The Fortress of the Pearl
core novel 1989 The Eternal Champion
Record
| First published | 1989 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.75 (6,098 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780575045156 |
| Internal chronology | 3 |
Synopsis
In The Fortress of the Pearl, the corrupt oligarch Lord Gho Fhaazi of the desert city Quarzhasaat poisons the dying Elric and blackmails him into a mission he cannot refuse: recovering the legendary Pearl at the Heart of the World, the only thing that can save him from the slow-acting poison now working through his body. To find it, Elric must enter the dreams of Varadia, a young woman trapped in an enchanted coma by sorcerers who abducted her, guided by Oone, a dreamthief skilled at navigating the minds of others. The search carries Elric through seven linked dream-realms where he is stripped of his usual sorcery and even, for long stretches, of his sword Stormbringer, leaving him to survive on wit and will alone.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Eternal Champion
- Series: The Elric Saga core; position 3 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 7 of 12: previous The Bane of the Black Sword (1977) · next The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
- Internal chronology, within The Eternal Champion: position 11 of 30: previous The City in the Autumn Stars (1986) · next The Sword of the Dawn (1968)
Sources
- Moorcock's Miscellany
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elric_of_Melnibon%C3%A9
- https://www.stevenhsilver.com/fortress.html
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