Set in a marvelous multiverse, this fantasy adventure-plus-memoir
grapples with questions of identity, creativity, heroism, and the very
structure of storytelling.
Postwar London, Swinging Sixties London--a time and place of creativity
and social change. Young Michael Moorcock embarks upon adulthood as both
editor and writer of science fiction and fantasy, helping shape the
genre into its modern form through his work and his friendships with
other writers. His marriage is new and fresh; his children are young and
raising them, an adventure.
But no adventure lasts forever, and Moorcock begins to chafe under the
grind of work and family. What seems a chance encounter with a monk--one
of the White Friars--leads to a secret at the heart of London. Massive
yet phantasmal doors lead to the Alsacia, a hidden world inhabited by
great heroes of both history and fiction. Captivated, Moorcock rides as
a highwayman and finds himself drinking in the company of all four
Musketeers, though he misses his children and his increasingly-estranged
wife.
The Alsacia's dangerous politics come to a head just as Moorcock's wife
divorces him, each catastrophe feeding on the other as two realities
pull on the emotionally struggling writer.
Part memoir, part adventure novel, The Whispering Swarm--the first
book in The Sanctuary of the White Friars series--is both an evocation
of a now-vanished London and the beginning of a new journey through the
multiverse, created by a master of science fiction and fantasy.
