This is the last of the Eternal Champion trilogy, and a fitting ending that draws together many threads from both earlier novels, as well as the two Von Bek novels. It fleshes out Moorcock’s ideas of the Multiverse to a satisfying degree, and shows us a existence of Law forever warring against Chaos in ways which make me highly suspicious that Games Workshop, and others, have been merrily lifting concepts from Moorcock’s novels. Yet these ideas are not just cool but also have intellectual substance. As with the Von Bek novels, the idea seems to be that humanity needs to grow out of gods and the supernatural, and to find the moderate path between Law and Chaos, excess and monkish restraint, licence and tyranny.
Not all ideas are philosophical: we have magnificent fantasy concepts here such as a linked series of worlds in a system resembling a wheel with spikes. But the characters are compelling, especially the likeable version of Von Bek we have here, a man of deep integrity but also humour, distracting us from the somewhat morose personality of the Champion himself.
I’ve enjoyed my mini-Moorcock marathon. There will be more in a while, but first I’ll turn to something else…
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