Friday, March 25, 2011

Hawkmoon

Last week I read the Hawkmoon book The Mad God's Amulet, by Michael Moorcock.  The book itself is very nice, particularly considering that I got it brand new as part of a library sale, and it cost me some fraction of $5. (paper grocery sack of books for $5)  That is unfortunately about all of the nice things I can say about it.  Set in some sort of post apocalyptic future, the dashing Hawkmoon is on the run from an evil empire, gets a McGuffin, saves his future bride, and then saves the day.  It had some of the flavor of a chivalry tale written for kids, but with far more blood and guts. Also, the mixture of super science technology and neo-feudal technology was odd, to say the least. If this is representative of the rest of the series, I really have no interest in tracking down the rest.  I suspect I lost something by reading this book, which is in the middle of the series rather than starting at the beginning, but again, do not have much interest in looking further.

On the plus side, it did have an interesting feel to it, and you could see how it influenced D&D.  Mad wizards, ancient cities out of phase with reality, technological artifacts, gratuitous plate harness, etc.

Now I am reading through the three most recent White Dwarf Magazines, which had accumulated unread on my nightstand.  My wife and I generally page through them together, looking at the pretty pictures, and then I read them later. Following that, I have Swords' Masters to read, which I am looking forward to.

I have also been working on my list of subjects for the A-Z blogging challenge.  I have pretty much selected all of the subjects, but some of the letters are more difficult than others (Q,XYZ for instance).  Plenty of content coming in the future.

2 comments:

ZeroTwentythree said...

Moorcock is really hit & miss. I really like some of his books, but others... not so much. I never finished the first Hawkmoon series. The second series (Chronicles of Count Brass) was better. The same goes for a number of his characters. I didn't care for the first Corum series, for example, but the second was good. I guess I consider his best writing was at mid-career. I'm not as fond of the early or more recent books.

Lasgunpacker said...

I enjoyed the "Warlord of Time" books when I read them, but it has been a while now. Everyone talks about how great the Elric stuff is, but I have not read it yet.