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Fabulous Harbors
Michael Moorcock
Avon Books. $24.00
(trade $12.00)
Fabulous Harbors collects nine previously published stories by Michael Moorcock. As usual for this author, they are loosely tied to each other and everything else he has ever written: tales of Elric, Jerry Cornelius, the various von Beks, and the extensive and ubiquitous Begg family. The idea that frames this collection is a weekend party, a comfortable get-together of old friends, and these are the stories with which they entertain each other.Moorcock has a dry, detached tone often reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, or Lord Dunsany. This narrative style sometimes drags in his longer works, but is peculiarly suited to his short fiction, especially pieces set earlier in this century. "The White Pirate" comes to mind, or a pair of Sexton Begg's adventures á la Sherlock Holmes ("Crimson Eyes" and "The Affair of the Seven Virgins"). Which is not to say that Moorcock limits himself to period pieces. Fabulous Harbors also has a contemporary urban fantasy in "The Birds of the Moon"; Elric of Melniboné blundering along in typical, willful ignorance in "The Black Blade's Summoning"; and something close to cyberpunk with "The Enigma Windows."
Fabulous Harbors is supposed to serve as a bridge between Moorcock's novel Blood: A Southern Fantasy and the forthcoming War Amongst the Angels.
Blood: A Southern Fantasy. William Morrow and Company, 1995.
Fabulous Harbors. Avon Books, 1997.
War Amongst the Angels. Avon Books, 1997
This review copyright 1998 by Wendy Morris.
Information last updated March 22, 1998
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