** Matt Ruff – Sewer, Gas, and Electric
*** Michael Moorcock – Elric (the original six novels)
*** Wendy Pini – Law and Chaos
*** Jim Thompson – The Grifters

I really enjoyed Sewer, Gas, and Electric the first time around. This time it just felt like someone trying too hard to throw a bunch of “funny” stuff into one book in order to create the best-sounding back-cover blurb. Giant killer sharks in the NYC sewers! A shark named after a beer!!! Etc! It was an okay time, but eh.

Michael Moorcock is not a bad writer. Or so I’m told — I don’t feel like I can judge very well, since I read most of his stuff when I was much younger and perhaps not a great judge of writing quality. However, the Elric books are really not that well written. There’s a lot of the cardinal sin of telling rather than showing — we’re often told things are evil or unnatural or whatever, and we have to take it on trust. It’s all fairly trashy — and yet, I pretty much sped through the entire six-book series (six thin, lightweight books, I admit) at full speed, compelled to see the whole thing through. So he’s got something going for him. Anyway, Elric is a lovable hero, the tortured emo anti-hero, doomed to kill those he loves and agonize about it to the uncaring gods. Plus, he looks cool.

Having finished the Elric books off, I decided to dig out Law and Chaos, Wendy Pini’s book of drawings from her never-realized animated Elric movie. I’ve had that book about as long as my Elric books (and going back to when I read ElfQuest and may even have admitted to reading it in public), and so her images are inseparable from Moorcock’s words in my head. It’s probably been 20 years since I even looked much at that book, and many of the scenes were still perfectly familiar. The art isn’t great — it’s a little too elfish/fey for Elric perhaps (not surprising from a very young-at-the-time artist who would go on to create ElfQuest) and it certainly doesn’t shy away from the emo aspect of Elric (again, not surprising), but it’s mostly a good fit for Moorcock’s character, and anyone who likes Elric would probably appreciate it.

The Grifters was good stuff, makes me want to read more Jim Thompson.