![]() Elric has continued to travel the Young Kingdom, although now as a wandering hermit rather than as an Emperor in search of wisdom. "While the Gods Laugh" is set a further year into the future. While Moorcock’s ability to create interesting creatures and landscapes shines, Imrryr is only painted with a few quick strokes and pales in comparison to many of the famed cities of fantasy, most notably Fritz Leiber’s “Lankhmar.” While the Imrryr seen in Elric of Melniboné seems a more fully realized city, the city destroyed in "The Dreaming City," seems strangely vacant and undeveloped. Although his treasonous acts against his people demonstrate his callousness, it is seen most clearly in the way he leaves Smiorgan to his fate. His one demand of the raiders as they destroy the city and rape and murder his erstwhile subjects, is that Yyrkoon and Cymoril be left unmolested to allow him to deal with them. Apparently Yyrkoon’s usurpation of his throne coupled with Elric’s own travels throughout the Young Kingdoms as decribed (slightly) in The Fortress of the Pearl and The Sailor on the Seas of Fate have led Elric to decide that the time has come for Melniboné to no longer exist. The story focuses on Elric leading a band of raiders from the Young Kingdoms against his kingdom, Melniboné with the eye to destroying it. Given the enormous role Cymoril and Yyrkoon play in Elric’s legend, it is difficult to remember they only appear in two of the stories. ![]() When read in the order collected in books, it includes characters previously seen, including a maddened and gibbering Yyrkoon, much less intriguing that the schemer he was in Elric of Melniboné, a Cymoril who spends most of her time asleep under an enchantment, and, despite Elric’s professed love for her, is merely one in a long line of mistreated and un-developed female characters, and Smiorgan Baldhead of the Purple Towns. The book continues with "The Dreaming City," which was first published in 1961 and introduced Elric and his world. It serves as a prologue to the book, however the following stories don’t flow from Aubec’s adventure, refer back to it, or even take place in the part of the Young Kingdoms where Aubec adventures. Aubec is also to give a view of the Chaos that reigns over the edge of the world in a manner which is never really shown through Elric’s eyes or visions.Īlthough Elric was described as using Aubec’s sword prior to his own acquisition of Stormbringer, and the clear tie Aubec has to the Young Kingdoms, the story seems out of place as the opening of The Weird of the White Wolf. Aubec is on a mission for his queen, Eloarde, to capture the Castle Kaneloon and expand her realm to the edge of the world. The story offers insight into the world as seen from the point of view of a human, rather than a Melnibonéan. ![]() Michael Moorcock’s The Weird of the White Wolf opens with "The Dream of Earl Aubec," a story set hundreds of years before Elric’s birth, a recounting of the legend of Earl Aubec of Malador, who is referred to earlier in the Elric cycle and whose sword was wielded by Elric prior to his acquisition of Stormbringer. THE WEIRD ON THE WHITE WOLF by Michael Moorcock DAW Books 978-0-87997-285-8 160pp/$1.25/December 1977 ![]()
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