GLORIANA
by Michael Moorcock
I wish I’d written this ...
... because this is far more than a mere novel!
This is one of Moorcock's major early novels, and one that I somehow never got around to reading during my youthful Moorcock marathons. Plainly a homage to Spenser's "The Fairie Queen" and perhaps also to his friend Mervyn Peake, it is fantastically atmospheric and grotesque, a story had me hooked from start to finish. The characters are wonderful and the prose opulent. For sure, it's pretty obvious that Moorcock is self-consciously aping another's style, but he does it so well that it's impossible not to admire his technical proficiency, though that's something you'll only do when it intrudes, which it rarely does. For the rest of the time, the story will urge you forward as it delivers one fantastic scene after another.
From the publisher
A fable satirizing Spenser's "The Fairie Queen" and reflecting the real life of Elizabeth I, tells of a woman who ascends to the throne upon the death of her debauched and corrupted father, King Hern. Gloriana's reign brings the Empire of Albion into a Golden Age, but her oppressive responsibilities choke her, prohibiting any form of sexual satisfaction, no matter what fetish she tries. Her problem is in fact symbolic of the hypocrisy of her entire court. While her life is meant to mirror that of her nation — an image of purity, virtue, enlightenment and prosperity — the truth is that her peaceful empire is kept secure by her wicked chancellor Monfallcon and his corrupt network of spies and murderers, the most sinister of whom is Captain Quire, who is commissioned to seduce Gloriana and thus bring down Albion and the entire empire.
