{"id":44042,"date":"2026-09-07T06:30:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T18:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=44042"},"modified":"2026-08-26T11:58:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T23:58:29","slug":"older-fantasy-books-like-the-wall-of-night-the-elric-of-melnibone-series-by-cj-cherryh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2026\/09\/07\/older-fantasy-books-like-the-wall-of-night-the-elric-of-melnibone-series-by-cj-cherryh\/","title":{"rendered":"Older Fantasy Books \u201cLike\u201d The Wall of Night \u2014 The “Elric of Melnibon\u00e9” Series by CJ Cherryh"},"content":{"rendered":"

As promised on August 10,<\/a> I’m adding to my June 22nd post<\/a> on newer fantasy series that are similar to The Wall of Night<\/a> by bringing you the companion list-of-five for older and “formative” (for me!) series that I consider “of like kind” to the WALL series.<\/p>\n

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I started with The Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/a>, of course — how could I not?! \ud83d\ude00 — but today I’m going with a series that I understand was written as a kind of counter-culture to The Lord of the Rings.<\/em> For example, Elric is as much, if not more, antihero than hero and definitely not a paragon like Aragorn. All of which is completely fine by me, since I love them both. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

Similarly, much as I loved The Lord of the Rings<\/em> from first picking it up, I was also blown away by my first encounter with Elric, which was in a book titled The Sailor on the Seas of Fate<\/em><\/strong>. Yes, I know<\/em>, it’s a great title — and the read that followed did not disappoint!<\/p>\n

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In particular, I loved its weird, with supernatural and demon realms overlaying the real world and lashings of equally weird magic; my first encounter with a soul-sucking sword (Stormbringer); a mysterious and enigmatic hero (or anti-hero); and a decaying but still potent empire and web of politics. All qualities that characterized the other books in the series, which I then proceeded to read.<\/p>\n

If you aren’t spotting elements-in-common with The Wall of Night<\/strong> series yet then you should be, because The Sailor on the Seas of Fate<\/em> and subsequent Elric reads definitely fired my imagination. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

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The only caution I would sound, if you haven’t read any Elric yet and are wondering if it would repay a look, is that it is way<\/em> more weird than WALL, despite the latter’s “strange magic” a la Robin Hobbs<\/a>. But if you’re ready to embrace your weird and dive into a series with plenty of the mysterious, alongside magical and sometimes horrific adventure, then Elric of Melnibon\u00e9 could be just what you’re looking for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As promised on August 10, I’m adding to my June 22nd post on newer fantasy series that are similar to The Wall of Night by bringing you the companion list-of-five for older and “formative” (for me!) series that I consider “of like kind” to the WALL series. I started with The Lord of the Rings, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44042"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44051,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44042\/revisions\/44051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}