Holy shit, I was pretty blown away by this from the get go!

Now, after all these years, I know why my Elric homies have pushed Michael Moorcock’s top character on me so damn hard.

Due to how many feel that The Witcher, among other things, have plagiarized Moorcock’s beloved Elric character and his stories, I wanted to finally check his books out after I got through the mountain of Robert E. Howard collections that I worked through over the past year.

However, let’s be honest, Elric, as a character, also isn’t wholly original and all sword and sorcery tales really owe their existence to Robert E. Howard’s work, specifically his character Conan, and even more so, his character Kull, which served as a template for what the more popular Conan would become.

All I really care about, though, is whether or not a story is good and entertaining and the first Elric novel definitely is.

Elric of Melniboné starts off with a bang and by the end of the first act, I found myself glued to the book and ended up reading it in under 24 hours. Although, I also love the novella size, as this was under 200 pages, was fast-paced and flew by. This also solidified my desire to make my upcoming sword and sorcery story in the same format, making more of a quick, fast-paced pulp novella than some epic, over-bloated brick like a Game of Thrones book.

One thing that really struck me with this book was Moorcock’s prose. He just writes things in such and interesting and fresh way, compared to all the other fantasy books I’ve read over the years.

All in all, this series is off to a great start and I look forward to reading the other five original novels.

Rating: 9/10