Elric of Melniboné

WHAT
A short fantasy story closer to a poem than a novel. Albino, purple-eyed, blood-weakened by birth, sorcerer, warrior, Emperor Elric, sets himself apart from the society he rules by virtue of his conscience even more than his physical features. It's a beautiful but coarse and unfulfilling tale that almost reach the quality of Howard's Conan.

TLDR
- thinly developed protagonist
- plot annoyance: “Fooled me once, fooled me twice, fooled me three times?”
- begging based magic with not explored consequences
- powerful sorcerer with no real magic
- moral character that makes no use of morality
- intelligent character that makes no (much) use of his mind
+ beautiful, fast paced prose.
+ the fantasy is here: ancient realms, demon race, magic, dragons, planes.

PLOT
Melniboné's power is decaying after a ten thousand year rule over the world, and its last emperor must find a way to bring back the old days of might and magic. But as his treacherous cousin plots to take over his throne, Elric is forced to pledge his loyalty to an ancient demon whose motivations are unknown. Have Elric started the downfall he was trying to prevent?

SUMMARY (spoilish)

The island of Melniboné in an ancient land of untold riches, powerful magic and mighty dragons. For ten thousand years the royal bloodline ruled over the entire world with an iron fist, granting them the title of demons.

Elric is the last emperor of this bloodline. He is a sorcerer, a warrior and a scholar. Born with a disease that makes him physically weak, he spent most of his youth in the library.

His albino coloration and purple eyes are not the only features that distinguish him from the rest of his kind. Melniboné is an amoral society, where torture and murder can be expected for prisoners, and a slave can suffer the same fate with no fear of consequences for his master.

The Melniboneans rule the world no longer. The supernatural entities that granted them magical abilities have been less present and more reluctant to attend their calls. They're dream inducing drugs have made them more inward and unconcerned with reality, contributing to the decaying power of the empire.

While Elric tries to think of a way to restore that power, his cousin Yyrkoon threatens to take his throne. His lack of morals resemble closer to a true Melnibonean, and he is constantly attacking Elric with words and veiled threats.

When a human fleet of ships attack the capital city of Imrryr, Yyrkoon takes the opportunity to slay Elric amidst the battle. He succeeds, but an unexpected aid from the Lord of the Water Elementals comes to the rescue of the albino emperor. As punishment, he sentences his cousin to a grim fate, one which he manages to escape through the use of sorcery. During his flight he also manages to kidnap his own sister, Cymeril, Elric's beloved.

Elric then spend all of his efforts to find them. After months of failure, he tries to summon the most powerful demon that has ever pledged to help the emperors of Melniboné in times past, Arioch. The demon agrees to help him at the cost of his servitude.

Further aided by the lord of the water elementals, and then hindered by his brother, the Lord of the Earth Elementals, Elric manages to find his cousin. In the course of a couple of months Yyrkoon has taken over a city and its armies, and set up a protective magical mirror, that makes anyone that gazes at it forget who they are, making them susceptible to being mind washed.

Through cunning, Elric destroys the mirror, but the battle cost most of his army. Yyrkoon escapes to another dimension but Arioch helps Elric to follow. His condition is that he must bring back the long lost soul blades, banned from this plane by Elric ancestrals.

When Elric finally finds his cousin, each takes hold of one of the swords and fight each other. Elric wins, but refuses to kill his cousin, fearing he is being manipulated into doing so.

Back at Imrryr, Elric renounces his crown, claiming he needs to find elsewhere for the knowledge he needs to save his people. He ventures into the Young Kingdoms, the land of the humans, leaving his cousin to rule in his place.


ANALYSIS
The length of this novel puts it in the short story category when considering the criteria for evaluation. The story overall is less detailed: characters are more shallow, the setting is briefly mentioned, motivations are told not shown more often.

Even with that in mind, I found the protagonist to be too coarse described to be invested on him. I don't know if I liked Conan better because I already knew him, but the author basically described Elric as “an intelligent and ethical warrior and sorcerer” in a few sentences, and then you're expected to have that in mind whenever he does something.

So he is troubled by torturing prisoners? Well, I said previously he was questioning his moral values. He defeated one of the best swordsman in the empire in a fair fight? I did say he was a fine warrior as well.

It is a bit of the show don't tell I guess, there is clearly something in his writing style that made me not connect with the character, in a way that Howard and Asimov have been able to do within the same amount of space. Salvatore's Drizzt, which was inspired by Elric, has a way more fleshed out personality.

I was deeply annoyed by one annoying plot element (trope?). Yyrkoon is openly hostile to Elric, he pretty much says that in the first opportunity he gets, he will stab him in the back. Elric ignores him, claiming “I'm stronger than him, I'm not worried”. And then Yyrkoon attacks Elric and leave him for dead. That's strike 1 for me.By a miracle (quite literally divine intervention) he survives, and again has the chance to deal with his cousin. He decides to exile him. Strike 2. That already is bad enough, but even before he was exiled, he manages to escape, proving once again to be powerful and traitorous.Elric then sells his soul and his empire in order to get revenge. This is an opening for future stories, as nothing comes of this in this book. If this happens to be the cause of Melniboné's downfall, It will definitely make me hate this saga. When finally he finds him again, he decides to let him live. "He knows now I'm more powerful". If Yyrkoon betrays him again, that will be strike 3.

I was not impressed with the magic in the book. So, every single spell is granted to the sorcerers through begging. They can choose between the lords of Order and Chaos, or the neutral Elementals. This is not developed well enough. “Oh please Arioch, strike down my enemy and I will do whatever you ask.” “Oh great and mighty demon, light me this torch and I'm forever yours.”

Not only is this upsetting, as I was expecting a sorcerer to actually have some power himself, but the interesting possibilities of consequences are not explored. The only time Elric sees a price for his requests is when he is forced to wield the world's most strong artifact in exchange for having to control its thirst for blood. Which he does, so, it felt like a good bargain. Also, Elric never uses his supposedly superior intellect acquired reading books when others were busy “being evil”. He is always pleading for a supernatural intervention.

On the topic of Elric's personality, there is not much here. We are told he is trying to develop a moral conscience, but he doesn't show that too much. He says he didn't kill Yyrkoon because he was not afraid of him (bad plot) and then because he was going to exile him (bad plot) and then because he had no reason to fear him. Where is the morality here? The only thing that shows is Elric brooding over his existence, embracing death at every turn.

Still, there is something about this book that makes me like it, enough to continue reading the others. This series is cited by many authors as being good fantasy, and indeed the elements of a great fantasy novel are here: (sleeping) dragons, magic artifacts, pacts with demons, ancient (soon to be forgotten, hehe) realms, inter-plane travel and soul drinking berserker swords.The prose is beautiful and there is an epic feel to the story, as Elric is portrayed as either the savior or the doom bringer of his civilization. And for all the negative points I mentioned here, my overall complain is that the interesting aspects are too lightly explored. This is a D&D reference

It would be really easy to dismiss Elric as tropey pulp fantasy. I mean, it absolutely IS that. But this is a character that first appeared in 1961 and a book that only came together in the early 70s. If anything D&D owes more to Moorcock than even Tolkien.

This is why when Elric is doing some his most stupid emo-princelinging, it helps to remember that pretty much everyone from Drizzt to Lotar and even Kylo Ren can trace their creative lineage back to the original mopey prince of pulp.