Elric of Melniboné
core novel 1972 The Eternal Champion
Record
| First published | 1972 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.88 (32,297 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780091121006 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
After inheriting the throne of the declining island kingdom of Melniboné, the albino emperor Elric struggles between his desire to reform his decadent, cruel civilization and the pressure of its ancient traditions. When his treacherous cousin Yyrkoon attempts to seize the throne and kidnaps Cymoril, the woman Elric loves, Elric must pursue him through dangerous and magical realms, drawing on sorcery and the aid of otherworldly patrons to survive. His journey brings him into contact with the legendary black runesword Stormbringer, a weapon of immense power and hunger that will bind itself to him for the rest of his life, setting the pattern for the wanderings and losses that define the rest of the saga.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Eternal Champion
- Series: The Elric Saga core; position 1 of 12 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Michael Moorcock
Notes
- From the series record (The Elric Saga): 12 novels in internal chronological order (per Saga Press's current standard edition), spanning 1965-2022 in publication. At least 4 of these are fix-ups of originally separate 1961-64 magazine novelettes (The Weird of the White Wolf, The Bane of the Black Sword, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, and, hybrid, Stormbringer); the remainder are original novels. The Sleeping Sorceress was retitled The Vanishing Tower for some US editions; the database records the earlier UK title. Publication order genuinely differs from internal order and no two secondary sources fully agree on the exact publication sequence due to UK/US divergence, internal (reading) order is used here as the primary axis since it is the one Moorcock himself settled on for the modern standard edition.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Elric Saga: position 3 of 12: previous The Sleeping Sorceress (1971) · next The Sailor on the Seas of Fate (1976)
- Internal chronology, within The Eternal Champion: position 1 of 30: next The Jewel in the Skull (1967)
Sources
- Moorcock's Miscellany
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elric_of_Melnibon%C3%A9
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elric_of_Melnibon%C3%A9_(novel)
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