Wow, excellent post. Thank you!
No problem. Always a pleasure to geek out about MM
As for those "moments of hackery": what books would those be? I'd like to avoid them. I'm sure his "hackery" is still pretty decent, but I don't have a lot of time to devote to reading and there are a lot of great fantasy books out there.
Like Rackhir says, the Mars books are a bit hackish. MM wrote them as a tribute to the originals, so they are something of a pastiche. They're
fun, but not his best stuff. Also, although the
Nomad of the Time Streams series is generally good, I find that the third in the series is weaker than the other two. That said, the other two are very good so if you get them in an omnibus you could well overlook that. (And depending on which printing you get, characters names will change - MM is an incurable re-writer of his early material.)
As I mentioned before, the quality of the Hawkmoon books is not on a par with his other stuff. Each Hawkmoon book took him about three days to write and in places it shows. Again, they're good fun, but not fantastic. However, if you start to get into the broader "Eternal Champion" saga metaplot* that ties lots of MM's work together, the final Hawkmoon book (
Quest for Tanelorn) is one of the saga's main finales. So you may wish to read it just to get that nice sense of closure that it offers.
I'd also not bother with
Silverheart, which MM wrote with Storm Constantine. It's basically a novelisation of an unreleased computer game, and it shows. Some nice scenes and ideas, but rather clunky.
I don't agree with Rackhir's assessment of the recent Elric books, however. It's true, you can't really top
Stormbringer. But I have a lot of time for
Fortress of the Pearl and
Revenge of the Rose and simply adored the most recent "Dreamquest" trilogy (
Dreamthief's Daughter,
Skrayling Tree and
White Wolf's Son). Very cool as a von Bek/Elric crossover. But tastes differ, of course. These later books are quite unlike the earlier Elric stories in style and theme, and that's not to everyone's liking.
Gotta agree with Rackhir on the lamentable absence of Whelan's art from recent printings. Whelan's art graced the covers of the first Elric books I read and it's always his style and portrayal that I think of when I think of Elric, his sword and the Black Ship.
Speaking of omnibus collections, there was a huge set of omnibuses that came out in the 90s that collected MM's Eternal Champion saga. They were published by White Wolf in the USA and by Orion/Millennium in the UK and comprise about 15 volumes, each containing several novels. Apart from a few differences between the US and UK versions, these attempt to put the series in a "chronological" order (despite that being something of an impossibility.) They're getting hard to find, but you might find them an easy way to get, say, all the Corum or Nomads stories in one go.
More recently, Del Rey have been publishing a series of Elric omnibuses, more or less in publication order (so the oldest stories first) with added extras thrown in, like short stories, original artwork, interviews etc. These are utterly awesome, still in print and not expensive. But I guess it depends on whether you prefer chronological or publication order.
I am going to resist the temptation to gush about the graphic novels for now. I think I've babbled on enough already for one day
*As you may know, MM's works posit the idea of an Eternal Champion, who incarnates in various places and times to fight for Law, Chaos or the Balance, as Fate decrees. Most of his protagonists are aspects of the Champion, but few are aware of this or accept it. The majority of his books stand alone, but some are more dependent on the Champion metaplot than others. Eventually, his works form an overarching epic that transcends time and space, with characters being echoes of each other and events mirroring other events on a fractal level. One of his conceits is that time is a field where everything happens at the same time, which allows for multiple endings to the same story. He really gets into this in later years, but you can see it developing in his earlier books. It's probably my favourite aspect of his writing, because the more you read, the richer the tapestry gets.
