The City in the Autumn Stars
core novel 1986 The Eternal Champion
Record
| First published | 1986 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.73 (408 ratings, collected 2026-09-28) |
| Page count | 344 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780246128430 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
Manfred von Bek, a descendant of the war hound Ulrich and a German nobleman who threw himself into the French Revolution, flees Paris in 1794 as the Terror devours the ideals he fought for. Disillusioned and hunted, he heads for Switzerland, where he falls in with an early balloonist and a scheme to swindle a fortune, and pursues an elusive countess who has taken his heart. His search leads him to the fabled City in the Autumn Stars, a place outside ordinary time where alchemists, adventurers and warring factions gather, and where the Grail his ancestor once carried is again the prize of the world's contending powers, in a set-piece battle in an otherworldly tavern. The novel continues the Von Bek family's long association with Lucifer and the search for the cure for the world's pain.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Eternal Champion
- Series: Von Bek core; position 2 of 2 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Michael Moorcock
Notes
- From the series record (Von Bek): The Von Bek family's bargains with Lucifer and their search for the Grail, the Cure for the World's Pain: Ulrich in the Thirty Years' War, his descendant Manfred after the French Revolution. Both are incarnations of the Eternal Champion.
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 Von Bek: position 2 of 2: previous The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981)
- Internal chronology, within The Eternal Champion: position 10 of 30: previous Phoenix in Obsidian (1970) · next The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)
Sources
← The Eternal Champion dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.