"What the fuck am I reading?" That's the correct response to the first page of the book. It's the worst kind of homemade, D&D-inspired, Clinkenbeardian rhetoric. It's so bad, it's funny. It's even funnier if you can't help reading it out loud in a silly voice. No wonder Dave Sim saw it fit for parody.

But wait! This was published in 1972... Before Highlander and the Beastmaster and Hawk the Slayer and Heavy Metal and all the other cheesy 1980s movies it invokes. Before high school students were writing Lord of the Rings fan-fiction (mostly). Before D&D, and most importantly, before Drizzt. This book could very well have set the precedent for a whole generation of overwrought, pretentious cliché that can't be taken seriously!

Furthermore, after you read it for a while, it's actually better than all of those followers. Despite the endlessly pretentious handling of the protagonist, the story's actually not terrible. The lurid amount of description is actually under steady control such that it paints a pretty effective picture. It's even a little bit thoughtful. The first chapter is the best because the words are metered frugally so that it almost has a poetic rhythm, although that mood wears off in the rest of the book.

Also, I strongly suspect The Dark Crystal was influenced by this book. The descriptions of the important characters in the wanton empire, their roles and attitudes, and the slaves, are all very familiar to the portrayal of the Skeksis.

I guess I feel the same way about this writing of Moorcock as I felt about Lovecraft: I thought it was horribly cliché until I realized it was way, way ahead of its time.