Customer Reviews

Von Bek - omnibus of The War Hound and the World's Pain, The City in the Autumn Stars, The Dragon in the Sword and The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius (Tale of the Eternal Champion, Volume 2)

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Easily the largest of the volumes in the series thus far, Von Bek can scare off readers when compared to the much slimmer Eternal Champion that preceded it. But this hefty volume is a must for Moorcock fans or even fantasy fans in general, for it embellishes the themes and ideas that Moorcock made famous in the first book. Here are my thoughts story by story:
The War Hound and the World's Pain: Like the title. This is the story that all the other Von Bek books refer back to, so it's a welcome addition. Moorcock provides a lot of twists in this one, beginning with Lucifer wanting the Holy Grail to save the world. Hopefully most people are open minded enough to see past this potentially offensive premise and read the exhilerating tale contained within.

The City in the Autumn Stars: More philosophy than the first one and another appearance by the Prince of Darkness. This is easily the longest story in the volume and every word counts. Granted though, it does get weird in the end.

The Dragon in the Sword: I found this one interesting, only because I had assumed that the Von Beks were just further incarnations of the Eternal Champion. Apparently they aren't, as John Daker appears again to complain and eventually take charge. This one is set during World War Two, but because of the fantastic settings, you'd never realize that. Still, it's a good one and a major turning point in the life of John Daker.

The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius: Another good title, long for a short story though. This was a nice, if very odd, way to close out the volume. Hitler makes another appearance (I don't know how), and Moorcock packs a lot of strange stuff into the thirteen or so pages of the story. It is a great way to end, though, as we say goodbye to the Von Bek family, for now at least

To get the most out of this book, you should read it (especially the section _City in the Autumn Stars_) in conjunction with _The Brothel in Rosenstrasse_. _City_ and _Brothel_ run parallel to each other in certain ways. I didn't really appreciate _City_ until I reread it after reading _Brothel_. _Brothel_ is one of Moorcok's very best, I think.

Incidentally, there are also a number of purely coincidental parallels between _City in the Autumn Stars_ and David Lodge's book _Small World_.

This omnibus edition contains three very different stories. The first, The War Hound and the World's Pain, is possibly the best work of a superlatively accomplished author. Dark and foreboding, filled with scenes of horror and despair, yet still a facinating and captivating work of fantasy. Moorcock's use of Christian mythology as a backdrop for a fantasy story is an inspired stroke of genius, and the character he developed for the fallen angel Lucifer is so believable as to make you question your own ideas as to the nature of evil. The premise of the story is absolutely original, a rare thing in any genre today, but especially rare in fantasy, and Moorcock's masterful writing brings the story to life in your hands.

The second book in this omnibus, however, is as bad as the first one is good. The sequel to War Hound, City in the Autumn Stars is a drab, plodding, disappointing piece with all the excitement and suspense of a bad Victorian romance and all the flavor of plain tofu. Moorcock's uncanny flair for descriptive passages becomes a curse here, as he paints image after image of boredom and redundancy. Skip this one, friends.

The Dragon in the Sword, although featuring a character named Von Bek and a plot involving the Holy Grail, has very little connection to the other two novels. It is actually the third book of the Eternal Champion Trilogy, following the novels The Eternal Champion and Phoenix in Obsidian. As such, it is more action-oriented than either War Hound or City in the Autumn Stars, as well as being set, for the most part, in strange realms. It is an "average" Moorcock piece, that "average" being about five points higher than your everyday author; not exceptional when compared to Moorcock's work as a whole, but better than a full three-quarters of the fantasy written to date by other authors.

The Von Bek omnibus is worth the money, despite the low quality of the middle book (The Pleasure Garden of Filipe Saggitarius is a short story, well written, but little more than a few minutes' diversion). The War Hound and the World's Pain is, itself, worth the price of the whole book, and The Dragon in the Sword is icing on the cake. Recommended.

The three full-length novels contained within this volume are each so different, one from the other, that the reader cannot help but be amazed that the same author wrote all three!

In "The Warhound and the World's Pain," Moorcock's usual themes of "chaos" vs. "law" are put in more the familiar terms (at least for us earthlings) of the Devil vs. God. Like his more popular Elric character, Moorcock has his "hero" Ulrich von Bek allied with chaos--the devil. The reader is treated to watching a master of fantasy play with common themes (the hero descends into Hell, and comes out with a quest that he must fulfill in order to save all humanity) that he rearranges in order to ask some penetrating questions about the nature of God, the Devil, faith, and religion in our lives.

The second novel, "The City in the Autumn Stars," is written in a completely different style from the first. Set in Germany (mostly) in the late 1700's, the book makes many references to actual historical happenings, in particular the French and American revolutions and the Industrial Revolution. The motivating factors behind these and other events are examined in extensive dialogs between characters as well as through internal monologues of the protagonist, Manfred von Bek. Someone a little better versed in English literature than I am could place the exact style Moorcock takes up with this novel, but it reminds me of Jules Verne. The chapter headings are long ("Chapter Sixteen: In which house rules are broken. An infestation and a visitation. Vermin destroyed. The Red O'Dowd's fish. Some useful attributes of a magic sword.") And the author manages quite capably to maintain this tone throughout the entire novel. Until the end, that is, when the multiverses start to conjoin, devil worshippers take center stage, and the feeling that one is reading a conventional historical novel rapidly disappears. The ending was not quite satisfactory, but nevertheless a tour de force by Moorcock.

The third novel, "The Dragon in the Sword," is one of my favorites, and I have reviewed it separately on the Amazon site.

The volume is capped off with a very short story, "The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Saggitarius." Although the main character is nominally a von Bek, and Hitler the Holy Grail, and some other toss-away references to familiar Moorcock characters are mentioned, there is no clear reason why this story was ever written, or indeed, why it was included in this volume.

From Millenium, it is also subtitled The Tale of the Eternal Champion 1.

It contains The Warhound and the World's Pain, The City in the Autumn Stars and the Pleasure Gardens of Felipe Sagittarius.

This omnibus collection contains two Von Bek novels and ends with a short story that features yet another of the Von Bek clan. This time it is Minos Von Bek, who is a metatemporal investigator in Europe.

He comes across Adolf Hitler, and ends up supplying Eva Braun with some useful toys

Though this is the second volume of the series, the stories are probably stronger, so if you haven't read Moorcock it is a good place to start. For some mysterious reason (see his multiverse.org website) Mr Moorcock has seen fit to withdraw all his fantasy novels but the new Elric stories from circulation and these are no longer published, so I'd advise you to pick up copies while you can. Hinted is the chance of them becoming available again as single volumes sometime in the future. Meanwhile there is the Elric movie to look forward to (see universal website).
The War Hound and the World's Pain is the first Von Bek story in the book and describes a war-weary veteran of the Hundred Years War who loses his soul to the devil and is offered it back if he can help reconcile Satan and God. This has become a fairly common theme in modern fantasy, but was startling and new when it first appeared and still retains its freshness.
The City in the Autumn Stars is about another member of the Von Bek family, this time a cynic, rogue and soldier of fortune, who escapes the horrors of the French Revolution and comes to the city of Mirenburg where he falls in with another rogue, the charming balloonist St Odhran. Together they concoct a scam, which goes wrong when their balloon actually takes them to another Mirenburg, the City in the Autumn Stars, where a variety of mystical and alchemical action takes place. The ending's a little weak (apparently Moorcock reduced this book from a much longer original narrative) but the atmosphere of the city and the strangeness of the characters dominates. A very fine tale.
The Dragon in the Sword is more like a conventional fantasy adventure in which Moorcock's eternal champion is thrown into a world of warring factions and intelligent bears.
Anyone who finds these books a little like Philip Pullman would be right. They were written years before Pullman but most of the ideas in His Dark Materials can be found here, including, of course, characters who travel between different planes of existence.
The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius is a great short story which exemplifies another strand of Moorcock's extraordinary multiverse and ties in with his 'metatemporal detective' stories such as the one recently published in McSweeney's (The Case of the Nazi Canary). In this a Von Bek who is a detective investigates the murder of Bismarck and is helped by police chief, one Adolf Hitler. Some of Moorcock's most fun stories are in this kind of setting, including his Nomad of the Time Streams stories, which are a later volume in this same series.
All in all tremendous value for money and highly recommended.

I would rank War Hound and the World's Pain among Moorcock's top 5 (along with The Quest for Tanelorn, Stormbringer, The King of Swords, etc.).

The book was, alone, worth the price of the omnibus.

The atmosphere of the book, though, shows it's authorship in the 60's, and it's style of writing is also of that era. And while this is not in any way bad to me, I have run into a few who dislike all non-modern styles. For me, this was good, because it evoked feelings of my first reads of Elric and Corum, taking me back to faraway days.

This is one of the best books Moorcock wrote. I like Von Beck's stories because they're always very interesting and with a lot of suspense

Each incarnation of the Eternal Champion has an affinity for a certain object of power. The Von Beks' are mystically linked to the Holy Grail. A source of hope, and inspiration to all in a myriad world, where the Von Beks must keep it safe from the likes of Adolf Hitler, and the devil. At times, the Von Beks will not know which side is which, giving such a provocative analysis of life in an old age question.

I thought this book was extremley boring. The first part was fairly good but there was hardly any action. The only reason why I kept on reading was because I hoped it would get better, but I was disappointed. The second part was absoulutely horrible. I fell asleep twice while trying to read this section. I greatly enjoy reading Moorcock's books, especially the Elric saga, but this book was a complete let down. I think Moorcock is one of the best authors of his time and I was expecting something more entertaining.