Que cosicas que nos trae la vida.
Una recomendación que pasé un poco por alto en su momento y que en medio de un bloqueo lector buscando algo cortito lo encontré en la lista de lecturas pendientes.
Pues me he encontrado con un libro que me ha recordado a las típicas películas de principios de los 80 como "Furia de titanes", "Jason y los argonautas" o mas actuales como "Dioses de Egipto" con transfondo mitológico donde los dioses juegan con los humanos y uno de ellos les desafía y se embarca en una auténtica odisea para conseguir un objeto divino y reconozco que me encantaban. Luego he visto que el libro es de 1971 y todo cuadra. Esto es más de lo mismo y esta cortado por el mismo patrón: Humano que lo ha perdido todo que desafía a los dioses y viaje de A a B con peligros in crescendo hasta enfrentarse al peligro final. Es cierto que empezó muy flojito y me costó bastante pasar de la página 50, pero a partir de ahí han sido un par de días lo que me ha durado.
Una grata sorpresa esta saga a la que sin duda le voy a dar continuidad.

Note: Below, my review is split into two parts. The first gives my general thoughts on the book and series, and the second details spoilers and major plot points. Be warned.

Part One: Overview

First of all, I have to say that the first few chapters of this book were actually painful to read. Just from the setting and from the events described, the book grants a sense of both urgency and complacency that makes the reader (or at least me) cringe with what happens. I cannot place this book, and the 3-star rating should be evidence of it. The writing style is certainly good, and the story is one that we've seen before several times, but it's done with such a crude passion that I can't help but enjoy it. And yet, I cannot say that I loved the book. Perhaps the worst part is that I cannot even say why. The synopsis at the back of the book is not very descriptive, and I'd done little research regarding the Corum series prior to starting The Knight of the Swords, so for the first half I had absolutely no idea of what kind of story I was reading nor where it was going.

The main character, Prince Corum, is a strange one to say the least. Something that fascinated me while reading this is that through the eyes of Corum, a being who is not human, we get to see the Mabden (or Men) as something utterly alien. This is something that many films have attempted before (Avatar, Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas), where we are supposed to look at our own humanity and see the flaws. For the first half of this novel, through some very clever and crude imagery, I got the sense that even though these people are of my kind (humans), I did not want to be associated with them. The line between Mabden and Vadhagh is so clearly drawn that even in my mind Corum, despite looking like a human and displaying human traits, was an altogether different entity.

Another thing that I found strange and even surprising is the fact that Moorcock captures the sense of loss and despair that Tolkien attempted to portray with his elves. The feeling that something beautiful is forever lost, that the old time of plenty and merriment are gone forever. That we cannot do absolutely anything against the tides of time. This sensation I felt much stronger while reading Corum than I did while reading The Lord of the Rings. Perhaps it is because of the crudeness that Moorcock refuses to shy away from that he captured the urgency and the darkness a little better. The grief of loss and the burning of hatred are both depicted very deeply in this novel.

But so far I have only talked about the first half of the book. The second half is very, very different in tone from the first half. The plot moves from a terrifying, almost nihilistic quest for revenge to a romance and then onto a mixture of John Carter's travels on Barsoom and Ulysses's voyages in the Odyssey (I will discuss the specific elements in my spoiler section below). And this, too, I found fascinating. The way that Moorcock shifted the focus from one type of story to another almost seamlessly is quite impressive.

A final point before delving into spoilers, I must state that the history of his world, the races of beings that keep getting older and older, that there is always a more ancient race, that even the primordial times are not the true beginning, quite reminded me of Lovercaft and his colossal monsters of the Elder Days. Even Tolkien's world, which has an entire creationist story behind it, feels youthful and lively compared to elder and elder folk in Corum's world.

I recommend it to fans of the abstract, fans of fantasy and fans who appreciate the very blurry, but very real, line between fiction and philosophy.

Part Two: SPOILERS and In-Depth Discussion

I will start with the first half of the book. This was the part that was very difficult for me to read, since there are a couple of torture scenes that, while not very descriptive, are rather crude and harsh. It does not help that we are seeing these through the eyes of Corum who, at this point, has lived his entire life in his family castle. His quest is to go and seek his relatives to see if they know anything about the growing Mabden threat; on the way, Corum learns that there is a group of men who want to eradicate the Vadhagh, the race to which Corum belongs. While not an entirely new idea (a brute, savage army coming to kill/destroy the status quo), it is presented in a few different ways throughout the novel. At the beginning, Corum's father hypothesizes that the Mabden have gone through a very quick evolution and then a devolution, going from beats to intelligent beings and then back to savages. This scientific idea is then contrasted with the idea of Chaos vs Order. Near the end of the book, Corum encounters one of the gods of Chaos, the titular Knight of the Swords, and he explains that Order and Chaos used to be balanced, but after a battle Chaos gained the upper hand, banishing the gods of Order. And it is this very chaos that gave rise to the Mabden. The Mabden are razing the older races because such is the cycle of existence. Several times the universe is called blind or deaf, immutable and uncaring. Some races exist, then they stop existing and the universe is none the better or worse for it. Even the Knight of the Swords, a god himself, admits that gods exist because of thought, and thought exists because of the gods (a theme explored in several other fantasy works, American Gods and Small Gods among them). But in this setting, the god himself is aware of this, but doesn't seem to care. Good and evil in the world of Corum are subjective, only a matter of perspective. Even chaos and order are both fine, so long as there exists a balance. The returned entity of order, the Giant, explains this to Corum.

The course of things is that they come and then they go. But there are some temporary exceptions, such as the sorcerer Shool and Corum himself, both the last members of a race no longer in existence. Again, this is something that has been done before, but not in this manner (as far as my literary knowledge extends). Which is why I'm not certain of how exactly to rate this book.

The action is smooth and quick, with some nice scenes of Corum being a fearsome fighter. And the final confrontation with the Knight of the Swords is quite impressive. But I feel that the strongest part of the book, at least thematically, comes from the first third, when Corum loses his hand and eye. It is around this time that the Prince learns what it is to be, for lack of a better word, human. He learns to fight and to kill, to be cruel and cunning, to hate and to seek revenge. But oddly enough, he also learns the good aspects even if he doesn't realize it. He learns compassion from the Brown Man, learns love from Rhalina, a love that he acknowledges shouldn't be valid, but is nonetheless. It's ultimately this love that leads him to make a deal with Shool the sorcerer and to travel to strange (in almost every meaning of the word) lands and to ultimately face off against a god.

I'd like to now get into the strange lands. I compared this section of the book to both the Odyssey and Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom series. He travels by sea, and in those travels he comes across a ghost ship (reminiscent of the Flying Dutchman), a sorcerer on a strange island inhabited by semi-sentient plants (reminiscent of Calypso's island upon which Ulysses is marooned), a giant walking on the ocean dragging a net behind him (which wouldn't seem out of place in a Greek epic), and the strange round-eyed folk who try to poison Corum. These last are the ones that reminded me of John Carter the most, because here we have an almost entirely alien race that, somehow, evolved into existence. And while they are courteous to Corum, ultimately his almost superhuman deeds are what save him and another prisoner. The otherworldliness of this entire sequence brought to mind the beginning of The Gods of Mars, where Carter and his friend, Tars Tarkas encounter the "plant men," by far the oddest creatures on the face of Mars. Likewise here, we seem to leap from a harsh, yet typical, fantasy into a pulp science-fantasy story, with talks about pandimensional vision and existence, cosmic entities and creatures that may well be from a different planet.

His usage of his god's eye and hand almost gave me the sense of a videogame, where the main character can summon a type of helper from a separate dimension. And this is exactly what Corum does. He peers into a separate plane and beckons strange creatures to aid him in battle. This is perhaps the most intriguing part in my opinion, because it opens the possibility that nothing is ever destroyed. He summons four hooded figures who kill several foes, and when he summons aid once more, it is the defeated foes who obey him. The novel explored much of the dimensions and multi-dimensional existence, but hardly touches on the subject of death or a potential afterlife. And given the setting that Mr. Moorcock cooked up in this novel, I think it would be very interesting to see if anything comes of it.

Finally, the ending: It is almost a happily-ever-after ending, with Corum and his partner sailing back home. This is a heavy contrast to the beginning of the novel, where Corum is driven and fully consumed by hatred and thirst for revenge and a brutal desire to kill the man who maimed him. At the end, he understands that he will have to face his torturer and that he will most likely have to fight him, but he acknowledges that he no longer desperately seeks his vengeance. But the way this is fitting is that, given the setting of an immutable universe, this ending is not a happily-ever-after, but rather a happily-until-the-gods-decide-otherwise-or-the-universe-changes-again.

I greatly enjoyed this novel, but I cannot entirely say why. While the things I discussed above certainly were a part of it, there's something odd about it that I cannot put my finger on. Maybe it's the almost dreamlike and surreal imagery in some sections, maybe it's the all-over-the-place, unpredictable plot. Either way, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone looking for something quite out of the ordinary. There's a lot of better fantasy out there, yes. But to that, I say: Corum isn't just fantasy.

This story is fun and imaginative, yet dark in the way Moorcock does very well. Of the Eternal Champion stories I’ve read, this one felt the most similar to Elric, but in a good way, and with plenty to distinguish it. In particular, Corum as a character is less of an antihero than Elric. Though he is often motivated by a desire for vengeance, it is an understandable desire given the events early in the book. The ending also feels more upbeat than I’m used to with Moorcock, though I expect that might chance later in the series. Overall, I very much enjoyed this book and recommend it, especially if you like Elric and want to try another of Moorcock’s stories.

The Corum series builds an incredibly cool fantasy world with weird creatures, gods, quests and multiple planes of existance. The single drawback of the series is that it doesn't pass the Bechdel test. The only memorable female character is the wife and lover of the main character who dosn't say or do much... The books are still fantastic in my opinion.

Interesting tie-in with the Elric series. A bit hard to follow early on, but I'm definitely hooked enough to want to continue to the series. Onward! Corum of the Red Robe!