The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock

 

I’ve never read this before, or indeed any Michael Moorcock novel other than the two I’ve already blogged. This is a much earlier novel, much less tied to real human history and mythology, and so a very different experience, despite the obvious shared links with Moorcock’s Multiverse, which I am now infinitesimally closer to understanding.

It’s a highly satisfying read, both philosophical and full of unexpected yet entirely logical twists and surprises as what is, on the surface, a very simple narrative deals with heave themes of the ethics of war, the darkness of human nature and its propensity for atrocities, and a devastatingly bleak view of racism and ethnic conflict. 

And yet, I confess, I found the opening chapters difficult. The idea of John Daker somehow having multiple existences in multiple realities and being cursed with that knowledge is fascinating, but it serves as texture rather than as the focus of the plot. We begin with Erekose exploring an unfamiliar Earth with continents and cities unknown to us, at a time in history (past or future?) which is equally unknown. Despite the subtle prose and characterisation this presents Gigi unties for the reader, yet the novel soon settles down and hooks the reader with its prose and characterisation.

The ending is extremely satisfying-and leaves all sorts of questions which will, I’m sure, be echoed in other novels. Is this our Earth, or another Earth of the Eldren, colonised by humans in the far future? Or is history just cyclical? Regardless, this novel is fascinating.