The first new "Eternal Champion" novel in ten years and a major fantasy publishing event, "The Dreamthief's Daughter" continues the highly successful Elrick Saga. The Count Ulric von Bek meets a figure known to him only in dreams--Elrick of Melnibon, the wandering Prince of Ruins. Somehow the same person, yet separate, their very beings fuse spectacularly. Now the never-ending struggle between Law and Chaos must be fought in both their universes. In the elaborate fictional cosmos Michael Moorcock has created, Elric and the various vonBeks are all aspects of the Eternal Champion who fights for the Balance, preventing both Law and Chaos from dominating the universe and trapping it in either barren sterility or pointless fecundity. Elric, the albino sorcerer and last prince of the inhuman empire of Melnibone, was the creation of Moorcock's adventurous pot-boiling inventive youth, just as the vonBek family featured in the heroic fantasies of his more thoughtful middle-life. In The Dreamthief's Daughter , he brings together Elric and Ulric vonBek, last scion of the family, and we finally learn the sin for which the perpetual villain Gaynor the Damned was doomed: Nazi occultists are searching for the Grail and the Black Sword and must be prevented from attaining them. Ulric seeks allies wherever he can find them, including Oona, who wanders through dream realities and with whom he falls in love. This is fast-moving phantasmagorical stuff with ambiguously virtuous heroes and baddies whose villainy and charm is total. Moorcock's immensely powerful visual imagination and sense of the innate drama of crucial scenes make this a breathtaking read. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk When the Nazis attempt to acquire Count Ulric von Bek's legendary sword, Ravenbrand, he finds himself engaged in a battle against occult forces to prevent the heirloom weapon from falling into the wrong hands. At the same time, in another dimension, Elric of Melnibone attempts to keep his own sword, Stormbringer, from falling into the hands of a mad tyrant. Returning to his popular "Eternal Champion" cycle of novels, Moorcock tells a tale of two worlds and two heroes whose deeds have the power to save or destroy the multiverse. The author's flair for combining fast-paced action with metaphysical adventure results in a topnotch fantasy adventure that belongs in most libraries. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Moorcock stalwarts, rejoice! The Eternal Champion is back, and the series in which different incarnations of him figure--the von Bek books and the chronicles of Elric of Melnibone--merge. Moorcock lays the foundations of this book's particular alternate world by reviewing the prehistory of Nazi Germany, after which Count Ulric von Bek relates Hitler's assumption of power and how otherworldly powers aided and resisted him. Ulric allies with the beautiful and magical dreamthief's daughter, Oona, and Emperor Elric of Melnibone, who is Ulric himself in another time period of the "multiverse" of Moorcock's fiction. They aim to destroy Gaynor the Damned, the human agent of pure evil, in all his many incarnations. Aided by the enchanted swords Ravenbrand and Stormbringer, the trio manipulate time and events and come toe-to-toe with the gods in their attempt to rebalance the multiverse. Although slow and uneven at times, the book is so full of magic and mystery, and its bad guys meet such satisfyingly gory ends, that it is still quite a romp. Paula Luedtke Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Michael Moorcock has written over 80 books and has won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize.