Good Christ, Erekosë is a whiny bastard.

Lots of good ideas and weirdly incomplete. Better than The Eternal Champion technically, but I definitely preferred its themes to these, which seem to be "John Daker thinks his life sucks, and he's right." ( )

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With the benefit of 50 years of hindsight this sequel to The Eternal Champion seems to be a bit of a potboiler. On the other hand there is sufficient drama and intrigue to make it entertaining. ( )

In PHOENIX IN OBSIDIAN (aka THE SILVER WARRIORS ), the Eternal Champion, Erekose in a new guise, is called to an icy world, and a new quest.

This is the one where the Black Sword on which so much of his fate rests is introduced, a soul-sucking blade as dangerous to friend as it is to foe. And it is put to good use here, in some stirring set-piece battles and serving as a plot device to bring us all up to speed with the raising of stakes for our champion.

Once again Moorcock's eye for a visual is striking, not least right at the beginning, with our fur and mail clad hero riding a chariot drawn by polar bears -- an image that Frazetta fans, or owners of the Dell edition called THE SILVER WARRIORS in the USA, will recognize immediately.

There's a doomed race in a world under a dying sun, huge beasts engineered eons passed for strange purposes, decadent peoples, plucky salt of the earth types and, along with the sword, an early appearance of what will become a well-known and well-loved companion for our champion.

It's a short, fast, read that I blew through in a couple of hours. Again it's all blood-stirring stuff, even if Erekose is a bit of a moper between the epic battles, and it rolls along at breakneck pace for the most part, to an ending that gives Erekose a glimpse of the sort of powers he'll be dealing with in the books to follow.

Like our champion, I'm now hooked into the multiverse, and won't be able to let go until we reach Tanelorn and the conjunction of the spheres. It will be a while yet before that, but I intend to enjoy the ride.


( )

The 2nd in the Eternal Champion series. This is often referred to as the 2nd Erekose book, but it isn't. This book is entirely about Urlik Skarsol, human prince of the Southern Ice, long slumbering on an dying Earth orbiting a red dwarf sun. Erekose wakes up as Urlik, summoned by Warriors who demand his aid. Urlik longs to return to his incarnation as Erekose and his Eldren lover, though he dimly remembers that he is also John Daker. Forces conspire to force him to act in this realm, despite his determination not to take up the Black Sword and kill. As always he is a victim of his fate, yet also in control of it. ( )