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Jewel in the Skull: 06/26/08
By all accounts I should have loved The Jewel in the Skull by Michael Moorcock. I normally enjoy his twisted take on things. This one has plot elements I normally enjoy; it's a post apocalyptic fantasy with a mixture of science and magic but the book just left me cold. I put it down after the first sixty pages. This first volume in the four volume History of the Runestaff series is deceptively short (160 pages or so) but dense. At the same time it's incredibly stupid. It's somewhere between Heart of Darkness for the complex plot being crammed into so few pages and Red Sonja (except that I like Red Sonja). I was willing to put up with not getting the plot or even when the story was supposed to be taking place but when I hit the gratuitous nudity I had to stop. The book went from being an odd example of early Moorcock to Moorcock "writing with one hand" as my husband would call it.
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