The War Hound and the World’s Pain by Michael Moorcock

It’s time to blog a novel not written by Roger Zelazny, I think. Eventually I will blog all sorts of authors. I may have a taste for literary science fiction and fantasy these days, but it’s all part of a balanced diet. Hopefully, within a year or two, this blog’s Novels Index will reflect the broad nature of my tastes.

So, Michael Moorcock. This is one of only two of his works I’d previously read. I first read this novel on a long flight between London and Los Angeles in 2008 or 2009, I forget in which direction. The initial meeting with Lucifer had stayed with me, as well as the idea of the Mittelmarch. But rereading it this time round it felt fresh and new, with the world, characters and subtext much richer.

 I’m aware, of course, that this is part of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion sequence, of which I know little at this point. It isn’t the first novel within this sequence which Moorcock wrote, but seems to have been retrospectively decided as a starting point, perhaps because of its historical setting within the Thirty Years War. I suspect the references to God, Lucifer, the Grail etc are Christianised versions of Moorcock’s own cosmology, but I’m sure I shall eventually see whether I’m right about that.

The novel is superb, on one level a typical quest narrative but subverting the cliches of such rather nicely, and on another a metaphor for the Enlightenment, a powerful argument for Reason over faith. The world is, indeed, better off with gods and devils leaving it alone. Von Bek is an intriguing protagonist, an amoral cynic who has commuted his share of atrocities yet who gains wisdom through both knowledge and suffering, leading a happy and long life in the end. It may well end in oblivion. But is that not so for all of us?

I’m very interested to see what other directions Moorcock takes. We shall see.