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.
