In his The Dancers at the End of Time series, of which this omnibus volume presents the central trilogy of novels, Michael Moorcock— who has possibly the broadest range of works in science-fiction, swords and sorcery, historical fiction, or speculative fantasy of any contemporary writer—brings all of his considerable knowledge and talent to bear on a story line that quite literally spans the history of life in the Universe, or as Moorcock's lexicography would have it, the Multiverse. The base setting for the action of the interlinked novels is The End of Time, a version of Earth so far in the future that the remaining remnant of the human race has, by virtue of their access to the accumulated reality-altering technology of all preceding eras, "at last ceased to take itself seriously." It depicts in other words a society steeped to the brim with aesthetic decadence and imbued with the power to bring any conceivable fantasy to life. Moorcock's genius manifests itself in populating this playground of ultimate decadents with a richly varied cast of characters who allow him to explore, in both satirical and humanistic terms, what sort of society humans might develop in an environment that allows—and can manifest—absolute freedom. As his two focal characters he gives us Jherek Carnelian, the last human born of natural means, and Mrs. Amelia Underwood, a reluctant and involuntary time-traveler from the Bromley district of London and a very prim and proper contemporary of H.G. Wells. The story is essentially a masterfully woven pastiche of Victorian love story and comedy of manners, beset with all of the attendant difficulties that afflict lovers in such stories—but what raises Moorcock's opus to the realm of masterpiece is his placement of the main action of the story in a realm that is physically and morally the antithesis of Victorian ideals of duty, truth, honesty, work, and Christian faith—qualities which at the End of Time are so foreign and antiquated as to be incomprehensible to its inhabitants, who exist in a paradoxically Eden-like innocence of and freedom from malice, avarice, or jealousy, unless they are employing some shallow mimicry of those qualities to stage one of their performance art-like amusements. What drives the story, and makes it well worth pursuing through the 664 pages offered here, is the very genuine love story that develops between Jherek, the ultimate decadent and aesthete, and Mrs. Underwood, the ultimate guardian of Victorian propriety. Touching and well-wrought as Jherek's transformation from aesthetic poseur to love-stricken but courageous young man and Mrs. Underwood's transformation from emotionally and morally constricted avatar of Victorian propriety to adventurous and morally sympathetic woman may be, however, it is the cast of characters and events that surround them that makes this a book worth reading. Morcock has peopled the end of time with a cornucopia of brilliantly conceived and animated secondary characters, each brilliantly named and festooned with craftily wrought character traits and physical embellishments, as well as enough amusing subplots to make each of the three installments of the trilogy a rococo, art noveau confection of nearly infinitely detailed artifice.
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- Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2013
- Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2021
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- Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2022
- Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2016
Top reviews from other countries
- William C.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 18, 2024
Absurdist maybe, but brilliant
- Abbie Lour ObamaReviewed in the United Kingdom on November 22, 2024
Just discovered Moorcock after thirty years of people telling me to read him...
