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Loading... The End of All Songs (1976)by Michael Moorcock
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. "The End of All Songs" is the third in the Jherek Carnellian series about life at the end of time. In the first book, we learned that end of time approaches but mankind (or what's left of it) doesn't view that eventuality as compelling enough to do anything about it. We also meet our Eternal Champion of the hour - Jherek Carnellian - and his late Victorian love interest, Mrs. Amelia Underwood. In the second book, we had Jherek go back in time to retrieve Amelia from 1896, but instead of an extraction of surgical precision, we ended up with most of the population of End Time taking a quick jaunt back to London to experience the experiences of the Victorian era. Jherek and Amelia ended up together, but on a deserted stretch of paleozoioc beach - marooned in time. The third book starts there - alone in the paleozoic, but quickly gets somewhat crowded as timetraveller after timetraveller bounces into their little sliver of the past and cause problems. Eventually, everything is bundled up into a neat little self-contained timeloop, but there's a whole lot of nothing that happens along the way. Jherek gets confused, lonely, bored and jealous. Amelia is filled with helplessness, self-loathing and undertakes a rather masochistic attempt to adapt to society at the end of time. Eventually, Lord Jagged's plans are finally revealed and they come to fruition. After thoroughly enjoying the first two books in the series, I was underwhelmed with this one. It just seemed like there was far too little going on and it took far too long to get there. Too much of Jherek pining for Amelia. Too much of Amelia making half-hearted attempts to join the End Time society. Too much of Jagged being mysterious and manipulative. And definitely too little humor. Jherek Carnelian and Mrs. Amelia Underwood find themselves stranded in the Devonian period due to a time travel overshoot. The End of All Songs is longer than the other two in the trilogy, with more existential angst and a lot of exposition about time travel theory. You'd think the angst and exposition would weigh the book down, but I think nothing on earth could possibly weigh this book down. The whole series is so utterly ridiculous, and fantastic, and so much fun to read it hardly seems possible. The conclusion to the wondrous "Dancers at the End of Time" trilogy, in which Jherek Carnelian makes a triumphant return to the End of Time with his beloved Mrs. Underwood, only to learn that Time truly is coming to an end, and that immortality will never be what it was again. A tale well-told, mysteries answered and a satisfying conclusion cap the final book of one of the best science fiction trilogies and pieces of social commentary yet written. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesThe End of Time (3) The Eternal Champion (The End of Time book 3) Belongs to Publisher SeriesGallimard, Folio SF (181) Présence du futur (281) Science Fiction Book Club (2701) Is contained in
In this last book of the trilogy, the decadent immortal Jherek Carnelian and his prim, beloved Victorian lady time-traveller, Mrs Amelia Underwood are rescued from the Palaeozic Era by a passing time-machine, and finally reach the End of Time. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction 1900- 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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But, felt it dragging on and just wanted it to end.
I have books 4 & 5 in this series, but believe they are mostly short stories involving different characters so I will be leaving the End of Time setting behind but may return again one day.... ( )