Tag Archives: Monsters – Fiction

The Citadel of Forgotten Myths

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Citadel of Forgotten Myths [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Michael Moorcock, related to The Elric Saga series.

Moorcock the Citadel of Forgotten Myths

While promotional copy insists that this latest addition to Moorcock’s tales of the last Emperor of Melniboné “takes place between the first and second books of the Elric Saga,” that refers to their current packaging in the Saga Press edition. For those of us more familiar with the old mass market paperbacks and their omnibus collections, that makes it fall between “The Weird of the White Wolf” and “The Vanishing Tower.” Elric’s peregrinations with Moonglum in the Young Kingdoms are interrupted with a trip to “the underside of the world,” where the moody kinslayer traces the origins of the Melnibonéan race and their relationship to the dragons with whom their culture is in symbiosis.

The first half of the book consists of two novellas previously published under other titles. I had read “How Elric Pursued His Weird into the Far World” when it was called “Red Pearls” in the 2010 collection Swords & Dark Magic. I liked it then, but it was too long ago for me to assess how “substantially revised” (per the appended note) this new version is. The story here is interesting, but often told at a somewhat chilly level of abstraction. The second novella is “How Elric Discovered an Unpleasant Kinship,” published before revision as “Black Petals,” serialized in Weird Tales (2008-9) and collected in Elric: Swords and Roses. Despite owning the latter volume, I had never read this story. It felt very much like a return to form, with a mood that matched “The Stealer of Souls.”

The second half of The Citadel of Forgotten Myths is centered on the citadel of the title, the stronghold of Kirinmoir. This polity in the World Below compares to Elric’s own Imryrr as an age-old capital of his race. It is matriarchal, however, with an apiary-centered economy. The story starts with some adventuring, and it builds to a great military conflict driven by Melnibonéan grudges and the scheming of gods of Chaos.

Particularly in the final part, this book has many “Easter eggs” for longtime readers of Moorcock, and not merely of the crossover variety that tie this story into his multiversal hyperwork of the Eternal Champion, Cosmic Balance, and moonbeam roads. For example, he alludes to his own song lyric in mentioning “veterans of those dreadful psychic wars” (184) and to his recent autobio-fantasy in “a whispering swarm constantly reminding him of his own mortality” (185).

Some contemporary political sarcasm is evident in naming a throwaway character G’nilwab Sirob–an anagram of “Bawling Boris” (205). (I suspect that I failed to catch yet other references built into character names.) Moorcock also has deranged Chaos Queen Xiombarg extol herself as “Goddess made Great Again” (284), and Elric expresses his resentment that his countrymen wanted him to “make Melniboné great again” (314).

The inhuman Elric is veritably the apotheosis of the sword & sorcery murder hobo. As an inversion of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, the point that stands out in these particular tales is the ineluctable net of dependencies and obligations that bind Elric to his race, his cursed sword, and his patron demon. Where Conan prizes his freedom and independence, Elric seems unable even to conceive of such a condition. I don’t think this book would make an especially effective point of entry for the Elric stories, let alone the larger Eternal Champion quilt. Still, I enjoyed it, and it fueled my appetite for re-reading Moorcock’s prince of ruins.

More personal than any article of clothing. More private than any diary. Every page stained with a sorcerer’s hidden character, their private demons, their wildest ambitions. Some magicians produce collections, others produce only a single book, but nearly all of them produce something before they die.

Scott Lynch, In the Stacks [Amazon, Local Library]

Hermetic quote Lynch In the Stacks more personal more private sorcerers hidden character demons wildest ambitions magicians produce collections single book something before they die

Len Deighton was not an author of spy thrillers but of horror, because all Cold War–era spy thrillers rely on the existential horror of nuclear annihilation to supply a frisson of terror that raises the stakes of the games their otherwise mundane characters play. And in contrast, H. P. Lovecraft was not an author of horror stories—or not entirely—for many of his preoccupations, from the obsessive collection of secret information to the infiltration and mapping of territories controlled by the alien, are at heart the obsessions of the thriller writer.

Charles Stross, The Atrocity Archives [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

Hermetic quote Stross The Atrocity Archives spy trillers existential horror nuclear annihilation frisson terror secret information mapping territories alien heart writer

The Atrocity Archives

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Atrocity Archives [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Charles Stross, book 1 of the Laundry Files series.

Stross The Atrocity Archives

This volume contains a brief novel (Stross’s first to be published) and its longish short story sequel. Of the two, I preferred the first with its more leisurely pacing. Also, there was a major plot-twist in the short story that I was able to spot about thirty pages in advance. The meat of both is a very artful hybrid of exo-horror and spy-thriller, with a sardonic take on postmodern bureaucracy and a generous helping of hacker culture. The characters are well-drawn and their context is a UK occult intelligence organization called the Laundry. I found myself often resorting to the appendix which decoded the alphabet soup of (mostly non-fictional) abbreviations, acronyms, and organizations; and I laughed out loud when I had to look up TLA and find it explicated as “Three Letter Acronym.” Other features I appreciated: misfiring demonic evocations, inside references to weird literature, a romantic dinner in Amsterdam, and cow jokes. 

As it turns out, the book is far from unique, not even counting Stross’ own sequels. In his afterword, he points to Tim Powers’s Declare and the gaming supplement Delta Green as evidence that the early 21st century was steam engine time for this sort of story. (The Torchwood television series was late to the party, and thus quite possibly inspired by Stross’s own work–a thought that would probably be unwelcome to him, since he has repeatedly expressed in his blog his contempt for recent SF television generally, and Russell T. Davies’ work in particular.) 

There’s no need to discuss Stross’s sources or literary influences here, because he does so himself with verve and candor in the aforementioned afterword. He also shares some interesting thoughts about the construction of spies and hackers as fictional protagonists. At all events, this book was a lot of fun, and I expect to read more of Stross’s stories about the Laundry.