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This is Michael Moorcock's Elric for grown-ups. The story-within-a-story, multiple flashback form has a rather self-conscious effect, but allows for a much more complete and three-dimensional story. The framing device is the story of a middle-aged, documentary film-maker who drives off a bridge by accident and wakes in the world of some long-forgotten pulp sword-and-sorcery novels that she wrote in haste in her youth. Story-wise, there is action, intrigue, aesthetics, much elevated language, and some less elevated, the destruction of an empire, incest, multiple murder, torture, rape, drug addiction, sorcery, genocide, demonolatry, kinslaying (and all of that is just the hero's personal activities), interesting food, beautiful scenery, excessive interior decoration, retainers both faithful and faithless, consideration of the responsibilities of the creator to the created, and the ruler to the ruled, and a clffhanger ending. This book may not be to everyone's taste. There is also no sign of the sequel, due in 2004, which is annoying.
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