I'm glad I read The Eternal Champion and The Sundered Worlds but I can't really see myself going back to them. Phoenix in Obsidian is a different story (so to speak) - smart, atmospheric, fast-moving science fantasy. Not as ambitious or assured as Moorcock's later work, but absolutely nothing to sneeze at or be ashamed of.John Daker/Erekosë has had a hundred years of peace, but the multiverse keeps turning, and it starts to look like time for the Eternal Cowboy to ride off into the sunset. Sure enough, Daker is soon the wonderfully named Urlik Skarsol, another legendary warrior called to aid humanity in its darkest hour.
The setting is a distinctly old-fashioned Dying Earth venue. The sun grows cold. The Earth no longer turns, and her fires have long gone out. Ice has conquered the world. The vestiges of humanity live in sea caves along a narrow strip of coastline sheltered by an enormous mountain range.
This book is a great example of Moorcock's talent for bizarre but convincing landscapes, technologies and cultures. His imagination appears to be limitless, and his worlds are filled with odd little details and grace notes that have a preternatural rightness to them. Example: the sea of this exhausted world is so saturated with salt and who knows what else that it has become viscous, so that ships must glide on the water's surface via hydrofoil, and men who fall overboard sink slowly but inexorably as if in icy quicksand. The science may not make any sense (I couldn't say) but the point is the image - a frozen, tideless, poisonous, syrupy sea lying black beneath grey sky and shrunken, ghostly sun.
Erekosë had Kanajana, a poisonous sword only he could safely handle. Urlik is called upon to wield the generically-named but infinitely more frightening Black Sword, a fate he resists without quite knowing why. Anyone familiar with Elric's sword Stormbringer can guess that this Black Sword will be, at best, a mixed blessing.
Daker/Erekosë/Urlik again finds himself allied with humanity against an unhuman foe, the Silver Warriors of the book's alternate title. I'm happy to say that the Champion avoids genocide this time around, but nevertheless those that call him discover that, while they may use him, they are in turn used by Fate, which has plans of its own and exacts a price they may not wish to pay.
The cover. I read the omnibus version, and I own the Dell paperback with the magnificent but over-familiar Frazetta cover. The UK paperbacks have featured beautiful and striking artwork, but I decided this very classy and unusual Robert Gould cover captures the tone of the book best. Note that the cup and sword are here again. The cover vaguely suggests an illuminated manuscript, thanks to the prominent block of text (an ominous bit of verse from the novel). Text as a major decorative element is an Arts and Crafts touch. The colors are my favorite part (what I wouldn't give for a good-sized print of this cover!) - white for the ice, grey for the sky, black for the sea, and red for fire - and blood. Large quantities of blood.
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