The idea of a lone sword-slinger saving a kingdom beset by inhuman foes is not a new one in the fantasy field. It’s stale. But it is the uncommon inversion of this idea that truly sets Michael Moorcock’s The Eternal Champion apart and above its fellow works in the sword-and-sorcery sub-genre. Those unfamiliar with Moorcock’s books may find this novel shocking, and possibly confusing. In the multitude of novels (93 thus far) he has written, he weaves a tapestry spanning myriad worlds, with only two constants: an Eternal Champion (whose name and aspect depends upon the specific Earth he inhabits) and an Eternal City, Tanelorn—which is noticeably absent from this book.

In The Eternal Champion, readers are given the unassuming John Daker, a man plagued by dreams of other, more heroic lives. He soon awakens in another time and place of a much more epic nature, as the self-aware Eternal Champion of Humanity, Erekose. His dreams continue to plague him throughout the military campaign he leads against man’s racial enemy, the ancient and alien Eldren. Instead of easily cutting a swath through another species, a dark lesson is learned, and its bloody price is quite steep for our hero, if he can even be called that. The novel also features one of the most creative and thought-provoking twists in terms of its ‘final battle.’

Moorcock wastes no time altering and questioning archetypes most fantasy readers are comfortable with or even tired of. The supposed warrior-hero is a borderline psychotic full of existential angst; the princess is either an emotionless slave to tradition or a spiteful harpy; the king is an aging drunkard of an aesthete with bigoted, antisocial tendencies. Moorcock’s elegiac and detailed-to-the-point-of-hyperbole prose operates as a perfect pastiche of that found in most tawdry paperback fantasies, which simply adds to both the dramatic and meta-textual punch of the novel. Though published in 1970, the questions that Moorcock asks are still relevant today. Does rape warfare occur when one kingdom takes over another? If so, can those who perpetrate and condone it against another species truly be called heroes? Why is evil so easily determined by race? Why do women always play submissive roles in epic fantasy? What are the actual duties of a hero, and who dictates them?

While Moorcock is not presumptuous enough to think he can answer these questions, his observations are nonetheless salient, enlightening, and relevant. Ultimately, it is up to the readers to decide whether or not Erekose is a hero—something they will struggle with long after they finish reading The Eternal Champion.