The world, and Elric himself, are stuffed with some of the most imaginative and evocative elements I’ve read. The structure also works to subvert reader expectations. The only problem with these subversions was—at least for me—that they were only successful in so far as I am vaguely familiar with fantasy and cliches about the world. Loved the anti-hero angle and the fact that even at the end he still doesn’t listen to people who were consistently right about what he should do and it’ll all probably end terribly.

The subversions decoupled what I knew about that stuff so didn’t know the rules of the world enough to appreciate some of what was going on, probably. Both the villain and Elric’s love interest felt a bit one dimensional because they mostly were in service to irony and subversion that made the characters kinda meh.