The Woods of Arcady

Book Two of the Sanctuary of the White Friars

By: Michael Moorcock

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Hardcover | 6 June 2023

At a Glance

Hardcover
496 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.62 x 16.26 x 4.32

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A wild desert crossing, a secret island paradise, a hidden underground civilization, plus London and Paris. The multiverse expands as pulp adventure mixes with unreal memoir in the second volume in The Sanctuary of the White Friars series.

In the 1970s, Michael Moorcock, a writer of genre fiction, attempts to save his failing marriage by taking his wife and daughters to Paris. One night in a bar he is amazed to find himself drinking with heroes of story and history. The next day he awakens aboard a sailing ship, kidnapped into another reality by a French highwayman and the four Musketeers, who know Moorcock well from adventures in London's Alsacia...but that was another Moorcock, from another world.

Soon after they reach Africa, the company is rescued from an ambush by Antara, a poet-adventurer who offers to lead them across the desert and through several realities to the estate of Lord and Lady Blackstone. The trip is full of wonders Moorcock has read, dreamed, or written: an underground civilization of nonhuman creatures; a magical oasis where the lion lies down with the lamb; a lush garden inhabited by miniature dinosaurs.

They are pursued by the notorious Jacob Nixer, who also remembers the Alsacia and is determined to destroy Moorcock and his companions.

The main narrative of The Woods of Arcady is punctuated by episodes from the story of the Blackstones and by spirited, freewheeling appearances by Captain Buggerly Otherly and his companions from the Second Ether. As readers move deeper into Moorcock's multiverse, it rises up on all sides, ready to astound.

Industry Reviews

"A rousing adventure. . . . full of startlements, wonders, rueful musings and companionable outreach. . . . a hybrid metafictional romp which can be enjoyed on many levels."--Locus

"I owe a lot to Moorcock, as does fantasy at large. If you haven't read his books, you're missing something grand."--Brandon Sanderson

"The ambitiously intertextual second installment to SFWA grandmaster Moorcock's Sanctuary of the White Friars series combines autobiography and fantasy into a genre-bending whole. . . . An engrossing tale."--Publishers Weekly

"The greatest writer of post-Tolkien British fantasy." --Michael Chabon, New York Times bestselling author of The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Praise for The Whispering Swarm:
"[Moorcock] has essentially written the other style guide for modern fantasy. . . His vision of a speculative fiction genre that can be psychologically complex is evident in how very sophisticated some of it has become--from 'True Detective' to Jeff VanderMeer, from David Mitchell to ''Under the Skin.' But Moorcock also embraces the joy of pulp, and, like Tolkien, his creations are namedropped and sourced high and low."--The New Yorker

"Astonishing."--Alan Moore in The New York Times Book Review

"Michael Moorcock has written a tribute to the glory of nostalgia, that bittersweet longing for what can never be again."--Nisi Shawl in The Seattle Times

"Michael Moorcock never saw a boundary he didn't want to cross, blur or dispense with altogether. It's fitting indeed that Michael Moorcock should become his own unreliable narrator."--The Guardian

"Brilliant. Moorcock interweaves his two strands into a cat's cradle of wonder, with each narrative illuminating and heightening its counterpart."--Locus

"If you are at all interested in fantastic fiction, you must read Michael Moorcock. He changed the field single-handedly: he is a giant." --Tad Williams, bestselling author of the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy

"A cross between Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and Moorcock's own life."--SFRevu

"A fascinating Moorcock-esque romp, where the rules are never quite revealed, to the reader or the characters."--SF Signal

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