Viriconium Nights

So totally behind on this:

Michael Moorcock, Hawkmoon: The Jewel In The Skull / The Mad God's Amulet / The Sword Of The Dawn / The Runestaff

Absolutely wretched. Even Moorcock essentially admits there's nothing worth holding onto in these books in his intro. They were written over the course of what I think is a 3-day weekend apiece but I don't know what he was doing on that last day -- certainly nothing resembling revision. The plotting is slapdash, the pacing is poor, there are continuity errors aplenty, and there are so many unnecessary POV shifts. SO MANY.

The Jewel In The Skull: Count Brass is the larger-than-life ruler of a small European dukedom (Kamarg, in what was once France) in one of those post-apocalyptic futures where the world has reverted to medievalism (though of course there's plenty of barely-understood technology left behind). Though nearing the end of his years, he rules Castle Brass wisely and effectively, assisted by his friend the philosopher Bowgentle and his lovely daughter Yisselda (it seemed at first like the two of them would be paired up, but alas, it was duller than that). Count Brass has had enough of war and killing, so he's inclined to think well of the Dark Empire of the island of Granbretan, which believes it has a destiny to rule the world and has started conquering everyone under the banner of unifying the fragmented continent. When rumors surface that the Dark Empire is pretty much pure evil and commits atrocities for fun, the Count ignores them, and so he gives a warm welcome to Baron Meliadus, high-ranking warlord and ambassador of the Dark Empire. This turns out to be a bad idea when the good Baron tries to rape / abduct his daughter and, when foiled, swears eternal hatred / vengeance on Kamarg, thus forcing the Count to come out of retirement to defend his weak people against a seemingly unstoppable superpower.

Count Brass is not the subject of these books.

Instead, after all that, we follow an angry Meliadus back to Granbretan to meet the actual protagonist, Dorian Hawkmoon, a captured prince and hero whose country has already fallen to the Dark Empire. The Baron and some evil scientists implant Hawkmoon with a Black Jewel in his skull (hence the title) and make him an offer: in exchange for infiltrating Castle Brass and helping the Empire to bring it down, they'll put him back in charge of his homeland. The catch: the Jewel functions as a camera, so the bad guys can see everything he sees, and if he shows any sign of betrayal, they can use the Jewel to eat his brain. Thus the conflict: Hawkmoon is a good man forced to work for the forces of evil against the one enclave of resistance -- drama here!

Except, no. As soon as Hawkmoon reaches Castle Brass, they figure out exactly what's up with him and easily neutralize the Jewel's powers.

Also Hawkmoon pretty much totally forgets about his homeland at this point, and the Dark Empire never even thinks to massacre his people out of spite or to force him to choose between groups of people he cares about or something.

United, Hawkmoon and the Brass-ites fight off a Dark Empire attack. Then Hawkmoon falls for Yisselda. The rest of the book deals with Hawkmoon journeying to Persia to find a magician to make the Jewel-neutralization permanent (AKA contrivance). On the way, he befriends a dwarf named Oladahn and is saved (the first of many times) by a Warrior in Jet and Gold, who seems to know everything and tells Hawkmoon that they both serve a fate-controlling artifact called the Runestaff but has a problem with straightforward explanation. Hawkmoon finds what he's looking for and beats the Baron again and there's the vaguest attempt to pretend that Meliadus got killed ("they never found a body!") though even the characters have forgotten about this by the beginning of the next book.

There's not much here other than false starts and setup, which wouldn't be so bad in the first book of a tetralogy except for the fact that the abandoned storylines are considerably more compelling than what this eventually congeals into, which is "Fated-to-win hero collects enough plot coupons to trade for a victory."

The Mad God's Amulet: The most pointless of these books. Hawkmoon heads back to Castle Brass, acquiring the following along the way:

1. A dimension-shifting device for Castle Brass (given by the ghostlike residents of a watered down Cittagaze), conveniently allowing the plot resolution to be delayed until enough questing has been done.

2. A dandyish Frenchish turncoat ally named D'Averc, who is given the most basic of loyalty-proving plots (you know, when the former bad guy seems to have betrayed the group but he ends up affirming his goodness and burning his bridges with the villains). He affects symptoms of sickness but is actually in fine health; this is substituted for actual characterization and never pays off.

3. The titular Mad God's Amulet, one of the necessary plot coupons Hawkmoon must gather. It can give him superhuman fighting strength but he never, ever uses it in a situation where that power would clearly come in handy. In fact, he leaves it behind against all sense when he goes off journeying again in the next book.

4. Yisselda, who helpfully got herself kidnapped by the guy with the Amulet, thus allowing us to dispense with two fetch quests at once. She's treated as Hawkmoon's property by pretty much everyone (the Warrior, speaking on behalf of the Runestaff and by extension the story gods: "You must destroy the Mad God and rip the Red Amulet from his throat -- for the Red Amulet is rightfully yours. Two things the Mad God has stolen, and both those things are yours -- the girl and the amulet." Hawkmoon: "Yisselda is mine, certainly."). It gets creepy.

And (most importantly):

5. A pair of pet near-immortal mutant war jaguars, by far the coolest thing in these books. They get abandoned for no reason whatsoever and it is a TRAVESTY.

The Sword Of The Dawn: Important characters are introduced that should have showed up a long time ago. Granbretan's Shakespeare sends Hawkmoon and D'Averc on a fetch quest to a nuked (or bio-contaminated or whatever) America regarding some teleportation rings. Baron Meliadus' ex-wife shows up and sort of helps them. Meliadus himself becomes more unhinged and power-hungry. Hawkmoon and D'Averc teleport around and wind up fighting some evil cultist pirates to get the next necessary artifact -- you guessed it, the Sword of the Dawn -- which is used to summon a legion of spirit-warriors (I only mention it because it shows up in Symphony of the Night). That's it.

The Runestaff: Hawkmoon and D'Averc meet up with the random brother of the Warrior in Jet and Gold so he can explain shit when the Warrior gets killed. They get to the City of the Runestaff; its child guardian is Jehamia Cohnahlias, LOL or not really. After introducing this guy Shenegar Trott as a Dark Empire rival to Baron Meliadus and extensively establishing how much wiser and calculating and effective and utterly unlike the rest of his Nazi-esque countrymen he is and having him show up at Runestaff Central as a formidable intellectual rival who is capable of masking his evil and convincing Cohnahlias that he may be just as deserving of the Runestaff as Hawkmoon, what do you think happens next?

Obviously, Trott, defying all sense, decides to be upfront with his evil and take the Runestaff by force.

AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH

So Hawkmoon gets the Runestaff and comes back just in time for everyone to prepare for the final battle (in an transparent and grossly inadequate attempt at feminism, the heretofore worthless Yisselda joins the men in battle despite being pregnant and in the past displaying the opposite of combat ability). Somewhat surprisingly, plenty of the good guys die; the scene is kind of reminiscent of the bloodbath at the end of The Worm Ouroboros, only lamer, and the last of the heroes' deaths might have been affecting if I hadn't seen it done so much better in The Book Of The Long Sun.

Important plot points are handled awkwardly; crucial information about the Dark Empire's line of succession should have shown up much earlier, and it's a throw-the-book-against-the-wall moment when the villains get the last-minute idea to turn the Black Jewel brain-eating machine on again and you're like COME THE FUCK ON WHY DIDN'T YOU DO THIS BEFORE.

As for the story taken as a whole, every single component of progression revolves on the most blatant of contrivances and, no, saying "the Runestaff did it!" is not an excuse; these are the type of books in which you can replace like every instance of "the Runestaff" or "fate" with "the plot" and things make more sense. I'm not overcome with the sense of wonder at all of these astonishing coincidences when they're clearly the result of the author not thinking things through, recognizing this, and awkwardly trying to smooth things over (at one point, the characters remark on how strange it is that they forgot to make use of their teleport rings or something when it would have solved their predicament easily; Hawkmoon concludes, "Doubtless that was the result of supernatural interference with our brains! How I hate the supernatural!" Ha ha ha ha ha FUCK YOU).

Hopefully things will get better from here.

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