point. No wasted dialogue or breathy descriptions. Some people don't like Moorcock because or his tendency to be brief and to the point. I however love this style of writing. Moorcock is a master of the english language and as a result his text and dialogue have a medieval flavor while at the same time being very easy for the reader to understand. Of course at the center of any Moorcock novel is his incredible imagination and his ability to keep you turning the page.
I must confess that I am a major Elric and Moorcock fan. His work moves me in a way Tolkien never has. I recommend this book to all fans of good literature and Fantasy. Now i'm off to read Wierd of the White Wolf !
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