smcleish's review
3.0
Originally published on my blog here in September 1999.
As with the other volumes in The Chronicles of Castle Brass, hardly any of The Quest for Tanelorn takes place in that location. To find his children, Dorian Hawkmoon sets out on a quest for the city of Tanelorn, which seems to be the only place where the contradictions between his memories and the world he lives in can be resolved.
Hawkmoon's quest joins up with those of other aspects of Moorcock's Eternal Champion, as they are allowed to meet up from different times and universes (two aspects of one soul, as the Champions are, are normally forbidden to meet) for the Conjunction of a Million Spheres. This marks the final, decisive confrontation between the beings who promote Chaos and those who support the Balance between Law and Chaos. (The beings who promote Law have long since been destroyed.)
The Quest for Tanelorn reads as though Moorcock, in the mid seventies, had decided to wrap up his ideas about the Eternal Champion, the Balance and so on. For a writer of Moorcock's ability, it was clearly something of a limiting restriction, and many of the books since this period have seemed freer. Combined with the immense speed with which he worked, the limited plot choices the idea enforced meant than entire novels seem just to be fillers in series ([b:The Mad God's Amulet|1062544|The Mad God's Amulet (The History of the Runestaff, #2)|Michael Moorcock|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1264867248s/1062544.jpg|496028] is an example).
Much of The Quest for Tanelorn also reads like filler, but it is in fact a necessary preparation for the final, climactic scene, designed to mark an end for the Eternal Champion. (Moorcock does go on to use the idea again, but never with the single-mindedness he shows in the early seventies.) Moorcock has some serious things to say here, more so than in most of the books relating to the Champion.
One of these is connected to the prior destruction of the beings promoting Law. ("Prior" is perhaps not a good word, as the Conjunction unites beings and events from many different periods.) Moorcock must surely be making a point about the culture in which we live; we have lost respect for the forces which bring order, and the best we can do is act to preserve the balance between Law and Chaos.
A second idea goes beyond this, for Moorcock seems to have wanted to criticise the way that we put ourselves in subjection to forces outside ourselves that promote chaos (such as rebellious teenage fashions) or law (such as many religions). No one should be single minded about these things for, Moorcock says, we have created them ourselves. I don't read this as being an endorsement of anarchy (after all, the books are about the need for a balance between Chaos and Law), but rather Moorcock is reminding us that we should think for ourselves.
As with the other volumes in The Chronicles of Castle Brass, hardly any of The Quest for Tanelorn takes place in that location. To find his children, Dorian Hawkmoon sets out on a quest for the city of Tanelorn, which seems to be the only place where the contradictions between his memories and the world he lives in can be resolved.
Hawkmoon's quest joins up with those of other aspects of Moorcock's Eternal Champion, as they are allowed to meet up from different times and universes (two aspects of one soul, as the Champions are, are normally forbidden to meet) for the Conjunction of a Million Spheres. This marks the final, decisive confrontation between the beings who promote Chaos and those who support the Balance between Law and Chaos. (The beings who promote Law have long since been destroyed.)
The Quest for Tanelorn reads as though Moorcock, in the mid seventies, had decided to wrap up his ideas about the Eternal Champion, the Balance and so on. For a writer of Moorcock's ability, it was clearly something of a limiting restriction, and many of the books since this period have seemed freer. Combined with the immense speed with which he worked, the limited plot choices the idea enforced meant than entire novels seem just to be fillers in series ([b:The Mad God's Amulet|1062544|The Mad God's Amulet (The History of the Runestaff, #2)|Michael Moorcock|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1264867248s/1062544.jpg|496028] is an example).
Much of The Quest for Tanelorn also reads like filler, but it is in fact a necessary preparation for the final, climactic scene, designed to mark an end for the Eternal Champion. (Moorcock does go on to use the idea again, but never with the single-mindedness he shows in the early seventies.) Moorcock has some serious things to say here, more so than in most of the books relating to the Champion.
One of these is connected to the prior destruction of the beings promoting Law. ("Prior" is perhaps not a good word, as the Conjunction unites beings and events from many different periods.) Moorcock must surely be making a point about the culture in which we live; we have lost respect for the forces which bring order, and the best we can do is act to preserve the balance between Law and Chaos.
A second idea goes beyond this, for Moorcock seems to have wanted to criticise the way that we put ourselves in subjection to forces outside ourselves that promote chaos (such as rebellious teenage fashions) or law (such as many religions). No one should be single minded about these things for, Moorcock says, we have created them ourselves. I don't read this as being an endorsement of anarchy (after all, the books are about the need for a balance between Chaos and Law), but rather Moorcock is reminding us that we should think for ourselves.
xterminal's review
4.0
Michael Moorcock, The Quest for Tanelorn (Berkley, 1975)
The Quest for Tanelorn ends with the words "the end of the saga of the eternal champion." A quarter-century later, of course, we know the untruth of that statement; still it's tough to read.
In this last novel of Dorian Hawkmoon and his compatriots, Hawkmoon, united with his wife, goes on the search for his children. He is pulled into a land of limbo suddenly while on a journey to Londra, there to find himself with his old friend Jhary-a-Conel, and the two of them adrift in a boat. They soon work out that they are in limbo, and have been sent there for a particular purpose...
Readers of the Eternal Champion novels will no doubt remember Hawkmoon popping up in various places throughout where he doesn't seem to have ever gone before in the series dedicated to him. Well, here it all is; the battle with Agak and Gagak (and what happens afterwards, when whichever manifestation of the Champion the series in question revolves around leaves Hawkmoon and his coterie in the ruins), the boat on the seas of limbo and its odd, blind crew; the whole mess. (One point, for those who have read the Elric series; how the Runestaff itself ends up in the tower of Voilodion Gaghnasdiak is never explained.)
All in all, the series draws to a satisfying conclusion, with the events coming in the most logical time flow they ever do in the eternal champion novels, and with the final mystery of the deaths of the gods, presented at the end of the first Corum trilogy, solved. Everyone (well almost everyone) who has survived ends up happy, and all is right with the Universe. Or so we think. ****
The Quest for Tanelorn ends with the words "the end of the saga of the eternal champion." A quarter-century later, of course, we know the untruth of that statement; still it's tough to read.
In this last novel of Dorian Hawkmoon and his compatriots, Hawkmoon, united with his wife, goes on the search for his children. He is pulled into a land of limbo suddenly while on a journey to Londra, there to find himself with his old friend Jhary-a-Conel, and the two of them adrift in a boat. They soon work out that they are in limbo, and have been sent there for a particular purpose...
Readers of the Eternal Champion novels will no doubt remember Hawkmoon popping up in various places throughout where he doesn't seem to have ever gone before in the series dedicated to him. Well, here it all is; the battle with Agak and Gagak (and what happens afterwards, when whichever manifestation of the Champion the series in question revolves around leaves Hawkmoon and his coterie in the ruins), the boat on the seas of limbo and its odd, blind crew; the whole mess. (One point, for those who have read the Elric series; how the Runestaff itself ends up in the tower of Voilodion Gaghnasdiak is never explained.)
All in all, the series draws to a satisfying conclusion, with the events coming in the most logical time flow they ever do in the eternal champion novels, and with the final mystery of the deaths of the gods, presented at the end of the first Corum trilogy, solved. Everyone (well almost everyone) who has survived ends up happy, and all is right with the Universe. Or so we think. ****
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