LDP

The Elric Stories are a fantastical Dark Adventure

Revisado: 03-07-22

I wouldn't go so far as to say this is a "grim dark" story, as often the category goes to deconstruct traditional fantasy narratives. Elric is the Ur example when it comes to Dark Fantasy Adventure stories. Most of the stories are episodic, and it is apparent in some of the wording that one of the stories was written out of order. People like to compare it to The Witcher, but the Witcher was more commentary about fantasy works like Elric, Arthur Legends, Fairy Tales, and modern values (global politics, environmental destruction, eugenics, women's roles in fiction). Elric has the soul of trying to be an anti-hopeful narrative, a deconstruction of Tolkien-like fantasy where the heroes go home after doing good (no matter how hard the road) and live their best lives, but it is also an Adventure Quest type narrative, much like Edgar Rice Burroughs (or even in some degree the Oz books), where the central character is the main draw, and he wanders around with a vague but over reaching goal and gets into bite-sized problems/quests.

Like everybody else, I respect Neil Gaiman... but that story was perhaps the most inappropriate thing in this version of the book. I had seen the book on hardcover recently as well and it was also included in it. It isn't fantasy, it is totally non-tonal to the rest of the book, and it involves a conversation with/between boys bring up that they had been molested by an adult.

If I want to make a "next reading suggestion" I would suggest reading Roger Zelazny's The Great Book of Amber (The Amber Chronicles + The Chaos Chronicles)... While I am disappointed that Audible hasn't (yet) combined the 10 stories into the Great Book, the series has been a staple in my meat-space library for over 20 years now and I have read it several times through. WHY I am suggesting to read this series is : 1) It is contemporary to Elric, and 2) They have a similar theme of "Forces of Chaos vs. Forces of Order" as well as the whole "Everything is Real, somewhere in the Multiverse" and 3) It broke my brain every time these were brought up in narrative about Chaos Lords and the people that walk through reality/shadows/dreams.

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a Junk food book

Revisado: 04-19-19

Books that it kept reminding me of (and are better) are: The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Cryptonomicon, Android's Dream, and A Scanner Darkly... read those instead. If you have already read those, maybe pick this one up if you are bored enough and read those a hundred times already.

It is basically taking the Illuminati conspiracy theory and slapping a War of the Worlds plot on top of it.

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I really missed this world.

Revisado: 08-06-18

I've been jonesing for another Dresden Fix ever since I've finished Skin Game a couple years ago. This really satisfied my itch, but it also left me wanting more. I really loved the last story from three different PoV, including the dog Mouse.

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This is the Second Book in the Series.

Revisado: 12-25-16

Just a fair warning to people picking up this series in the official English translation. The series itself is split in half, between the first book and the first-half of this book (a deconstruction of fairy tales) and the rest of the series (the quest around Ceri). Ceri was properly introduced in THIS book, and skipping over it makes reading the rest of the series seam off a bit. The first two books are collections of short stories rather than proper "beginning, middle, and end" books. About the only thing they have is story themes. This book talks a lot about fate and destiny, rather than in the first book which stories are more about morality and choices.

The games are an unofficial fan sequel to the series. The developers of the games liked to make a lot of nods back to the book's continuity but the author even said that the characterizations in the games differ from those in the books.

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I skipped the first half of the book...

Revisado: 06-23-16

And missed absolutely nothing.

I had problems when downloading this to my MP3 Player and it didn't want to upload the first half of the book to the player. So I jumped into the book at Chapter 16.

The second half of the book is where anything interesting happens. If you'd read the previous book you'd already know about other Protectors being on the Ringworld and the basics of inter-species policies.

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Dark...but something's still missing.

Revisado: 02-03-16

First off: I had to buy the third book and read-read it because it was not available on Audible. (ugh, I know, what a chore. *sarcasm)

Second: The series should be sold together as one book. It reads as one book instead of three, and they are short. Don't bother buying it unless it goes on one of the $4.95 sales.

Third: The series is bleak. There is no happy ending. You meet one of the main characters dead at the beginning of the first book and spend the rest of the series finding out what kind of person he was and how he ended up in the middle of nowhere dead.

Fourth: There is something missing.... It is like we are only given a small slice of time in this world. Get told just enough things that had happened in the past to move the story along, things that center around the town itself--but it feels like there was not enough, that a lot of history was glossed over. There is a world here that needs more expansion, and maybe that is what is going to happen in future books? IDK, but it is like hitting the ground running on this one.

In conclusion: It wasn't a waste of time to read it. It would black your soul just a little bit by the end of it. So if you don't like listening about the rat-infested slums, drug abuse, the lives of the barely-living poor, and demonic murderers: pass it up.

However, I did like the fictional religions, and there is solid world-mechanics behind how the demon-born taint the spaces around them and why the Wolf Priests want to stop their spread. Even the sympathetic Rachel is too dangerous to be around.

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This is the book my friends stole from me.

Revisado: 06-08-14

I had gotten the trilogy my freshmen year of high school and read it twice before loaning it out to my friends. They read it and passed it around to other friends, and eventually lost track of the book.

We still joke about reading hidden messages between the lines, 15 years later.

It was an experience, something that needs to be read twice or more to understand most of what's going on in it. I feel like it had prepared me (or desensitized me rather) to some of the more stranger things I would later read and become interested in.

It is firmly on my quick suggestion lists for younger people looking to make that jump into adult fiction. It's kind of like that one weird mind-screw anime you suggest to people who normally don't watch anime, it's completely out in leftfield and would leave an impression on a person, even if they didn't like it.

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Philosophy the Novel.

Revisado: 08-22-13

The story itself really isn't the main draw of this book, it is all the philosophy being talked about. What Leto's goals are, what the characters' views on government, religion, and social vices are. I thought that most of the best quotes from the entire series are from this book alone.

I had stopped reading the Dune series after this book, and felt it could've made a decent ending for the entire series.

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Bland reading.

Revisado: 06-13-13

Having listen to many novices voice act over the past several years, this reading was ranked average among them.

It took him a good 5-10min to get into the "groove" of reading, and the audio is of a lower quality at the beginning of each "start" of a new segment. This would've been avoided if he had spent a few min prior to recording doing a practice read. Sometimes I could've sworn that a new guy would come in sometimes....

and I think at one time I could hear someone murmuring in the other room?

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REALLY GOOD FOR A $2 BOOK

Revisado: 06-13-13

I was surprised about how well read this book was, I wasn't expecting much out of it, considering the price tag was so cheap. Having picked up the other books in the series for 4-5$ a pop, this one had been the best performance out of the whole lot.

After getting through most of the second book, read by somebody else that frequently started off bad and had to work his way up to "eh, it's ok." 5min after they started reading a new segment.... THIS reading of "A Princess of Mars" was by far better.

I would suggest picking up this version of the book. It is the right price if you are just wanting to get introduced to the series.

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