Off the Shelf

“The Quest for Tanelorn”

By Marcus Pan

Moorcock's fantasy work is always hard to come by, but quite satisfying when you do. The Quest for Tanelorn is the third in a volume called The Chronicles of Castle Brass, and here we hang out with Hawkmoon...who is Corum...who is Elric... Quite simply, these characters created by Michael are the Eternal Champion, different vistas of the same soul in differing worlds. And Tanelorn? A city where all points of the multiverse meet and collide...a place of peace and worship, where you can while away the last of your days or cross to get from one frame to another.

This is the final novel concerning Hawkmoon and his alternates. Here he is whisked away to another land where he will have to find his way to the lost city of Tanelorn. To get there he hitches a ride on a dark ship, which carries four complete versions of the Champion Eternal – four men from different worlds, with similar warrior skills, who are really one object for the balance's use. Together they go off to beat down some whacky wizard family – brother and sister – who are from another "place" and have found this juncture of our multiverse and sit there drinking our energy up. Those bastards!

The confrontation is strange, weird, unusual but somehow enjoyable. Moorcock gets very dominant in his theologies here as the idea of split frames, multiple planes, Law, Chaos and Balance become prime focal points of the novel as the four piecemeal heroes try to figure out where they fit in all this. It gets a mite confusing, what with the theology interwoven deeply into the fiction, but it's a short and energetic read that ends up very interesting in the end. Great close to The Chronicles of Brass.

“The Quest for Tanelorn” by Michael Moorcock
Copyright © 1975 by Michael Moorcock
Published by Dell Publishing Co, Inc.
Originally Published in Great Britian by Mayflower Books, Ltd.
ISBN: 0-440-17193-8

Click to Buy!