The Fortress of the Pearl: An Elric Tale

Muuuuch better than the first book. I'm reading in chronological order so given that this is actually 8th book in the series it makes sense. I just hope the rest between book 1 and book 8 will be more similar to this than to Elric of Melniboné. I doubt it for the next two books at the very least, though.

The story is alright, prose is beautiful in the tokienesque fairy tale sense and characters actually weren't pissing me off 90% of the time with their behavior. I still have issue with the ending because Elric acts like honorable warrior for 98% of the book only to slaughter half a city for no reason at the end. Like wtf? Maybe other novels will explain his relationship with chaos more and make it make sense...

But this is what I expected when I heard all the praise for this series. Not post-modern garbage the first book was. Moorcock is also exploring philosophical ideas here but it doesn't ruin the flow of the story unlike in the first book.