Apparently, Michael Moorcock wrote the original version of this story when he was seventeen years old.  He has since updated and rewritten it several times.  I don’t know how much has changed, but I assume quite a bit.  While you see certain plot elements that will be familiar if you’ve read other works from the author, there are some specific things that feel like they came later, in order to more properly link his works into a greater mythology.

Erekosë is an unusual incarnation of the Eternal Champion, as from moment one, he seems at least somewhat aware of his greater self and greater reality.  He dreams of himself in the guise and name of his other incarnations.

There are certainly troubling traits in this incarnation.  Every version of the Eternal Champion is flawed in some way, some more than others.  Certainly Elric, with his dreadful and inexorable doom, comes to mind.  Yet, somehow Erekosë is so much worse.  His passive, dispassionate willingness to commit atrocity is disturbing.  He knows things are wrong, and yet, when told to do horrible things, he does so, often with little more than the most feeble of resistance.  I am reminded of the fatalism of a Samurai or perhaps a Taoist, but in the extreme.  Unwilling to push back, to stand against great forces, choosing instead to bend and allow the crushing waves to pass over, to be a part of the onrushing water of genocide.  Is he but a tool in the hand of some greater force?  Perhaps that is the true nature of the Eternal Champion.  Perhaps, ultimately, he is but a weapon, and in this corner of the Multiverse, his has been used to cut out a cancer.  It’s all pretty grim and dark stuff.

I think I remember Erekosë showing up in one of the Hawkmoon stories.  I wonder what his future in these stories will be.  As he is so aware of his other selves, he could make for an interesting guide.  But the fact that I think I’ve only noticed him show up in one other Moorcock book makes me think he doesn’t do so often.  His story feels largely finished by the end of this novel, though with the possibility of more.

It’s hard sometimes to judge Moorcock’s work.  Because he often wrote stuff so quickly, and he has repeatedly revisited his stories to rewrite and reorganize them, I often have to look at a novel both by itself, and how it relates to the others I’ve read, knowing I have read only a fraction of his work.  This one was interesting from a Multiverse lore standpoint, but not especially captivating.  The biggest question is never answered.  Why is Erekosë aware of other versions of himself and of the Multiverse as a whole?  

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