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In the end I liked Dancers at the End of Time more than I thought I would around half-way through. It is essentially a debate contrasting the values of the protestant moral world view and work ethic against an entirely free and "innocent" society. It suffered I felt from both a rather uneven structure across its three parts and a desire to add external threats and incidents which weren't really necessary. It wasn't as funny as the comedies of manners of Oscar Wilde, either, on which it was, I believe modelled. In the end I thought it succeeded as an exploration of its themes and was able to explore them in ways only possible in an SF novel of this kind but it failed as a homage to Wilde and Beardsley and as a more traditional style SF-based adventure which it seemed, in places, to wish to be.

( more, including spoilers, under the cut )

I was interested to read a passing comment in one of

parrot_knights recent posts that he is currently reading Michael Moorcock's "The Dancers at the End of Time" sequence. I am also doing this prompted by a review of his work that appeared in SFX last year. I previously read one of his Elric novels but remember absolutely nothing about it at all beyond that it had Elric in it (well *duh*) and that I found the ending vaguely unsatisfying and open ended. "The Hollow Lands" is the second book in the sequence after "An Alien Heart" which I read earlier this year, before I started this blog.

( Review of The Hollow Lands )

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purplecat

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Dancers at the End of Time
The Hollow Lands (Dancers at the End of Time)

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