Michael Moorcock's "Elric: The Fortress of the Pearl"

Michael Moorcock's "Elric: The Fortress of the Pearl" opens with a promising premise. Moorcock places interesting constraints on Elric, including that he's tricked into drinking a powerfully addictive elixir that, in effect, makes him a slave to an evil aspiring politician named Lord Gho. Also, I found the initial setting of book, Quarzhasaat, extremely compelling: It's a once-prosperous city now devouring itself from within to maintain the superficial trappings of wealth.

Unfortunately, the novel falls apart in its second and third acts. As Elric navigates the seven layers of the so-called Dream Realm, the story feels monotonous, like Moorcock is throwing obstacles at Elric just for the sake of prolonging the conclusion. The characters are flat, the dialogue stilted. This feels like a second draft in need of several more rounds of revision.

One thing I did like about the novel was its elevation of female characters to major players in the story -- heroic figures with ambitions beyond just being supportive of Elric. This is a step forward from the previous novel (chronologically) in the series, the otherwise flawless "Elric of Melniboné," which had one major female character who was a stereotypical damsel-in-distress.

Despite my negative review of "Fortress of the Pearl," I still plan to continue on in the Elric series, because I've heard such great things about it. I'm reading the Gollancz editions in chronological order, so the next book on my Elric list is "The Sailor on the Seas of Fate."

The best paragraph (p. 29):

"Indeed." Elric realised that so thoroughly had Quarzhasaat explained away her defeat and provided herself with a reason for taking no action, she had consigned his entire people to oblivion in her legends. He could not therefore be a Melnibonéan, for Melniboné no longer existed. On that score, at least, he could know some peace of mind. Moreover, so uninterested were these people in the rest of the world and its denizens that Lord Gho Fhaazi had no further curiosity about him. The Quarzhasaatim had decided who and what Elric was and were satisfied. The albino reflected on the power of the human mind to build a fantasy and then defend it with complete determination as reality.