I read this as part of Hawkmoon, the third book in the White Wolf edition of the Eternal Champion series.  You can read my reviews for the previous books here:  Book 1;  Book 2;  Book 3.

The shortest book in the series, The Runestaff pretty much just serves as a way to wrap up all the various plots and character arcs from the previous three novels.  Consequently a lot happens, but also not a lot of new stuff or particularly interesting ideas are introduced.  The lion’s share of the book is getting everyone together and ramping up the tension for the big finale.

The finale is fairly grand, with tons of action and violence.  Very, very few make it out the other side.  That said, I wasn’t really invested in a lot of the character conclusions.  Moorcock’s strength is not in his great character building, afterall.  There was an interesting writing choice, where he’d start certain bits with something to the effect of, “and this is how Important Character X died…”  Though it removes some tension, it gives things a wistful and fated vibe that is…something.

Hawkmoon is one of the more removed stories from The Eternal Champion cycle.  He doesn’t ride an airship with Elric and Corum, for example.  In fact, he only travels to one other plane of existence, if I remember right.  That’s pretty low for a Moorcock character.  Yet, there are plenty of references and thematic echoes.  One of the weirder ones that I didn’t really understand, was the child named Jehamia Cohnahlias, an obvious reference to trippy time traveling superspy Jerry Cornelius.  But why?  What did that have to do with anything?  I sure don’t know.

I think I mentioned it in previous reviews, but it’s striking how much of Games Workshop’s Warhammer setting comes from Moorcock’s Eternal Champion stories.  You can see a lot of proto-Warhammer 40,000 in these books, especially.

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