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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780441888054
ISBN: 0441888054
Label: Ace
Manufacturer: Ace
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 160
Publication Date: 1988-03-01
Publisher: Ace
Studio: Ace

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Super Reader
Review: The Weird of the White Wolf also is a book that contains several smaller pieces of work, namely :
The Dream of Earl Aubec
The Dreaming City
While the Gods Laugh
The Singing Citadel

The first is a quick Eternal Champion interlude.

In the Dreaming City Elric returns to the Dragon Isle to attack his cousin, who is holding his lover captive.

While the Gods Laugh show Elric journeying with Moonglum, his version of the Companion to Champions, to find the Dead Gods Book.

The Singing Citadel is a building with the properties of a siren, basically. Elric and Moonglum investigate.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: In response to the "Spotlight Reviews"
Review: In defense of one of the greatest and most original sagas in the annals of heroic fantasy, I would like to address some of the negative comments (and misconceptions) of the Spotlight Reviews.

First and foremost, the Elric Saga is a tragedy. None of the stories have a particularly happy ending, and the final book, "Stormbringer", ends along the same lines; sad, but dramatically fulfilling. One should consider that when Moorcock first started writing these, tragedy was virtually unheard of in Sword and Sorcery Fiction. This is not Tolkien. The hero does not get the girl and ride off into the sunset. If that's what you're looking for, you should avoid Moorcock and seek satisfaction elsewhere.

Secondly, the story that everyone has the most problem with, "The Dreaming City", is actually the FIRST Elric story that Moorcock ever wrote. He did not write these chronologically. As it stands, "The Dreaming City" is the most pivotal, and arguably, the most important story in the entire Elric Saga. It's the story that defines the character and his subsequent actions throughout the rest of the series. One person noted that Elric's actions (in leaving S. Baldhead to die in order to save himself) was uncharacteristic. Well, its supposed to be uncharacteristic, BECAUSE THE CHARACTER UNDERGOES A PROFOUND CHANGE IN THIS STORY. The character of Elric at the end of "The Dreaming City" is not the same character at the beginning of the saga. In the first two novels, he is idealistic as well as naive (especially in trusting Yrkoon a second time). But after his actions bring ruin to everyone he cares about, he becomes embittered and vengeful, all the way up until midway through "The Bane of the Black Sword", where the character changes once again. As for the complaints that some of his actions are inexplicable and inconsistent, I must remind the readers that Elric is a drug addict. His sword, Stormbringer, is his addiction. Anyone who has ever dealt with addiction in the real world, either directly or as an observer, can tell you that an addict's actions are often illogical and inconsistent.

The idea that Elric never really cared about Cymoril is ludacrous. Anyone who gained that from reading the stories must not have been paying very close attention. While I don't like to give away spoilers (unlike some people, who are content to ruin it for everyone just because they personally didn't like it), I will say that the tragic events of "The Dreaming City" haunt Elric throughout the rest of the saga.

In closing, I would suggest not to prejudge the series based on this one book. Reserve your judgement until you've completed the entire saga.

Five stars. Highly recommended.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Long Journey
Review: A Review by Joe

The Book follows an Albino emperor, named Elric who has given up his ruling of his land. Elric has done this in order to find out why he is on earth, why he exists. The book takes the reader along on all of Elric's journeys to find the meaning of life. Elric goes to many lands and fights off many mystical creatures to find this out. He will meet many new friends along the way, and the reader will lose some friends too, as you go along on his journeys.

I like how the book always kept me wanting more. The stories in the book are just as exciting as the next. It makes the reader feel like you are right next to Elric. The book is so descriptive. It almost makes the reader think that the monsters are real. I really like this description of Elric and his new found friend Shaarilla mounting their horses. "They mounted there swift, black horses and spurred them with abandoned savagery down the hillside towards the marsh, their clocks whipping behind them lashing them high into the air." In the book the vocabulary was easy enough, but I could not understand some of the names. I kept wanting to call Elric, Eric. I really thought that the cities were hard to pronounce like Jharokor, Imrryr, and Melnibone.

I recommend this book to readers who like adventure, fantasy books. This book has all of those great genres jammed packed into on whole book.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a repetitive and hugely unfulfilling disappointment
Review: In all honesty, I find WEIRD OF THE WHITE WOLF to be a frustrating disappointment. Like SAILOR ON THE SEAS OF FATE, this third installment of the Elric Saga is essentially a collection of three, disjointed tales pitting Elric against only slightly varying opponents and obstacles. WOLF, to it's credit, is slightly more coherent than SAILOR, but it's repetitive and terribly unfulfilling.

The Elric Saga is great fun out of the gate, with ELRIC OF MELNIBONE telling an original, complete tale of love, war, and betrayal...and with a compelling open end, to boot. But nothing is done with it. Elric drifts near-aimlessly through the second volume, and here, in volume three, Elric's much-awaited return...along with the Dreaming City's destruction, is glossed over in a mere 60 pages(!), only to return Elric to his tired, pointless wandering where he spends his time largely bemoaning his existence.

Once again, there're quicksand-like marshes, organic tunnels which take the belly of the whale metaphor a bit too literally, seemingly abandoned building's which give birth to ghastly monsters within, and stray companions who are easily disposable. It's all just more of the same, with a poorly relayed love interest haphazardly thrown in.

To reiterate, Elric's much-anticipated return to Melnibone is a shameful bust. We off-handedly find out that Elric is once again dethroned by his cousin, that his betrothed has once again been put to sleep by a spell, and that Elric is once again considered an outcast. No time is spent exploring his relationship with his hateful cousin Yyrkoon, Cymoril is a total non-entity as she sleeps right up until her unfortunate death, and Elric's other established friends and supporters from the first volume are completely ignored. I can't emphasize how much of a let-down all of this is. Elric secretly visits the Dreaming City days before its destruction...if he had but one conversation with a coherent Cymoril, or a brief, friendly encounter with his friend and supporter Dyvim Tvar (who isn't even mentioned!), this could have been infinitely better, allowing the reader to at least momentarily empathize with Elric. But alas, all the potential energy is fruitlesslly discarded.

I feel as if Moorcock became completely disinterested in the Dreaming City and wanted to be done with it as soon as possible, deferring, instead, to the enveloping (and boring) relationship of Elric and his symbiotic sword.

In my opinion, it's just a huge, wasted opportunity. Perhaps, if I were 14 years old again, none of this would matter and I'd be content with all the soul-sucking and incantations. But as an installment in a series with such a strong first part, WEIRD OF THE WHITE WOLF has extinguished any desire of mine to continue with the Saga.

Moorcock, you lost me.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: 3 of 6: Back to Melnibone
Review: Michael Moorcock, The Weird of the White Wolf (DAW, 1977)

The third book in the Elric series introduces the reader to Moonglum, Elric's longtime companion (and, thanks to AD&D's Deities and Demigods book, the companion most readers can't imagine him without). Much of the second novel moved away from the events of the first, and concentrated Elric's character on other adventures. The Weird of the White Wolf brings Elric back to Melnibonë along with Moonglum, their friend Smiorgan Baldhead, and an army of raiders bent on overthrowing Yyrkoon, who stole the throne when Elric left Melnibonë for a year to travel the world. For those wondering, whether you've read the book or not: the "weird" of the title is an archaic definition of the term, given by Merriam Webster as "One's assigned lot or fortune, especially when evil." And when he finds it, he's not all that happy about it. But that's to be expected when one's antihero has a crisis of conscience, I guess.

Certainly not a slow book by any means, nor a weak one in the context of the series. And it's definitely a necessity as a prelude to what comes after it. But I still felt there was something missing here; some pieces of description left out, a few places where things could have been filled in better. All of the Elric novels are short, to say the least (Stormbringer, the last and longest of them, clocks in a 217pp.), and feel as if they could use some fleshing out; this one, however, gives that feeling the most. One wonders if the brevity of them was not the insistence of the publisher, and what Moorcock would do with them, given the opportunity (a la King's unexpurgated edition of The Stand). Loads of fun, and highly recommended for fantasy and non-fantasy readers alike, as is the whole series. ****

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