For the past three years or so I have made a bit of a hobby of picking up Michael Moorcock books from second-hand shops – given how prolific the great man has been, you’re never likely to go long before something new turns up – and I’ve managed to acquire quite a respectable collection simply on this basis. Until recently, the only Moorcock books I’d bought brand new were Stormbringer and The Coming of the Terraphiles.
The downside to this approach is basically being at the mercy of the fates (or, if you prefer, the machinations of the Cosmic Balance) in terms of what books actually materialise. As a result I ended up with bits and pieces from several of Moorcock’s series and – most irksomely – the first and third volumes of The Dancers at the End of Time but not the middle one.
Nevertheless, I would have been happy to plough on in this vein, but then Orion-Gollancz had to go and start releasing what they’re calling the Michael Moorcock Collection – the vast majority of Moorcock’s fantasy output, generally spruced up and assembled into cheerful new volumes. Here, then, is the chance to enjoy the entirety of the Corum series without haunting every charity shop and second-hand bookstore in southern England; here is the opportunity to pick up the complete Elric without having to worry about accidentally buying the same stories twice. Needless to say, I am supporting this new venture with enthusiasm.
The first volume I got stuck into was Hawkmoon: The History of the Runestaff, simply because I read two of the four books collected in it a couple of years ago and found them to be amongst Moorcock’s most vivid and curious early work. The setting is a heavily fantasy-flavoured post-apocalyptic Earth – some of the nations, such as France and – ahem – Germania have virtually retained their original names, others, like Amarekh and Asiacommunista, have altered theirs somewhat.
The villains of the piece are the lords of the Dark Empire of Granbretan (= Great Britain), depraved nutters virtually to a man, ruled over by an immortal homunculus and organised by the beast masks they affect. At the start of the series they attempt to make an alliance with legendary warrior Count Brass, Lord Guardian of Kamarg (= the Camargue, in southern France), but their emissary, Meliadus, can’t keep it in his trousers where Brass’ lovely daughter is concerned and is thrown out on his ear.
Being a moustache-twirling villain, Meliadus swears vengeance, but happens to do so on the legendary Runestaff, thus setting in motion a peculiar chain of events. Meliadus chooses as his instrument of revenge captured rebel leader Dorian Hawkmoon. To cut a very long story extremely short, Count Brass rumbles Meliadus’ scheme to use Hawkmoon as his pawn, defuses the mind-eating brain-jewel implanted in Hawkmoon’s bonce, and together they set about taking on the Dark Empire and its tightening grip on Europe and Asia Minor…
Well, I have to say that once you get past the quirkiness of the setting, this first helping of Hawkmoon never quite takes flight. Most of it is very much by-the-numbers sword-and-sorcery, populated by a bunch of protagonists who are each really defined by a single character trait: Count Brass is Redoubtable, Olahdan the half-giant is Loyal, D’Averc the renegade Dark Empire noble is Ironic, the Warrior in Jet and Gold is Cryptic, and so on. Hawkmoon himself is accurately pegged by John Clute’s introduction as ‘a bit of a berk’: he’s humourless and contrary, narrow-minded and prone to surliness. He spends most of the book wandering around in search of plot-coupons, rather against his will.
Much more interesting than the various travails of Hawkmoon and his assorted sidekicks are occasional interludes at the court of the Granbretans and the depraved power-politics going on therein: these are what really give the book most of its distinctive flavour – and, to be honest, its humour. Moorcock says these books were written quickly but not cynically, and I believe him, but one inevitably detects a tongue drifting cheekward when the villain is declared to be the baron of Kroiden and the ancient gods of Granbretan are named as the fab quartet of Jhone, Jhorg, Phowl and Rhunga, with their supreme deity revealed as Aral Vilsn (it’s a 60s thing).
But this isn’t really a spoof on any level – most of the time it just reads like a Saturday morning serial with art direction by Hieronymus Bosch, the narrative being propelled along by various unlikely meetings, captures, escapes, deus ex machina rescues, and so on. One almost gets a sense of Moorcock making it up as he goes along – the early books indicate the fabled Runestaff is to be found somewhere in Asia, until it suddenly pops up somewhere in the vicinity of New York with not much explanation being given.
There are lots of things you could legitimately have a go at the Hawkmoon books over – the slenderness of the characterisation, the plot-coupon-gathering narrative, the fact that, when our heroes eventually find it, the fabled Runestaff doesn’t really do a damn thing to help them in their struggle, proving to just be a plot device to explain the implausible nature of the story (the villains complain about the outrageous good luck which contrives to keep Hawkmoon alive and kicking).
But the Dark Empire is one of the more memorable manifestations of Chaos in the Moorcock canon, and in its closing stages the story perks up a bit, as civil war breaks out amongst the bad guys. Moorcock pulls off a neat coup by presenting a major battle solely through dialogue between two onlookers, and – after four books in which Hawkmoon and his chums get into endless sword fights and are regularly described as receiving dozens of small wounds, which never really seem to hamper them much – the near-total slaughter of the supporting cast comes as a genuine surprise.
This being early Moorcock, you will look in vain for too many references to the author’s greater design – as I think I’ve said before, a lot of the pleasure of a Moorcock fantasy comes from trying to discern the resonances and connections with the rest of his work – though Hawkmoon inevitably gets referred to as a ‘Champion Eternal’ and there’s a minor character called Jehamia Cohnalias, a name overloaded with significance for the initiated (despite appearances, he doesn’t seem to be another full-blown aspect of the Eternal Champion himself, though a connection clearly exists).
This first installment of Hawkmoon is not exactly premium Moorcock, for all that it barrels along breezily and never actually drags. It has a brash, not-fully-thought-through quality in some respects – the Dark Empire is an interesting creation, but Hawkmoon spends much of his time off in much more generic locales fighting considerably less interesting bad guys. Then again, any book featuring a supervillain from Croydon, giant riding flamingos, and the legendary mutant war jaguars of Asiacommunista has clearly got imagination on its side some of the time – it’s just a shame these bizarre touches are limited to the peripheral elements and don’t really inform the central characters or plot.
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