Moorcock is yet another author I've been meaning to get into for quite some time now, as Sword & Sorcery has been one of my niche interests of the past few years, and knowing that Elric is one of its central and most archetypal sagas.

Elric of Melniboné is chronologically the first in the series (though not the first that Moorcock wrote), and there's a lot to enjoy about it. It's succinct, very readable, and doesn't get too carried away with detail or get lost in the machismo that makes much of the genre pretty stale. Elric is a more morally complicated character than the genre often has, and reading of his ups and downs made him a dynamic one. The world also has a lot of creative imagery and concepts, making it feel truly fantastical and otherworldly. By drawing from classical fantasy and metaphyiscal/cosmic fantasy and horror, it has the hallmarks of a work that's more influential than it may receive credit for.

My only criticisms come from the dialogue-- I don't need fantasy, let alone, pulpy fantasy to have really lofty dialogue or prose, but some of it felt a bit quaint and simplistic, sometimes redundant-- was ultimately hoping for something a bit more 'lyrically' written, but that's admittedly one of my biases within genre fiction and it's more of a nitpick than an objective flaw. Gene Wolfe's work may have spoiled me in that regard.

All in all, it's easy to see why it's heralded as a classic within fantasy, and I look forward to reading more of the White Wolf and Stormbringer.