Like Elric, Corum possesses an unreliable, murderous weapon in his prosthetic Hand of Kwill (the only remnant of a dead god). His quest for vengeance against the Mabden man who killed his family broadens to take on the Chaos Lords. He finds out they want the destruction of all the older races on his plane and want to supplant them with Mabden who they have been aiding. Unlike Elric, Corum is never allied with the Chaos Lords. The ship of corpses, including that of her husband, is one of the most startling images of the book along with the vast, naked form of Arioch, Lord of Chaos, Knight of Swords (the Sword Rulers are Chaos Lords in this series) with men, lice-like, crawling over his body, feeding on crumbs, sweats, and scabs. His lover Rhalina is much more learned in it. Unlike Elric, he is a rational, dispassionate sort who dismisses sorcery, in this world practiced by the upstart Mabden. He gets maimed, losing an eye and head, and then falls in love with a Mabden woman. In short order he finds himself virtually the last Vadagh, a complacent, rational, anti-social race that he finds upon venturing out of his castle, almost dead at the hands of the upstart race of man, here called Mabden. The book wastes no time making Corum as a mournful, melancholy figure. I found several things surprising, variations on the other fantasies of the Eternal Champion saga. The Knight of the Swords - I liked this fantasy more than I thought I would, especially since I found out it was based on Cornish mythology. “Introduction” - In a short introduction, Moorcock notes this is only fantasy whose language and mythology derives from a specific source, specifically Cornish.
My reactions to reading tis omnibus in 1999.
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