‘The Jade Man’s Eyes’ – Michael Moorcock (Unicorn Fantasy)

When I first went to high school my English teacher was more than happy to let me read anything off the library shelves, I think she was just pleased to come across a student in her class who wanted to read! Needless to say I went straight for the sci-fi/fantasy shelves and it was there that I first came across the works of Michael Moorcock. The satire of Oswald Bastable’s adventures went straight over my head (give me a break, I was twelve!) but I found the tales of Corum and Elric much more to my liking. Especially Elric…
Here was a warrior-sorcerer who was evil yet fought against the forces of evils, tied down by a fate that he brought upon himself but couldn’t escape from. You think you’ve got problems? Have you ever destroyed your home city and inadvertently killed the woman you love? Elric has done all this and much more…

When I was on holiday, last week, I came across this novella in a second hand bookshop. It appears in a slightly different form, as a part of ‘The Sailor on the Seas of Fate’ (which I have), but I’m a sucker for books that have a ‘collectable aura about them’ and so this one came home with me! :o)

Elric’s wanderings bring him to the city of Chalal and a meeting with Duke Avan, an adventurer who requires Elric’s help in searching out the lost city of R’lin K’ren A’a (the ancient city of Elric’s ancestors, don’t even think of asking me to try and pronounce it!). Elric has his own reasons for agreeing to help but fate has its own reasons for bringing Elric to this forgotten island…

‘The Jade Man’s Eyes’ is only seventy four pages long and I managed to finish it on the train to work. As such, I thought this was going to be a fairly short review of a series of sword and sorcery encounters. A fun read but how much can you fit into seventy four pages? I was wrong.
What you get is seventy four pages worth of testament to Moorcock’s skill at placing layers of meaning one on top of the other. There is much more to ‘The Jade Man’s Eyes’ than is at first apparent…

The plot itself is a fairly standard ‘quest’ tale where trials and horrors must be overcome in order to gain great treasure. It’s relatively fast paced and action packed but I’ve seen it all before and so have you. One thing that bugs me in particular is the way that Elric seems to be able to call upon Gods, at the drop of a hat, to save him from impossible odds. This is a man who seems to have favours owed to him by every deity in the multi-verse. It would be nice, every now and then to Elric solve a problem using his own ingenuity rather than getting the Gods to bail him out…
Don’t go too disheartened, about the negative points, though. Moorcock manages to turn ‘The Jade Man’s Eyes’ into something quite special.

First up is the character of Elric himself, maybe not the original anti-hero but an iconic figure nonetheless. His sense of ennui means that a new dimension is added to the tale; this isn’t just a quest for treasure, it’s also Elric’s quest to find meaning to his existence and also find a strange kind of solace in danger. Does he succeed in this quest? It’s a ‘half and half’ thing where the danger is all too apparent but any answers that Elric finds will inevitably throw up more questions. This raised the question, for me, of how a reader is meant to feel about an unrepentedly evil character that keeps being thwarted in his attempts to do the right thing and cannot escape his destiny. I’ll get back to you on that one as I’m still trying to work it out myself.

The other thing that sets ‘The Jade Man’s Eyes’ apart, from more typical ‘swords and sorcery’ fare, is that the choices Elric makes in this novella have the largest of impacts on all of his stories to follow. And we all know how that turns out in the end, don’t we?
Bearing this in mind, it becomes interesting to try and figure out just how much choice Elric had in the decisions that he made. If he was fated to do this can he really be said to be fighting to maintain the balance between Law and Chaos? I mean, the Balance is obviously maintained but it was at the expense of the Balance that was already in place. Now I’m getting confused…

‘The Jade Man’s Eyes’ is not easy to pick up in this format but, like I said, you will find it as a part of ‘The Sailor on the Seas of Fate’. Wherever you find it, this novella is well worth a read. A light bite that is ultimately very filling.

Eight and a Half out of Ten