A review by ostrava
Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock

2.0

There's a shit ton of battles in this small novel. Things reached such a point of confusion to me that I literally had to google the plot because I simply lost track of what was happening! Who was who again, where did this character die again, why is this other guy still around...it could be spectacular. It could. If I cared about any of it. I understand this was written before any of the other novels, but I gave up on the storytelling long ago, and now you want me to care? There's something about a wife that needs to be rescued: why should that matter more than the Universe? I want to call that a plot device, but there's barely any plot here, so was that needed? Am I expected to care?

Here's the thing about Elric. There's an introductory novel that works quite well as a stand-alone story. You should stop reading there. Everything else is a disaster with no pay off. Except for maybe the last moments of the series where it almost feels like it remembered its true potential...at which point, it was too late. I'll give it 2 stars out of respect for its inventiveness and some appealing ideas that do show up every once in a while, but this was honestly awful.