Hawkmoon: The Sword of the Dawn: The Sword of the Dawn

By Michael Moorcock

Book Overview

In Michael Moorcock's vast and imaginative multiverse, Law and Chaos wage war in a never-ending struggling over the fundamental rules of existence. Here in this universe, Dorian Hawkmoon traverses a world of antique cities, scientific sorcery, and crystalline machines as he pulled unwillingly into a war that pits him against the ruthless and dominating armies of Granbretan.

In The Sword of the Dawn, Dorian Hawkmoon's quest to destroy the Dark Empire of Granbretan leads him onto the path of a man who possess a rare ring that allows men to travel through time. Hawkmoon uses this ring to travel to a far future New Orleans, where he must battle the Pirate Lords who possess the Great Sword of the Dawn, which can end the Dark Empire once and for all.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076532475X
• ISBN13: 9780765324757
• Release Date: August 2010
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Super Reader

Despite Dorian Hawkmoon's best efforts, the Dark Empire is still expanding. It is growing so much he has to take extraodinary efforts to protect his own turf. Doing so, however, doesn't solve the greater problem at hand. Heroes are made to do heroic things, and Hawkmoon is the Eternal Champion, and the Sword of the Dawn calls.

More buildup to the conclusion in The Runestaff.

Michael Moorcock, The Sword of the Dawn (DAW, 1968)First, to get it out of the way: the worst, absolutely unforgivably worst, thing about the 1968 DAW edition of The Sword of the Dawn is its unforgivably bad cover. It's so bad I actually knocked half a point off the book's final rating. DAW, who usually came up with top-notch artists to do Moorcock covers, really dropped the ball in the Runestaff series, and this is the nadir. Cover it, school-textbook style, before reading.That said, the book itself is top-notch, one of the better novels in the whole Eternal Champion cycle. Dorian Hawkmoon, reluctant servant of the Runestaff and another incarnation of the Eternal Champion, is off on the quest to find the last piece of the puzzle he needs to strike back at the Granbretanian army, an artifact called the Sword of the Dawn. Needless to say, getting his hands on it will not be easy...The same cast of characters from the first two novels returns, along with some throwaway characters, a new villain or two, and all the adventure one could possibly want. As well, The Sword of the Dawn is set on a new continent in the purview of the Eternal Champion, Amarehk (yes, it is what you think it is), and Moorcock's descriptions of the city of Nawlin (yes, it's at the delta of the big river) are perhaps the most detailed urban descriptions in the whole series.The novel could probably stand on its own without too much of the ongoing plot being lost, but aspiring Moorcock readers are encouraged to read the whole series (preferably after those of Elric, Corum, and Erekose, at least). ****

Picaresque but fun

A bit slow at the start, but the second half is very entertaining, and Moorcock's imaginative descriptions of strange worlds and peoples is always worth the price of admission.