Remembering Corum

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about how I discovered sword-and-sorcery, and how I went to the local library, then the local bookstore, then the local used bookstore, before I found ANYTHING listed in the famed Appendix N at the back of the DM’s Guide. This was the very early 1980s, when I was still in junior high and riding my bicycle all over the city.

I couldn’t latch onto much of anything from that recommended reading list except, in the library, some Zelazny. Every regular visitor knows about my love for a lot of Zelazny work. The used bookstore had Leiber’s Swords Against Death, for which I am eternally grateful. And they ALSO had three beat up paperbacks by Michael Moorcock.

They’re full of wild color and inventive world building and some lovely prose and gripping action, and if the plot line to each is pretty similar, well, so be it, it’s a fun ride. Maybe this trilogy doesn’t hit the absolute highs of the Elric saga, but it never sinks to the low spots of the Elric saga either, which is, let us be fair, a little inconsistent.

I’ve read a lot of Moorcock and while I haven’t read all of his sword-and-sorcery books, I’ve at least sampled all of his heroic fantasy cycles, and these three books remain my very favorite of those series.

I only read the sequel trilogy once, and recall that as a kid I found them too dark and sad. Maybe I’d enjoy them more now that I’m older. What’s your take? Are there any other Corum fans out there?